"I've got a feeling, oooooo"

That tonight's going to be a good night?

Well, I think it will, because I'm determined to get to bed early, curl up, and read one of the new books Steve bought me last week. I've been meaning to do this for three nights now, but I've instead ended up staying at the laptop late into the night trying to sort out things like houses, moving in, finances, and other exciting, stressful and dismal things (respectively).

This is where I am! In the heart of that maze!
 

I've always been a compulsive bookworm, but there was a time when I never let a Wednesday go by without going to the Carleton, a cheesy but weirdly fun club that Lancaster University students love (or hate). 

Having out-Carletoned myself in my second year, though, I've spent this year behaving steadily more non-student-like as the months have gone by, which includes sometimes staying in and trying to sort things out/treating myself with a new book.


In fact, last night I did a most un-student-y thing: I went to an art exhibition. Okay, so the exhibition was meant to showcase the third-year art students' work, one of whom happens to be my friend Katy. But you should have seen it: it didn't feel like a student gallery at all. With free wine, stunning clothes and that kind of pure bright light you only ever find in shiny art galleries, I felt like a Sophisticated Woman of Culture.

Oh, yes. My friend Lindsey and I even managed to look thoughtfully at certain pieces of art and say things like well, what do you think this empty space represents, darling? in voices borrowed straight off Jennifer Saunders.

Flippancy aside, it was a really lovely gallery with some amazing stuff in there. Katy's was my favourite. Obviously.


But forget the nights! What about the days?

Today is absolutely gorgeous. I haven't been outside yet, but it looks spectacular from my window. Sunny, bright, possibly even - gasp, dare I say it? - warm. 

To those of you who live in the UK, you'll know what a rare treat this is!

Now I don't want to start counting my chickens and all that, but could this be - could it possibly, maybe, really be - the start of summer? Should I be decking myself out in a floaty little dress and my favourite new sandals and breeze down the campus path with the wind in my hair and my sunglasses firmly in place? Should I be dragging my flatmates down to the green with ice-cold drinks?

Maybe I will.

So what do you like to do on a gorgeous day?

So, University. What did you teach me?

With my degree now pretty much done, and graduation in July, I thought I'd look back on the last three years and ask them: what have I learned from you? 

More specifically, what have the last three years done for me in my writing?

My degree is in English Literature with Creative Writing, which means I've spent three years attending workshops once a week where the group critiques each other's submissions. That, obviously, has done wonders for my writing: I've learned control, I've learned to be disciplined (usually), and I've learned how to avoid the common mistakes that appear in my work. I've also learned to critique other people's work effectively, which in turn makes you look at your own work more critically and objectively.

What about the English lit part? I really think reading a lot helps you write better, but I have to say, looking back, there have been so many concrete moments of inspiration that I've derived from specific texts and ideas we've explored.

In my first year, we looked at Robert Browning's poetry (amongst many other things, obviously) and that was when I learned about beauty, death and the attraction these ideas had for writers of the time. This didn't have a direct impact on my writing but now, three years on, I often find myself, when writing about death, touching on the intensely physical and beautiful aspects of it. The cold skin, the sound of a waning heartbeat, orchids and lilies, all these things that intertwine beauty and poetry with death and tragedy.


In my second year, I did courses on Romanticism and Victorian lit. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights each inspired, in different ways, what eventually became my novel ECHOES, while Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' inspired the albatross that appears in TEA WITH DEATH, DESIRE AND RAGE.

This year, my third year, I wrote a dissertation on dystopian fiction, which lent me so much material and understanding and theory that I've been able to apply to the slightly dystopian Weaver/echo premise of ECHOES. One of the novels I used was Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which gave me a wider grasp on clone-related fiction and helped me research the subject a bit more. ECHOES is about a fantasy variant of clones.


I also did a course on modernism, which made me really passionate about using the city or the landscape as a heaving, thriving force in my writing. Now I very rarely write a story or novel without making the setting a hugely important and almost alive part of the text.


And finally, being at Lancaster University gave me Lancaster: an old, beautiful city surrounded by absolutely incredible countryside. This setting is significant to ECHOES, and will continue to be hugely important if and when I write the sequels.

There's a parking lot in the city where, if you look out over the city's skyline, you could actually be standing there a hundred years ago and it would probably have looked just the same.  I find that incredibly poignant and amazing.

It's worth mentioning too that some of my best memories are set in Lancaster, on campus, around this university. It's not just my writing that fell in love with this place. I have too, and, awful weather aside, I'll miss it dreadfully.

Can you trace your ideas and stories back to a specific root or inspiration? Has school, university or just learning something new triggered off a story or a passion for you?

Inspiration...

...from dinner at an Italian restaurant? Well. Lest anybody think the writerly, studenty life involves little but writing, studenting and general meandering about our gloriously sunny campus (yes, the sun is rare. I'm excited.), let me disabuse you of that notion. Tonight, I'm going out. Just for a meal in town, for a friend's birthday, but the unusual thing about this is: there will be about thirty other people at dinner too.

The last time I went out with more than a handful of friends, I was seventeen, it was lunch after my school graduation, and I entertained my entire class of sixty by trying desperately to fish a cherry out of the bottom of my friend Tarun's sweet lime soda. Believe me, I had no idea everyone had fallen silent and was watching me struggle. Such was my absorption in getting that cherry.

So it's been, what? Five years now since that outing? And here I am again, about to embark on a similar feat of large gatherings at a restaurant. The reason I mention this is because, when I find myself amongst so many people, most of whom I won't know in the slightest, I invariably get Ideas. I steal things off them. Someone might say something funny and in my head, I'll go ping! I'm going to use that line! Or I might see someone with an absolutely exceptional nose and I'll immediately want to use that nose on a lovely, charming new character.

It's an illness. I could swear it is. I don't know about other writers, but I personally find it very hard to bump into an unusual characteristic or witty banter or magnificent nose without thinking I want to use that. Books are always on my brain. Ideas. Those sneaky things.

How do you get your ideas? Can you hear your friends say something funny without wanting to tweak or use it in some way?

Snapshot of a university day

As I write this, I'm sitting in the Learning Zone, a new building designed so that students at Lancaster University can study, work, talk, eat and hang about, all twenty four hours a day. One end of it is covered with long, large windows, looking out into Alex Square, the centre and hub of the university. In the interest of putting off doing my work (I've written about 700 words of yet another dissertation chapter and think I can take a break), I thought I'd describe what I see and offer a snapshot of university life.

Across from me sits Lindsey, friend, flatmate, fellow student, slightly insane and not a little bit dopey either. She's more engrossed in her phone than in her work and occasionally looks up to offer me yet another update re. her job, her manager and the rota. I listen with one ear. Around us are various other erstwhile students, some diligently working, others sprawled out on the sofas with their iPods plugged firmly into their ears. Today, the windows are closed, so it's quite warm in here. So warm, in fact, that I've taken my hoody off. Gasp. In England, too.

Outside, in the Square, which is actually more of a very long rectangle surrounded by shops, banks, passageways and trees, it's still light, though the sun has vanished. Very English. Two girls sit on the steps, smoking. Two boys appear to be enjoying a couple of milkshakes. I'm tempted to ask them where they got theirs, because I tried getting a Diggles milkshake not fifteen minutes ago and was told they were closed. A girl dressed, apparently, for the Antarctic is passing by, her hood so dense it could probably shelter Lindsey, me and the rest of the Learning Zone, were we to feel the chill. Someone's getting money out at the cash machine. A group of first-years are laughing over sandwiches. I can tell they're first-years because only first-years wear skimpy clothes in the cold and laugh that loudly. Trust me. The rest of us have too much work to indulge ourselves. (Okay, I confess to mild sarcasm.)

As early as it is, I can give you a snapshot of the Square tonight, or on an average university night. Girls in short, pretty dresses and coats totter on high heels, already drunk, to get the bus or a taxi. Boys make sure they look steady and reliable, to prove they are men and can hold their drink. Occasionally, someone will try to climb a tree and break an arm. The buses will take them into town, where they'll dance for hours at Cuba or the Sugarhouse or one of the other clubs, and they'll drink till they're silly. I do this frequently, so I know.

Yes, that's university life. Work, drink, dance, play. Work some more. Work whilst nursing a hangover, whilst suffering stomach cramps, whilst being sick, whilst contemplating tomorrow's night out. Then go out. Then work some more. That's the final-year student's life, anyway.

Steve is driving up to see me tomorrow. Am very, very excited about that.

Bruv, Bruv

First off, Stop Crying Your Heart Out. Oh, I do love this song. My character Sean is a big fan of Oasis, so I try to listen to them when I can. Research, you know? (Or so I claim. In reality, one might call it procrastination.)

On a different note, I thought I'd share a story I remembered today. My friend Amina claimed about a year ago that, whilst walking through the streets of Lancaster one afternoon, she overheard the following conversation. I remember laughing so hard and can actually recall almost every word she said.

[The scene. Two trackpant-wearing young men hover beside a pigeon, that happens to be pecking at a discarded piece of KFC chicken.]

Boy1: Bruv, check it out. 
Boy2: That's wicked, bruv.
Boy1: It's eating it, bruv.
Boy2: That's like bruv eating bruv, bruv.
Boy 1: Bruuuv...

Now if you're anything like me, you'll probably laugh and then doubt very much that this actually happened. Happily, I'm quite convinced Amina was telling me the truth. Not only because I've overheard many such bruv-filled conversations myself, but because, in Lancaster, the home of pigeons-flocking-the-cobbled-streets, this seems more than likely. It's wonderfully, delightfully true.