Roof, Saturday Night

[withoutverona]

Romeo owed a lady a sonnet.

And, for reasons of his own, he wanted it to be a good one, not one tossed off in his lunch break and not meant to be read more than once. It had to be the best poetry he could write, and he had to follow all the rules, because even if the subject wouldn't notice his wobbles, he would.

Eventually, he got bored with trying to come up with a rhyme for "everything from nothing" that would fit his rhyme scheme and settled himself near the ledge, smoking and feeling very much as though the weight of the world pressed on his pen. He was pretending his open notebook did not exist for the second, though he'd take it up again soon enough.

[OOC: Open.]

Comments

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal considered this information carefully over a long drag, trying not to laugh too hard inside over the irony of the fact that he'd be the one giving unsolicited advice about a relationship. But, as his latest chapter lead him to remember, he always was a bit of an expert at the understated and silent exchange of devotion.

"If she's not one for the big gestures," he mused, "then why so worried about what you write? Just write something simple, with just enough, without being overbearing, you know?"

[withoutverona]

Something sparked in Romeo's eyes at that suggestion. "I hadn't thought of it that way," he admitted, mind racing. "I think I worry so because it comes to personal pride. If it were less than my best, I would know, even if she didn't."

"But," he added, "something simple that I do not loathe is a far sight better than nothing at all, which is what I seem to be working on at the moment."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"And, I mean," Cal added, tapping ashes down to his toe, "what good is your best going to be if she hates it? There's still no shame in making it something she'd like more. Thought's still there. Still a challenge trying to suit it to her."

[withoutverona]

He hadn't said she would hate it, only that she would laugh, but that was a tiny point.

"It might even suit her more if I don't spend a hundred years trying to make what I have to say fit iambic pentameter," Romeo said. "Thank you, sincerely."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

The reaction was one he couldn't help. Cal cringed, face twisting as if his last drag tasted exactly like sewer sludge.

"Iambic pentameter," he said. "Ouch."

[withoutverona]

"Is it really that bad?" Romeo inquired, making a face at Cal's face. "It's a discipline, to make your writing fit the form."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"Maybe not that bad," Cal said, "but I think if you're good at it, you're good at it. If you're not, don't bother, and leave it to the people who can really manage to make it sound like music and not a chore."

There was a slight pause.

"I probably just say that because I'm kind of a crappy writer."

[withoutverona]

"It is like music," Romeo agreed. "Usually botched badly by amateurs. I know the structure, but I can only make it sound like anything decent perhaps a third of the time. I don't think it has anything to do with being a good writer."

[OOC: I cannot write iambic pentameter. At all. Thank you for giving me an IC reason not to make the attempt.]

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal shrugged a little bit again. "Some," he declared, "have the muses on their sides, and others don't, or, sometimes, the muses work in mysterious ways."

He couldn't help a small grin at Romeo there, flicking the butt of his cigarette off into the unknown darkness of the night. The irony was so beautiful, and wasted in the fact that only Cal understood it.

Muse of Epic Poetry, indeed.

[withoutverona]

"The muses are fickle beasts," Romeo had to agree, stamping out his own cigarette as he reached for his notebook.

He had an absent look in his eyes, though, one Cal might know as that of Getting An Idea. "I ought to go where the light is better," he said. "Let me know how your story turns out, if you finish it."

[OOC: Hee. Night!]