Interesting, because with me it's the other way around. I post my really good stuff on my blog and on CoT, but my lesser works in CoT only. That's why you don't see my Pathfinder story mingling in those elements. For some reason, it gives me more satisfaction when my good stuff is associated with "my place". Perhaps that's bad marketing, but to me it comes off as sound style.

Anyway, you are correct in that this would make a better short story than it does a poem. The ideas are a little too...I don't know, they way you present them sounds insincere. The biggest problem is the fixed form, or at least the way you used it. I don't think it would have been too distracting, but unfortunately you used the words "sane" and "vain" too much. Perhaps if you had only used "sane" two or three times it would have flowed better, but reusing two different words throughout the poem doesn't work. Of course, these are flaws that you acknowledge, and I understand that this was a requirement, so much is forgiven and this obviously doesn't change my perspective on you as a writer (other than signalling to me that you have troubles with structured poems).

I look forward to any short story that comes of this.

Interesting, because with me it's the other way around. I post my really good stuff on my blog and on CoT, but my lesser works in CoT only. That's why you don't see my Pathfinder story mingling in those elements. For some reason, it gives me more satisfaction when my good stuff is associated with "my place". Perhaps that's bad marketing, but to me it comes off as sound style.

Yeah, I get that. I just feel like posting things in COT is more..."published" than in my blog -- in my blog I can write just story ideas, parts of stories, writing exercises, random ramblings, etc., whereas in COT I can't.

Anyway, you are correct in that this would make a better short story than it does a poem. The ideas are a little too...I don't know, they way you present them sounds insincere. The biggest problem is the fixed form, or at least the way you used it. I don't think it would have been too distracting, but unfortunately you used the words "sane" and "vain" too much. Perhaps if you had only used "sane" two or three times it would have flowed better, but reusing two different words throughout the poem doesn't work. Of course, these are flaws that you acknowledge, and I understand that this was a requirement, so much is forgiven and this obviously doesn't change my perspective on you as a writer (other than signalling to me that you have troubles with structured poems).

 

I look forward to any short story that comes of this.

Yeah, the fixed form was the thing I disliked most about this, too. Especially the sane/vain, but those two lines had to be repeated over and over again (I mean, I could've used synonyms for them, but I couldn't find anything that rhymed, so I was stuck with just sane/vain, unfortunately). I definitely could've picked better lines to repeat, but oh well. But yeah, structured poems are something I definitely do not like. I just feel like they're way too constrictive -- that I'm thinking more about keeping the structure right than writing what I want to; there must've been at least a dozen times when I had to scrap lines that I liked because they didn't fit the rhyme scheme or something. Especially because it was for school, I really had to make sure the form was correct, rather than just do whatever I wanted. But oh well. I think it was good to do something that I don't like doing, and I might do more of it later. I doubt I'm ever going to use a structured poem in any..."serious" writing, but I'm always a fan of challenging myself to do something I don't want to, even if I'm not using it for something.

I appreciate the interest in the short story, though I doubt it'll be written any time soon, especially with NaNo coming up. But who knows when inspiration will strike next. Thanks for your comment!

On a side note, the last movie I watched before reading this was A Beautiful Mind. Surprisingly fitting. Although I only watched half way through, so I'm liberated from the need to write a full blog review of it.