Tomorrow, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I will share with you the greatest love poem ever written.
Before then, does anyone want to venture a guess as to what it is?
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Tag Archives: writing
Romance Advice from William Shakespeare – Part Four
Shakespeare was an intense dude. Most people were intense way back when. They put on twenty pounds of clothes just to go out to eat and they used twenty words to say things where one would have done just fine.
The Bard’s words are beautiful, but they aren’t as easily understood by today’s modern English speakers.
So first, study Shake’s immortal love sonnet below, and after that, I will translate.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? (Sonnet 18)
BY: William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
OK. And now for the translation. Are you sitting down? Good. For I will now translate this masterpiece of old English into modern language:
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? (Sonnet 18)
BY: William Shakespeare
TRANSLATED BY: Bookshelf Q. Battler
Damn baby, you be fine!
And there you have it. The Bard’s words brought forth into modern times. ‘Tis a beautiful thing.
Fake It Till You Make It
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
– Ernest Hemingway
No commentary necessary. This one speaks for itself.
Elmore Leonard – Quote About Writing
“I try to leave out the parts the people skip.”
– Elmore Leonard
Among your many works, Elmore, thank you for bringing us Justified. So sad this is the last season.
Tomorrow on Bookshelf Battle…
I’m going to have a special announcement.
Will it be…
a) So big that it will take people’s attention away from the big sporting contest I hear will be taking place?
b) that all of my readers will get free Kindle fires? Even my Aunt Gertie?
c) that the dawning of the Age of Aquarius is finally here?
d) that I have acquired a guest spot on Game of Thrones, in which I inspire everyone with my near victory, only to be murdered in a gruesome and unexpected manner?
e) None of the above?
Whoa nelly, such suspense! Stop by tomorrow to find out!
Deflategate Shakespearized
I like to Shakespearize things – movies, TV shows, songs. I love Shakespeare. Maybe it’s trite, but I do feel that the English language’s greatest author walked the earth around 500 years or so ago (give or take a few years here or there).
I hope to turn this into a new feature, and if you have something you’d like to see Shakespearized, let me know.
Without further ado…
DEFLATEGATE SHAKESPEARIZED
By: Bookshelf Q. Battler
A Tale Told in the Tradition of the Bard
PRESS MAN #1 – In fair New England where we begin our tale, a legend of great treachery and sanctimonious chicanery, of gladiators of the gridiron and air dispersion most foul.
RANDOM COLTS PLAYER (staring at and holding up a football as if it were a skull) – Is this a ball I see before me? It’s lack of weight disturbeth me with the passion of the Gods who once clapped in thunderous combat above the skies of Ancient Rome. Fi on thee, Knaves of New England, Mercenaries of the Villainous Cheese Baron! Something is rotten in the State of the NFL.
ENTER KING BELICHIK – Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! Good sirs, rest thine ears upon my voice, and hear me as I say that in my four score years of leading mine knights into carefully manicured grassy fields of battle all across our land, this is the first and only time that anyone hath raised the issue of mine balls! Merry, it surpriseth me greatly to hear men complain of a trivial happenstance, as surely as it would surpriseth me were I to waken on the morrow to find that the sun’s exuberant colors had transferred from yellow to green.
PRESS MAN #2 – Foul! Foul! Scandal most foul! A plague on your house, King Belichik! For thou failest to taketh the fall in this fake story that we hath manufactured out of whole cloth! Thou hast thrown Sir Thomas of Brady under the bus!
TYPICAL COLTS FAN – To inflate or not to inflate? That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to inflate your balls to 12.5 pounds per square inch, or to take air out of your balls until they are 11.5 pounds per square inch, and in doing so, ruin them? To inflate, to deflate, to inflate perchance to dream? Ay, there’s the rub…on our balls!
SIR THOMAS OF BRADY – Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow…inflated balls are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying slow news days…
COLTS FAN #2 – O, I see Queen Mab! Come she does, the Queen of the Fairies! And she telleth me true, she fills my ears with the melodious truth, that had our balls been comprised of more air, we surely would not have had our asses handed to us in a massacre in which we lost by 40 points! Fi! By the beard of God I say had the game ball had one but one more pound of pressure inside of it, we would have fought boldly like the mighty warriors of the coliseum of old!
ENTER FOX AND COMPANIONS – Forsooth and hark, for we are Fox and Companions! Bringeth yon noble viewers news of the death of the Saudi Arabian King? Nay! Bringeth ye news of the resignation of the Yemen Government? Nay! Gather round and hear a tale of balls deflated with vigorous gusto!
PRESS MAN #3 – But soft! What lies through yonder window breaks?! It tis the east, and the underinflated balls are the sun! Arise fair balls, and kill the envious moon, whose maid art sick and pale with grief, that her maid’s balls are far more inflated than yours!
PATRIOTS FAN -(also holding a football like it was a skull) – Alas, poor football, I knew him, Horatio. Twas a football of great jest and most excellent fancy! Once inflated to 12.5 pounds per square inch and then alas, deflated to a paltry 11.5 square pounds per inch by rapscallions of ignominious cunning and unscrupulous alacrity. Our knights, once a great bastion of the game, now reduced to wicked pissah jokes about deflated balls.
Steven King – Quote from On Writing
“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Do you doubt yourself while you’re writing? I know I do. Is that a good thing? Perhaps some of the junkiest books come from folks who believe that nothing but rainbows comes out of their pen? Perhaps some of the best writing comes from people who have toiled away, questioning and self-debating every single, solitary last word choice?
What say you, readers?
99designs
The site where artists give you several options to chose from when it comes to your self-published ebook cover.
Anyone out there use it? Anyone want to discuss their experience with it? If so, comment away!
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