“The Novelist Laments in Verse”

A screencap of a sonnet titled "The Novelist Laments in Verse" by Marie Brennan:

Shall I compare me to a wrung-out rag?
I am more limp, more grimy, and more drained.
The labor of a novel makes me sag;
my fervor for this enterprise has waned.
Sometimes -- ofttimes -- I’ve craved a restful week,
in which no scenes or chapters I compose,
no useful details in my reading seek:
but sans those things, a novel never grows.
So my eternal labor must go on,
in word by word and day by tiresome day,
until the moment when, quite pale and wan,
I can, arm raised in feeblest triumph, say:
I may be brain-dead and completely beat,
but after all these months, my book’s complete.

(I have finished a draft of The Worst Monk in Omnu, just in time to kick back for the holidays!)

One Response to ““The Novelist Laments in Verse””

  1. Jeremy Brett

    Brava! Congratulations!

    reply

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