We Writers

Something happened today that shook me to my very core.. Something was said that rattled my soul and rendered me taken aback due to the utter disbelief I emitted due to what I had heard. And I felt the need to remove this from my chest before it takes someone else by surprise.

One would think that, within an academic setting, in an English classroom that aims to educate future educators and lovers of literature and written expression, one would be surrounded by common minds – minds that think alike, minds that believe communication in any form is an output of personal integrity. Today, I was shown that this is not the case.

After having gone through a dreadful peer presentation on a reading, I was shown that it could indeed get worse: on to the front of the class marched the next presenter, armed with a USB holding the blandest presentation I have ever set eyes on – but who was I to judge? We all have starting points. So I sat there, attempting to focus in despite all of the “like” and “ums” that I heard. I was fine with the fact that this particular presenter had no idea what to say and kept stating the obvious, that the science fiction story she was assigned to read and analyse contained alien life forms – that was completely fine, great analysis, thank you.

In our presentations, though, we are required to ask the group three key questions that contain depth. Her first two did not contain such a thing, and her third had me taken aback, and not in the way that I had desired.

Let me explain, first, the reading that she had read, ‘The Women Men Don’t See’ by James Tiptree Jr., who in actuality is a female who goes by the name of Alice Sheldon. She had adopted the pseudonym so as to divert the public’s gender-shaming of her work due to women’s writing apparently not being acceptable enough. But that is not what I am here to argue about.

This reading was preceded by another reading which gave an insight into Alice Sheldon’s personal life, her beliefs in gender equality and such, and it was not meant to be discussed by the presenter. What did the presenter do? The presenter took the last sentence of the following reading:

‘In May 1987, when Alice Sheldon’s beloved husband was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, she shot him dead and then turned the gun upon herself’.

Alice and her husband, later in their lives, practically became recluses after having suffered due to her chain smoking, and after her husband’s degenerative disease grew. Their health declined and they saw it fit to shy away from society. I understand that, because when I am sick all I want is a person who I adore to keep me company, and a box of tissues. Nothing else matters.

After having shot her husband and herself, they were found with their palms interlocked in an infinite embrace. They both may have wanted this. And that is understandable, because most of the time I think of ways that I can escape but I admit that I am not brave enough to do so. That is beside the point, though.

After having learnt this, this particular presenter had the nerve to take that fact into account and attack all writers with a mindless powerpoint slide:

The presenter thought it was appropriate to ask such a thing. And not only ask, but to imply that all writers are mentally ill. She flung the word around as though it meant no harm, and stood there in front of the class waving around her wrist that was entrenched in Tiffany and Co. jewellery, and paid no attention to my look of utter anger mixed with bewilderment. How dare she.

How dare she stand there laughing at those who do not befit the qualities of the status quo. How dare she stand there and mock those who render themselves vulnerable, who go out of their introverted ways to display a piece of themselves and categorise them in a department that society has labeled with negation? How dare she stand there and imply that most of the people in the room, and all other writers are the other? Something alien to the norm? Something that avoids standards of ‘normality’, something that undermines their intellectuality?

It is pathetic to think that some people classify writers as such. We writers document things that most people think and fear to think of again, let alone write down or read. We writers lift our very souls from our depths and scatter them into categories collected in clusters of words and share them with all to see. We writers bravely inscribe our belief systems, our notions of thoughts, our theorizing of concepts, our imaginations and fantasies and reach out with them to others who feel the same way to both acquire a sense of acceptance and receive one. We writers are urns of tears, spilling ourselves onto material accessible to all.

How dare anyone attempt to nullify an unshielded human who is looking to connect? How can anyone be so heartless as to invalidate a person reaching out for a touch of understanding? How can anyone be so cruel as to not inquire into the life of someone who may or may not be going through mental trauma, only to stand there waving their arms like a skewed lamppost, for the sake of a grade out of 25?

Mental agitation is something seldom considered. Rarely does one consider that maybe the person in front of them who has been wearing the same clothes for months, who drifts off into daydreams looking outside the window in class, who sits there with a yearning smile and a burning desire to be accepted, has fought in an internal battle just to be there that day. Rarely does one consider the mental battles themselves that most people go through.

Those people who fight these battles are the ones who do not appear as though they need to. They always smile. They are approachable. They are always happy to help. They are compassionate. They are generous. They will go out of their way to be there for you, to offer you a shoulder or a hand. And they are the ones who sit there and watch as negative connotations are carelessly flung around, aimed utterly at them when all they crave for is what they give to be returned.

We are writers. And we do not hanker for our integration into your commonplace, rather we hanker for your respect.

And to answer your question, presenter, yes. Mental illness certainly plays a part in our role as authors. But we do not see it as an illness. We see it as an antidote, repairing us from the notions that your society has placed unto you and us, blinding you of what we see. Do not get me wrong: we forgive you. But moreso, we pity you. You will never have the depth of our minds' springs, so do not lay implications where understanding is scarce. 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

source

At times where I have a copious amount of tasks to complete, I loathe having to feel accountable for reading six novels in less than ten weeks. But in forcing myself to immerse myself in varied forms of literature in a short span of time, I have found the burden in the lack of time lifted from me because of accurate-to-the-text film adaptations.

Tonight I viewed the 1998 film adaptation of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and I must admit that the very beginning bored me. I thought that the next three hours of my life would be filled with regret, but little did I know that it would indeed be so not because of the lack of plot, rather the depth and breadth of the plot to the extent where the outcome and the events leading up to it upset me. 

And what is more perplexing in this entire ordeal that is the storyline is the fact that apart from Tess falling victim to rape, she fell victim to other forms of abuse, the most crucial being blame. In fact, the very moment that Tess was raped proved itself the most innocent of ordeals compared to the ones that attacked her thereafter. 

Coming from a traditional family where marriage between man and a 'pure' woman is still valued above all, especially above food which is surprising considering my mother cooks for an army every day, my anger speaks for me, or it would if it could at least. The entire time watching the film, I felt horrible for Tess as the subject of 'purity' was thrown around. And that brings me to the argument that I always put forth for my mother to justify - why is it that brides are to remain pure, and it does not matter whether grooms are or are not? What justification has anyone as to the retaining of a woman's virginity for her wedding night, and not the retaining of the groom's virginity on his?

And I never have received an answer for that. I suppose that I never will. I am content with the fact that what my family believes and what I believe are two very different things because on the case of equality, traditions value anything but. 

"You Must Be Really Smart!"

Lately, I have been acquiring an insurmountable amount of compliments from every direction due to my daily essaying endeavours. Apart from the fact that I am content with receiving some form of compliments per se, I am stricken with some amount of annoyance at the sorts of compliments I get.

The most annoying of which is, "wow, you must be really smart!" How exactly can writing one's daily thoughts for everyone to read deem one smart? My essays may show my level of punctuation, grammar and my ability to conform to certain structures and to maintain a certain argument, but they certainly do not prove to anyone my intelligence. If they did, then I would probably be studying somewhere much more fancier than the institution in which I currently study. 

If my essays displayed my intelligence level as "smart", then I would not even need to study. I would not need to strain myself in the duration of both semesters in order to achieve scores high enough to please me. I would not even bother travelling to and fro university, nor would I bother paying car park fees in order to be able to stay there at all. I would not even have a student loan to pay off. I would be "smart" enough to live in some intelligent way that I would just happen to conjure up.

By telling me that I "must be really smart", these people are placing themselves below me. They are making what I am doing seem like it is some impossible task. It is not. And I do not exceed anybody in any way. I, instead, choose to partake in the sharing of my innermost self through daily scribblings so as to relieve myself of intense thoughts at times where I should be sleeping, to leave a little imprint of mine in the world, to connect with those who my imprint reaches, and to prepare myself for the strenuous task of novel writing. 

I do not intend to place myself above any individual. I do not condone the placing of myself above any individual either. I believe that everyone has something that they excel in, but that does not mean that they deserve to be treated better than another. I simply do what it is that I do for the same underlying reason that you do whatever it is that you do - for self-enjoyment, self-expression, for the relieving of boredom, for the sharing of ideas, for existing and creating and thriving. Any one talent should not undermine the talent of another.

It also appears as though people have forgotten that I am someone other than the person who writes an essay a day. There is a lot more to me. I shall not allow myself to be categorised as one being, for I thrive as many. I thrive in the department of the arts - performance, creative, illustrative, decorative. I thrive in the department of literature - reading, writing, editing. I thrive within words as well as colours, but limit me not to those two departments! For I am ever evolving, ever learning and ever aspiring. One aspect of this evolution is my newfound interest in the continuous writing of essays, but that is not to say that it is my main one!

I am a conglomeration of many things. I will not allow anybody to limit me to merely one. I am multi-faceted, ever learning, ever changing.

5 Steps Towards How to Conquer Writer's Block

The reason as to why I have started writing daily essays in the first place is partly to cure my writer's block. For as long as I can recall I have wanted to write stories to share and inspire, and for as long as I can recall I have been blocked from doing so, mentally. So, I have devised ways down below on how to conquer, once and for all, the block of writers:

1. Expose yourself to controversial things
That is indeed the best way to conquer writer's block. When you are exposed to controversial news reports, debates, pieces of writing, videos, or any other form of text, you begin to formulate your own internal opinions, and whether you agree with what is being said or not, you instantly begin to want to write down those ideas. That, in itself, gets you one step ahead of writer's block, because you are being active in the literary sense, which is what I try to do on a daily basis in order to invoke within myself something to write about. After one-hundred and fifty essays, it becomes more and more difficult to write about new topics - but the newspapers find something to talk about every single day. How is that for inspiration?

2. Talk to people you hate
Although it is difficult to talk to people you hate because of the reasons you hate them, I bet that one of the reasons is that they do not make sense or that they are stubborn within an argument. Good. Stubborn people feed the writer's very soul because they allow the writer to see things from varied viewpoints and perspectives. I remember getting into a heated argument with an Irish man, who said that teachers were "no good". He kept degrading education to my sister who was selling him his milk and then he turned to me - imagine a really angry face, then imagine that face on top of my shoulders - "why don't you smile?" he asked me, poking his face into my zone of proximity. I replied, sternly, "I'll smile when you leave." So he did. Although this happened over a month ago, I now am thinking of the benefits of that heated conversation, and hey, at least that argument has lead me to include it in this piece, thus upping the word-count.

3. Visit places strange to you
Being in the same place at the same time every single day of every single week within every single year makes it difficult for one to find a muse, or find a source of inspiration. For me, this occurs whenever I am in the city, strolling through busy crowds and looking up at Victorian architecture. It is in observing groups of people that I also acquire inspiration to write, and it also helps me to shape my imaginary characters by looking at real life characters whom I have never met and probably never will - this also helps when you come to write about them because strangers would deem an exact description of themselves by you as pure coincidence and nothing more in the event of you wanting to write about them, instead of you having to write about a direct relative who is "fat" and "repugnant" and "smelly" - imagine having to explain to them that your protagonist is not about them even if they look alike visually.

4. Engage in conversation with yourself
They say the first sign of mental illness is when you talk to yourself - I say the first sign of mental illness is when you do not. If there was a clone of yourself you would get along so well with it, why not clone your mind and pretend that it exists right in front of you and have a conversation with it? You may find interesting things to talk about. When I talk to myself I make up plays on the spot and they become so inspirational that I almost cry about the fact that I forget to record them - every single time. Talking to yourself also has its benefits in that instead of mentally developing your opinions you begin to voice them, forcing you to develop them faster and towards a more finesse outcome: what you voice in your mind may not always make sense, thus when you bring it into the atmosphere vocally it will develop from brain mashed potato into atmospheric potato balls, crispy and sure of themselves. 

5. Have long showers and take long poops
 This may be the weirdest step of them all but weird is good. Trust me, I have tried both these things and I should not speak about them in past tense because they are activities I partake in on a daily basis. Long showers with steam touching your eyeballs and the sound of water trickling down your sides and down the drain may not sound good to your water bills but they will definitely offer you what society does not most of the time: headspace. If you are not too keen on a high water bill, then perhaps just sit in the bathtub and pick up handfulls of water and let them fall through your fingers slowly, recreating that dripping headspace sound. If you hate bathtubs like me, then perhaps the toilet is for you. Enter the toilet, and lock the door. Turn on the noisy fan and pull your pants down, and make yourself comfortable. Make sure there is another toilet available if you live with your family otherwise you will not get much peace. Now, do your business for as long as you please and remain seated until your legs become numb. Make sure you find a focal point in this duration and stare at it senselessly. You will find yourself more capable of writing after this. Try it.

These may not work for you but they certainly work for me. They are interesting ways of defeating writer's block, if I must say. Oh, by the way, I defeated mine tonight by writing about the ways in which I defeat writer's block. 

The Importance of Grammar

I am here today to tell you all about the importance of grammar - however, as great as I am within the English language, I am afraid that I cannot tell you about the importance of grammar, because I do not know the necessary complexities of it.

Had I been taught from primary school all the way up to secondary school why I structure sentences the way I do and had there been labels put to these structuring of sentences, then by now I would have been an expert of the English language. My expertise would have been vast, and I would have been teaching at levels currently unknown, professional levels which would exceed my expectations and the expectations of others. 

But I do not know about grammar in the way that I would have loved to. Yes, I know how to correctly structure sentences, paragraphs, essays, articles and so on, and yes I know how to spell rather well without being too heavily reliant on new technologies like auto-correct, and yes I do know some grammatical devices, per se, such as metaphors and similes, however I cannot actually bring myself to explain to both another or myself the reasons as to why sentences are structured the way that they are. To my understanding, I know that the way I write is so because of rote learning. I have been brought up with dictation, with punctuation practice and because I read a lot, I know the structure of things but I cannot put labels to them.

These labels are crucial, because they are the solid base to which reasoning stands. But why? Why do I need to put that there? What's the difference with this and that? I don't get it! Neither do I, yet. I will teach myself what my English teachers failed to teach me. In fact, I promise myself from this moment on that I will not become a hired English teacher until I master the art of grammar. The education system here in Australia does not see fit the need to study grammar, because from what I am interpreting and witnessing, they just feel the need to follow the fast-paced curriculum to teach students what is necessary to passing essay writing and novel analyses, but not why. 

In my experience, students need reasons, valid reasons as to why they learn the things they learn. How then, can an English teacher offer reasons for sentence structure when they themselves are not aware of them? And across the cohort of English teachers in training with me, I can assure you that I definitely am not the only one with this experience. It is shocking, but most English teachers do not know the fundamentals of grammar. How then can we explain to students why things are the way that they are? Doctors have their terminology, nurses, tradespeople, mathematicians and scientists, yet the terminology for English has been abandoned. Ask any student, and they will be able to give you an example of a metaphor or a simile. Ask them to define a subjunctive mood, and you will lose them faster than a mother of eight would lose her children at a rock concert.

As a self-proclaimed geek, as an English enthusiast and as a lover of literacy and literature, I will acquaint myself with the one thing that most English teachers lack: a sense of grammar.

Art: A Sense of Regret

Sometimes, I regret the fact that I have an artistic side to me, apart from my literary side. I regret also the fact that these two aspects make me, me. Apart from giving me a sense of identity, though, art takes a slice of myself away, and returns it when it is withered and useless.

Today I have spent over seven hours working on three varied art projects which are due in soon. I have, for two weeks, had no idea what to do for these three projects. I have bounced from idea to idea, and just when I thought I got the hang of what exactly a still life art project is, I have not. It is quite a challenging task, which requires effort, energy, attention and all thoughts.

I foraged through the garage, and mind you it was not an easy job, trying to find any sort of objects that I could use in artworks, which depict me. Because every object was out of reach, and far from the possibility of me ever coming near them without encountering potentially life-endangering spiders or scary looking rats or a web of sticky spider web. So I grabbed the nearest long object next to me, a pitchfork, and successfully pulled a bmx bike out of a large bike heap, and slid a large canvas on the top shelf of the shelves off the other canvases, bringing down with it dust and spider legs. Though both tasks were seemingly awful, I am quite proud of the outcome because now my art projects have taken flight.

I will not yet directly reveal what my three art projects revolve around, simply because of copyright reasons to avoid myself looking like I have plagiarised from some other source who, in reality, copied me, as doubtful as that hypothetical situation may be. What I will reveal, though, is that the three projects consist of toy dinosaurs, a bmx bike, statue heads, bananas and three-dimensional effects, all ultimately resorting towards one theme: urban decay.

What I am trying to illustrate though, is the toll this process is taking on both my body and my mind. It has not been easy creating these three ideas. One may think that three ideas are minor, but one has to take into consideration that the objects located within the artworks also have to contain elements of self in it, the self of the artist, me. This in itself becomes a difficult task when all that I have been focussing on for the past three years is pedagogy and praxis and teaching and learning. All of the sudden, I have to move away from theories and move towards the freedom of expression, and that throws me right off any plan that I feel comfortable with because while there are plans behind art, most of it is improvised.

Balancing both art and English is a difficult task. I have to split my mind into two states of thinking in order to accomplish both, simultaneously, otherwise I am incapable of performing well in either sector. If I have one phrase of advice for you, it is that do not follow the creative path if you have two elements of creation which you wish to cover, otherwise you may run the risk of, well, not being able to run at all. It is all a slow process and you have to abide by each task, each essay, each artwork, until they are completed in a fashionable manner.

Another problem arises with this. I am unable to create art when I am under the pressure of having to create it. Art to me comes naturally, the need to draw comes when I come across a certain muse, and only then will I produce something that is spectacular, meaningful and displays my full potential. I am forced now, though. I have due dates, I have a teacher who regularly checks on my progress even when he promised not to, and I simply cannot cope the way that I would prefer to. With that said however, I still am coping. Just not easily.

I am veering more further away from freedom by following a path which I initially thought was built on freedom. Yes, I reap what I sow, maybe I should have sowed something more tolerable, manageable and easier to maintain.

Libraries, the Home of Luring Books

There has never been a time where I walk through my university library and walk out empty-handed. Always at the last minute of m stay, as I am walking towards the exit, I find a book on a shelf that calls to me.

The books do not literally call my name, they just sit there, and with the bold writing on their spines catch my eyes - it would prove rather creepy if these books could physically call my name, in which case I would not approach them, I would rather run as fast as I possibly can in the opposite direction until it is physically impossible to hear them calling my name. How would they know my name? And why me? I am the last person any talking book would seek to fulfil their legacy or prophecy. I am far too lazy and when I do move, I move at a pace a turtle would find uncomfortable.

Honestly, though, just when I think I have finished from the gravitational pull of a library and its many uses, I am pulled towards at least one random book which happens to fit my liking. The first time that this occurred, and note that it is the first because I usually tend to avoid bookshelves in the library when I am there to study for this sole reason, is a book about the Third Reich. It was short, stubby and worn out, and without hesitation I pulled it off the cold, hardly visited shelf, and took it to the librarian to scan. I never got around to reading the entire book, I did not even get half way. In fact, I probably read around three pages and on the third, I came across a long sentence. After counting the amount of words in that particular sentence, I had a miniature freak-out. One hundred and twenty-three words. I was so astounded, so amazed, in fact so in awe that I could not pass that page to read on.

Eventually, I had to return the book, so upon my arrival at home the week after it was borrowed, I opened up eBay and bought my very own copy - unfortunately it did not come with the exact cover of that which I fell in love, but it was still the same book, and to this day I am yet to pass the third page. What is important, though, is the fact that I now own this amazing book, and what is more important is that I came to know it by walking pat and walking back to a shelf on which it sat. Had someone placed it their prior to my arrival, in order to tempt me? Perhaps I am getting too carried away, but judging by all the crazy movie ideas I have come across I am failing to view things realistically.

I do not know, now, what scares me more - the prospect of someone having placed that particular book on the shelf for me because they knew I was coming and they knew that I had more than a mild interest in the Third Reich or books with sentences over one hundred words long, or the prospect of a book being able to firstly identify me and secondly call out my name. Anyway, the other day, I picked up a total of around ten books which I had firstly thought were relevant to my research topic, and had miserably left them on the side of the computer desk I was sitting at because they turned out irrelevant. The eleventh book I came across was one about Wittgenstein. The cover looked complicated, and it promised a complex but easy look at this man's life. So I picked it up with the intention of borrowing it.

Then, in the sociology section, a book titled, So You Think You're Human? It had a sophisticatedly dressed monkey on the cover, surrounded by books. I mean, how much more interesting does a book need to get before I feel like borrowing it? So I picked that up too. I asked a companion about the maximum amount of books that I could borrow at one time and was told five. That was the maximum amount I could carry, too, because of how heavy they all were, and coincidentally I only needed three other research relevant books to borrow, so it all worked out fine.

Now, apart from these five books, I have around seven other pieces of reading material and no time because I spend too much of my time procrastinating whilst sitting down rather than actually doing anything. One of these days, one of these days I shall have my life a little more organised. Now, it is three in the morning, so I must log off to go and read a set class text and fall asleep to how boring it is.

Lisa Jacobson's The Sunlit Zone

It was a mildly warm morning. I made my way hurriedly through the campus – today we had a guest speaker, and I had devoured her brilliant book of prose with my mind days before this day. I needed to meet her, I needed to have her acknowledge that I was utterly immersed in her brilliant work.

I made it – five minutes earlier. She was around ten minutes late when class had begun. And so I sat there, taking notes on the last page of her book with my pacer. I wrote about her interpretations of the themes in the prose, and I related them to my own just to study her psyche. I noted that she had rewritten the novel twenty to thirty times. I noted things that inspired it, who took the cover photograph, everything she had said I had documented as a way of showing interest and respect to her.

Then, question time. A couple of other people had asked her mindless questions, some about symbolism. And then it was my turn. I cannot recall my first question, however I can recall my second quite well, seeing as I asked it in urgency due to our lecturer beckoning us to show some more interest in her work.

The question I asked had thrown her off track – she has had none other like it, for people only focus on the contaminants of the book itself, rather than its actual build. Today, I was to challenge her with a question lacking complexity – “the two navy pages at the beginning and the end of the book, does the placement of them symbolise that the story itself it in a sunlit zone, a pun of the title and story of the book?” And she froze, her look of confusion frozen with her.

She basically had answered that she had no idea what the publishers had to do, that publishing her book in this sense was out of her control, and that the possible symbolism of this was most likely untrue, but possibly could have been possible. Disheartened, I sunk into my seat and wished I had never asked.

If I were a published author or poet, I would want utter control of what I publish. The cover, the cover photo, the way the book is arranged, everything. I believe symbolism is not contained only in the story, but also in the make of the book itself.

I recommend The Sunlit Zone to all lovers of literature and poetry, because this very book has both of those elements perfectly intertwined.

Was Shakespeare Lonely?

"When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate.”

Most holders of great minds have a rare amount of people acting as their support mechanisms until after their passing. It is unfortunate that most of the world recognizes and acknowledges literary works of great authors when it is too late to actively encourage more from them. By observing this from the world and its works, I am claiming that William Shakespeare was a lonely soul in the times of his existence.

Shakespeare’s one-hundred and ninety-five published works are magnificent, and are still spoken about, written about and referred to today, almost four-hundred years after his passing – all this positive commotion, however, unfortunately did not happen to this extent in the years of his artistry. Although the literate public at the time of his living possibly had received him in an acknowledging and appreciative manner, I am claiming that if they had received him and his works even more, that he would have written a lot more works due to the enthusiasm he would have received, in turn of his works’ appraisal.

I also believe that a person’s experiences in life can hinder the way in which the works they release are written. I believe this was the case with Shakespeare, that more than happiness and comfort, he felt loneliness and discomfort with the world and its people and their relationships. He has written stories and plays depicting incest, to tragic romances which end in deaths. He has written somber sonnets which end with two uplifted lines, which could still indicate a sense of loneliness, a sense of ‘if I had you, I would not feel the way which I depicted in the lines before the end of this sonnet’.

When I write, my writing is altered by my moods. When I am feeling negative, my writing tends to be blunt and antagonizing towards the subjects I write about. In my angry state I tend to write about murders and crimes and the lack of punishment, and in my happy state I tend to write about the positivity in things. With the fewer relationships I have had with all sorts of people, I have developed a tainted writing style, in that most of my opinions about people in society have differed quite so since my innocence in thinking society was as beautiful as my parents’ treatment of me was taken from me. Thus, I now write with a voice which thinks uncommon thoughts, surrounding stories too about incest and murders and tragic romances. Thus, I have come to the conclusion that, seeing as I too am lonesome and have experienced bad things, Shakespeare has written all of his plays and stories based indirectly on his experiences with society at his time, as a way of mocking the status-quo because of its alleged perfection, but true imperfection.

I have a strong belief, that in reading Shakespeare’s more somber works, that he was a lonesome soul, and his only release of his mind’s troubles happened through his writing, that writing about horrid things and tragedies and mocking things in comedies had released his mind from having to constantly think of his experiences with certain people – his alleged homosexuality may have also contributed to this. His sense of identity is strong, however it alters slightly in every one of his works, yet the language of his lonely mind still pulsates through each piece of writing. I am able to conjure this link by linking my own mind to Shakespeare’s, seeing as I now have a certain style of writing, and after writing thirty consecutive essays, over thirty consecutive days, I have confirmed within myself that my moods and temperament and experiences have all contributed to my style and what I choose to write about.

Sometimes I wish that I had lived in Shakespeare’s era, just so that I could have enjoyed his work a lot more and shown him my enjoyment, so that he could have been encouraged to almost double his literary works. Knowing that I cannot do that, I will do what I can do, and that is continue studying his works, and pushing the liking of his works upon my future English students so that they may learn to appreciate all the work Shakespeare has gone through, and the risks he took in sprawling pieces of him one-hundred and ninety-five times.

I appreciate you, Shakespeare, and your great mind and its experiences. I too am lonesome, so thank you for connecting with me through your works.