It is currently half past six in the morning and I can’t sleep. It could be the coffee I had fifteen hours ago, or the book I was reading that I can’t get out of my head, or everything else that has me up to my eyeballs in stress. But I’d rather not get into that just yet.
I finished painting my room. I’m saving the pictures for the actual planned post I had instead of this one that I’m only writing because I can’t turn my brain off. It looks amazing and I’m pretty happy with myself. But it still took over a month to paint, not including the month it took just to pick colours and styles and gather the guts to make such a change. And now I’m going back to school soon anyway so I won’t be able to enjoy it for long.
Speaking of school, how can I be so anxious about it already? It’s not as if I haven’t done it all before; the planning, packing, travelling, meeting, studying, etc. But I suppose this being my last year it is also arguably my most important—certainly the most important so far. I’ve still got a lot of reading to do before classes start, and a lot of writing, too. In fact, I had hoped to have a first draft of my ECP by now. It was going to be 8000 words of a fictional piece, and at the moment I can’t seem to write more than the first twelve.
I can’t say how other writers do it since everybody is different, but my ideas for stories grow like plants. I start out with the tiniest of ideas, usually a “what if?” although sometimes it’s a “what then?”. For my ECP idea, it was a “what if?” and it had been possibly the slowest, laziest seed to ever take root in my mind. I had thought that same “what if?” for several years and the idea did not grow until the very last second, and I mean that literally. I was sending a couple of ideas to my ECP tutor in an email, my mouse was about to click the send button, and then the second part of the idea popped into my head, prompting me to write it down at the end of the list. It was finally enough to build a story on, and I hoped it would continue to grow but it hasn’t. I can imagine stretching what I have into a 2000 word story maybe, but I’m going to need to come up with more if I’m going to make it to 8000. And once that’s done—if it’s ever done—I’ll have to complete a 2000 word rationale.
That’s only one thing to worry about, of many.
But as I said, it’s my last year in university. It’s my last year in England, it’s my last year seeing friends regularly who I wouldn’t see otherwise, it’s my last year studying something I love in a beautiful town with amazing people. I’m not going to waste this year. I plan to participate in as many societies and sports as I can juggle (and I’m even running one, can you believe it? It’s the Writers’ Society. No pressure.) Some of my friends and I plan to do a lot more traveling, preferably every week although judging from past experiences, it will probably be something more like every two weeks. Winchester is a lively city and I’m going to try to wake up early enough to actually enjoy some of the festivities that run at different times. I’m excited for my classes, too.
By this time next year, I will probably yearn for the stress that comes with preparing to leave the country. I will definitely wish I were going back and seeing my friends again. However, I think instead I will be starting classes in a local institute, learning about film production which is what I had meant to study in my first year before signing up for film studies instead, combined with creative writing which I got right at least. But who knows? A lot can change in a year. Hell, a lot can change in a day. Maybe I’ll have different thoughts by 7am tomorrow, like, “It was just the coffee.”
Precarious Writer 