I’m Writing a Story

So I’m going to go a little meta this week for the post, because I’m writing about writing. I love to write, but I hardly ever do. I received a 2:2 in English Literature and Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University way back when. And I have used that degree in real life but not for a long while. I remember back in Uni I’d have what seemed like endless time to write poetry and think up story ideas. Having a lot of free time (for me) is conducive for writing poetry because I’d spend a lot of time wandering around rearranging words in my head, rearranging stanzas on a page and wondering whether I needed that comma or not.

I once wrote about two hundred words in an essay on one comma in the middle of a poem and what it meant to leave it in and the struggle I went through on whether it should be in or out. Simpler times. But this is a small example of the sort of time I used to have back then. I definitely don’t have that time now. I also remember a time when I handed in a short story and it was shit. Like utter bin juice. My professor marked it and I winced when I saw all the red on my pages as he handed it back to me. And this gent was intimidating. Not physically, but because he spoke in complete sentences. He never ummmed or ahhhhed and tripped up. He said exactly what he wanted to say all the time; so eloquent. I wanted to impress him, but I was just shit back then at writing stories. I couldn’t get the building blocks sorted.

Then, next assignment was poetry and I aced it. There was something about poetry that I just got. I mean, I would have never set the poetry world aflame with my stanzas, but I was decent. My professor handed me back my work and actually said, ‘I questioned for a moment whether your last assignment and this one were written by the same person.’ In his roundabout way he was telling me that this one was a fuck tonne better. Which I greatly appreciated. Sadly now, I hardly ever write poetry. But I do still have story ideas. And I think I have quite a good one.

No I’m not bloody telling you what it is. Some bastard will nick it, write a novel better than me and sell it for loads and… But I know myself and if I tell someone, like you, the reader, that I’m going to do something, then there’s more of a chance of me actually doing it. If I write something down and it can stare back at me, then it might just get done. It might be a long time coming though, we’ll see.

O and one more thing. Go to Wales. It’s lovely.