Sirrah, a word with you

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.

STORY OF MY LIFE. I just handed in my Shakespeare midterm after madly running through Henry IV, Part I and skimming Romeo and Juliet this morning. We all know I love my Will, but Zounds, I am wanting a reprieve from mine Bard lest my humble speech begin to mirror his. I have two more midterms this week, both of which will require further expeditions into that twenty-six charactered jungle.

To move from reading words to writing them, last week presented two opportunities to write that were exciting in that they brought to light the fact that "hey, writing is a somewhat marketable skill!" It is a heartening realization.

Firstly, I am part of a scriptwriting team for a haunted house in Geneseo called the Ford Mansion; we are responsible for writing lines for the tour guides, storytellers and characters along the tour of this four-story mansion. The first writers' meeting was on Saturday, and it began with a tour of the house and the barn on the property . . . it's been said that the ghosts of two horses are still present, and that sometimes the hallways will inexplicably smell of male cologne. It was completely creepy and completely awesome. I went there with the intention of just helping to write, but left committing two full weekends to acting in it as well. I am so excited.

The second opportunity is one that I don't have a whole lot of information about, but a representative from the Department of Asian Studies came into our fiction class to recruit writers for a play to be performed sometime next year about Asian-American immigrants. She has a collection of interviews on DVD that need to be dramatized for the stage, and it sounds like a great project. Plus, how fantastic would it be to see something you wrote performed on a stage? Your name in a playbill? So cool.

Anyways, all I can say is that I'm glad I live for this stuff . . . life this week would otherwise seem quite dismal. Either way, though, I am seriously looking forward to a celebratory few hours of Guitar Hero once my midterms are finished. If you can hear Guns N' Roses from wherever you're reading this from come Thursday . . . it's me.