"The clothes he wears no longer fit, he freezes while he stands..."

Tonight I spent a lot of time reading and writing. First I started working on my paper that was due three days ago now. I took a stance, wrote a paragraph and a half, and then came to write in my blog when I was at a loss for words. I started to write in my blog, complaining about the paper and its topic. I reread what I had written, copied and pasted it, and suddenly I had two pages of my paper written; and the stance was opposite the stance I had taken to begin with. That was pretty cool.

Than I sat back on the couch and read more of Way of the Peaceful Warrior. That book really gets me thinking, and suddenly I was inspired to write, so I put the bookmark back in between the pages, picked up my notebook, and started to work on a poem.

In two weeks I have a writing portfolio due: it needs to have two short stories with 10-20 pages each, a ballad , a sonnet, a villanelle, 3 haiku's, and three of whatever else I want. The catch is they all have to be new pieces of work. Tonight I started the ballad.

Now I felt inspired to write, and just before I began one of my best friends from California called me, and for some reason I engaged in a deep conversation with her. I've been alone in my apartment since last Friday and I have been very reflective, doing a lot of thinking about life, people, and what I want to be doing with mine. When I hung up the phone with my friend, my idea about what I wanted to write my ballad about had significantly changed. 

Ballad's are my least favorite type of "rhyme schemed" poems to write; sonnets are my favorite. A ballad, if you don't know, is usually a long poem that tells a story about a character. It starts en medias res, or "in the middle of things." It usually ends leaving the reader wondering what's going to happen next. That's the fun thing about a ballad, every reader imagines their own ending.

When I write a ballad, I like to write about a character with an internal conflict rather than an external. Eventually on my site one of past ballads will be posted; it's about a football coach who suffers from communication problems with his daughter. Yes, this is an external problem, but it stems from internal conflicts that are within the main character, the father. The poem that I wrote tonight, or actually started writing, is similar in regards to this, yet totally different in scenario. I consider myself a realist, and this new poem is certainly a realist piece. 

Suddenly my clock reads 12:30am, and I need to get to bed... more tomorrow!