Aki- The sonnet in this chapter is by Sir Philip Sidney. I do not own the poem or anything affiliated with Gilmore Girls. This is actually the poem I read over a year ago that inspired the idea for this story.
…
Rory,
It wasn't the ending line or lines that caused me trouble when I wrote The Subsect. No, it was the complete opposite that caused me trouble, the beginning. Not just the words, but starting out at all. I can't quite explain my thought process when I decided to start writing. I never dreamed of getting published, I was just trying to do…something. I wanted to create something, something that wouldn't be there if it weren't for me. And I wanted to prove something, that I could do something worth praise.
I meant what I said that night. I couldn't have done it without you. You believed in me like no one else ever did before. I think Luke believed in me, but not the same way. He saw that I could go somewhere better than where I was heading, but I don't think he always thought I would make it. But you, even after I ran away, I always thought that you thought that I would be better. For some reason, having someone believe in you for the first time like that makes you really believe in yourself. I may have never gone to college and not finished high school, but that doesn't mean I have to fail at life.
To be honest, I may have had some ulterior motives to writing the novel as well. I wanted to show it to you. I wanted to prove myself. I don't think it went as I planned, not when I saw who you had become and not when I met the 'blonde dick at Yale.' You loved my novel, even though I've grown to want to revise it, change, throw all the copies into a furnace…but you still didn't get. You still don't.
I don't know how to explain it. For being a novelist I 'm not always good at putting what I want to say into words. At explaining what I want to say out loud to the people I care about. I found this poem to help. I know, me finding poems, seriously.
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain -
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite -
"Fool!" said my Muse to me "look in thy heart, and write!"
It's the first sonnet in a big collection of them called "Astrophil and Stella". Those are names that mean, "Star-lover and Star". See, it's about this dude who is a poet and he likes this girl and he wants to impress her with his writing. He wants to win hr grace and favor but putting how much he tortuously loves her in words that she might pity him and that pity will turn into something else. All the while he's trying to come up with these profound words to write and his muse tells him, "Stop being an annoying idiot, just write what's in your heart, fool!" Or something like that. I don't know, you read the poem.
Do you understand now what you were insinuating what I might have been insinuating?
Do you understand why I wrote in the first place?
I'm not sure I'm going to send this letter. But if you get it, then I guess I did.
Love,
Jess