Fiorella the Bard

Fiorella sent her full manuscript off to her editor last night at 9:43 pm and is now free to act like a human being until the revisions come in.

But she can't help but reflect on various aspects of her book, like why her heroine was a woman who had been hired by a small Texas town to direct its civic theater.  Probably because Fio has a fair amount of theater experience and knows people who can fill in the blanks.  But it also might be because, as an author, Fio is a director herself.  She sets up her characters and gives them roles to play, roles which they must stay true to in order to make the "play" come out right.

Every fiction writer is his own Shakespeare.  Think about it.

The Sonnet Sonnet

            

A sonnet is the clever use of rhyme

In patterns such as Petrarch might employ

Or Shakespeare's playful whimsy intertwine

For centuries of lovers to enjoy.

A sonnet is an unrelenting beat,

The blood's intrinsic pulse of weak and strong,

That runs full-tilt for five iambic feet

In three times four plus two, a discipline of song.

A sonnet is a message of the heart,

Of Wordsworth's wonder, Milton's heavy hand,

Of Keats's classic skill, of Shelley's art.

Of Browning's love songs from a foreign land.

    While others seek the chessboard on a day,

    The sonnet is my choice of game to play.

                                            

. . . . do I not bleed?

Life is loss, life is gain
Life is joy, life is pain
Love and hate, sunshine and rain
All is vanity, all in vain

Paranormal Parade

It dawned on Fiorella the other day how much of our classic literature is what we now classify as paranormal. Think about Homer's epics--the appearances of the gods and goddesses in the Iliad, plus the bizarre creatures encountered in the Odyssey. Think about Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf. In fact, think about Beowulf himself, swimming around for--eight days was it?--fully armored. Think about Spenser's Fairie Queen.

Shakespeare was something of a realist, but in Midsummer Night's Dream, he too dipped into the paranormal.

Fiction lets the mind run wild, and apparently human minds tend toward the abnormal--uh, paranormal.