Those days where you just can’t bring yourself to do anything, even though you know you’re supposed to. And when you try, it just feels broken and not worth the bother.
Normally not a problem, but when one of the things you’re supposed to do is to finish the paper that’s due the next day, it’s kind of a disaster.
I mean, I’ve basically finished it. No, technically, I have finished it. I just need to edit it some more. On account of right now it’s 6 pages and it’s not supposed to exceed 5. But as long as I go back and paraphrase that quote about what the philosophes believed about history, that should hopefully get it down enough lines. Because that way I get rid of a footnote as well as using fewer words. If there’s anything left after that, I guess I’ll go and remove a few adjectives or something. Maybe I can find a way to disparage the book’s horrendous mistakes about Homer and the Iliad in fewer words…
I actually spent more time on my Trojan War novel today than I did on my paper. But that’s not a good thing, because I can’t help feeling like it’s 90% crap. Maybe even more than that. I’m a terrible judge of my own writing. Either I think it’s awesome, or I think it’s awful. Frequently swapping back and forth between the two, even. Not a good situation.
The only thing I did today that felt like an accomplishment is that when I went to Barnes and Noble in killing time, I sat down and read the introduction to their new edition of The Fall of Troy. Didn’t really point out any of the things I wanted to point out in the introduction I’ve been mentally writing to the translation I want to write someday. Kept on gushing about how great the poem is, in fact, and how unfair it is to compare Quintus to Homer. Okay, obviously, the introduction can’t say “yeah, this poem’s nowhere near as good as the Iliad” but I still think the guy oversold its quality a bit. Then again, I’m pretty sure he was reading the original Greek, not the English translation that his words had been attached to, which had to help. But the fact that there’s still that little known about Quintus’ life does kind of mean that there’s no way a mere grad student could even learn enough about him to write a thesis on the subject. I need to look up if there’s any history of wealthy families in Smyrna and/or Pergamum who claimed descent from Neoptolemos…
But I’ll have to do that tomorrow, because right now I have to take a hasty bath and then finish fixing up my paper. I have to leave earlier than usual tomorrow so I can talk to the professor, after all.
