Post-post-postmodernism?

Since my last post, I have discovered a strategy for getting my essay done. The strategy is to man up, stop whining like a pathetic little emo kid and just do some work.

So I have wound up writing my current essay about the postmodernist elements of the two novels I am studying. However, this has left me very confused. This is why I am confused:

1. No one really talks about postmodernism anymore unless they're being ironic. Which would make us post-postmodern.
2. I'm not sure it's even cool to be ironic about postmodernism anymore, because postmodernism is so clearly outdated that anyone who is ironic about it is just stating the obvious. Which makes us... Post-post-postmodern?
3. I don't have the faintest idea what postmodernism is. And I'm not sure anyone else knows or cares either, because isn't the point of postmodernism that you can't attach a single definition to anything, including postmodernism? In which case you can't define postmodernism as saying that you can't define anything, in which case I am now going to smash my face against the keyboard.

Sometimes I wonder whether my degree isn't just one big joke?

Anger management?

Today is a beautiful spring day. It's crisp and bright; my window is open, and the sunlight is shining through the glass and warming my back. Our neighbours' grandchildren are in their garden, playing and laughing. Sounds of freedom. I am sitting at my desk, working on an essay. As I have been doing almost every day for the past two and a half weeks.

I'm so fed up. All I can think about is essays. I've finished one and started on the second. Yesterday, I decided to skim through the two books I'm writing about and look for useful quotes. I thought it would take a couple of hours, but it took all day and I still didn't finish. At about five o' clock I was still working away, even though my head hurt and my eyes were bleary - I thought I had to be almost finished, but when I looked at the book I was not even halfway through! I got really angry. Then, upstairs, my dad started snoring. I was suddenly infuriated by the fact he got to have a nap while I had been working all day, and it wasn't like I was nearly done because I hadn't even started writing the 5,000 word essay. I was so infuriated that I had this sudden desire to lash out, and so I raked my fingernails down the book I was reading so hard that I left tears in the page... And then I almost snapped my pencil in half and threw it across the room but managed to restrain myself.

I think I've got anger issues!

I'm just so, so fed up and depressed. It's the holidays but I can't enjoy them. I've been arranging to do things with friends, because I need to unwind, but I can't appreciate the things I do because I'm constantly thinking, "I should be doing my essays right now - how am I going to get them all done?" The silly thing is, I know I will get them done. I always do. But I always feel like I need to sacrifice my sanity to do so.

Anyone got any advice? How can I stop being so angry? I don't want to destroy all my books in sudden psychopathic outbursts of rage. In the meantime, it's back to essay number two... I have written about 700 words but as usual they are all absolutely awful! Hm, maybe eating more chocolate will help.

Emma's Essay Nightmare (and writing progress)

I have five weeks off uni for Easter - a ridiculous amount of time, I know - but I need them, because I have been sucked into a Black Hole of Essay Doom. I have three assessed essays to write, adding up to a total of 12, 500 words. That doesn't seem like a lot when you consider that for NaNoWriMo I had to write 50,000 words in four weeks. It's different, though. For NaNoWriMo the words could be a complete pile of twaddle (man, I adore that word!). These words have to be clever words. They have to be words which will get me good marks - my degree is riding on this! And the topics I have chosen to write on are really quite hard.

Hence Emma's Essay Nightmare. I will probably update this blog moaning about my progress, or lack thereof. Here's where I stand at the moment:

• Essay 1. A 5k comparison of Crime and Punishment and Hunger on the theme of subjectivity. First draft, written in barely comprehensible English, complete. I have spent literally all week sitting at my desk doing this. It drove me crazy. Today my dad drove us out into the forest and we went on a walk, just so that I could remember what fresh air and sunlight were like.
• Essay 2. A 5k essay on feminist themes in Possession and Alias Grace. Haven't even started researching yet.
• Essay 3. A 2.5k essay on 17th century text no one has ever heard of, which I have to research and then make up - gasp! - my own opinions about. Have not even decided what I'm going to write about yet.
  

Sigh. I just have to keep telling myself that it's worth having no life for five weeks in order to get a good mark for my second year. And, hopefully, a good degree at the end of it all. Which will hopefully mean a good job. Which won't necessarily mean a good life, but I think I've got that one sorted whatever happens.

On a slightly different topic - (creative) writing progress has been made! I realised that the reason I've felt absolutely no motivation to write Into the Blizzard (the Storm Awakened spin-off) is that I had no plot, and couldn't see where it was going. When I did manage to write a few paragraphs, I was writing aimlessly. So this evening I sat down and focused all my energy on writing a detailed, comprehensive plot.

Guess what: I actually got somewhere! I mean, I have a plot that I actually think is decent, and it's fairly complex, too! It's all a bit of a muddle at the moment, and I have only plotted about 3/4 of the story, meaning I still need to find a way to wrap it all up and then locate and destroy any plot holes - but I can see the story going somewhere now. I have enough material to write at least 20 chapters. That's right, it's going to be another long one. This is going to keep me distracted from those essays for a while!

The Remains of the Day

I just finished reading The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, which had been on my shelf for ages, but I'd never got round to reading it because it looked pretty dull. It won the Booker Prize in 1989 and oh my gosh, I can see why. It was amazing. I haven't read a book that has actually made me cry in a long time. It was just so good.

From the plot, you wouldn't expect it to be good: a butler goes on a road trip through the English countryside to visit an old friend, and reminisces about his past as a butler in a grand old English household on the way. That's it. And when I first started to read it, I thought, oh dear. Because Stevens, the main character, has this incredibly over-formal, emotionally stilted voice, and I didn't see how I was going to endure it for the whole book.

I quickly changed my mind. The narrative voice is the best thing about the book. There's something really haunting about it. Stevens is completely in denial about everything - particularly his own feelings towards the housekeeper, Miss Kenton - but all these undertones and nuances bubble up underneath everything he says, and you get this constant sense of the truth being repressed. It's painful. Stevens seems to have absolutely no interests outside of being a good butler. Even the conversations he has when off-duty are about butlering. As a reader, you want to scream at him, can't you see that you're missing out on everything that's good in life? That you are throwing away every opportunity that's given to you? But of course he can't hear you, which is incredibly frustrating.

There is one point, one sentence, where the human being breaks out from underneath the veneer of the old-fashioned butler, and this is when he realises that it is too late for him to have a future with Miss Kenton:

I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed - why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.

The ending verges on the sentimental - as he sits on a bench on the seafront, a random old man enlightens him on everything he's missed out on. But I didn't really care. It had my eyes watering anyway. I'm not going to say anything more about it. Just read it!

I'm sorry to go all smarmy and book review-y on you. I just had to get that off my chest. It's made me worried about my own writing, though. I don't think I'll ever be able to write anything as good as this. Technically, I'm good, but I just don't have any ideas. I'm starting to think I'll never even finish a novel, let alone publish one. And yet my parents always talk about it like it's going to happen and I don't want to let them down...

In denial?

Monday was the strangest day. For some reason, everyone was being really nice to me. My mum woke me up with a cup of tea, and then she brought in all these presents. I got a new digital camera, and some notebooks and CDS, and lots of books, including original 1930s/40s editions of books written by my ancestor, Cecil Freeman Gregg. Then we went for a walk, and had tea and cake and soup, and then went food shopping so we could make homemade pizza and have a feast with even more cake. And my friends were sending me messages, inexplicably wishing me a pleasant day...

I have no idea why any of this happened. It's not like I'm older or anything. It's not like I'm twenty. I'm going to be a teenager forever, right?

On a serious note, though. I'm twenty now and I need to sort out my life and do something useful. Like write a good novel. Or actually go on a date, or something. I'm getting closer and closer to the point where I have to grow up and start planning what I'm going to do with myself after university, but I really don't want to. So far all I've got is: I want to live in a quaint little flat in a slightly dilapidated building somewhere near London, occupied by lots of eccentric artistic types, and write lots of novels and articles, and wander about the city having tea with all my high-flying lawyer/accountant friends. How I'm going to finance this lovely life, I have no idea.

I might do a Masters in Creative Writing. But I'd have to get accepted onto one first, and apparently they all just teach you to churn out books exactly in the style of Ian McEwan. Which I don't really want to do. I have my integrity! (I just mistyped that as "I have no integrity" - Freudian slip?)

I have done one useful thing though! I had a job interview last Thursday, and received my offer letter today... I am officially an employee of the Royal Household! I'm going to be working at Buckingham Palace over the summer. It's going to be pretty intense - five days a week all summer with no holidays - but I'm really excited. Apparently working there is great fun, and I bet you meet loads of interesting people too. So, if you happen to be visiting London this summer and go to the palace, you might just meet me in one of the gift shops! Though if you said, "Are you Emakoke?" to me, I would look at you like you were crazy and pretend not to know what you were talking about. So don't bother.

On Saturday I'm going to visit my friend on his farm to celebrate his birthday. He has lambs! I might get to hold one! This is an immensely exciting prospect.

That is all for now. I am still young... I am still young...

More mundane updates on my life.

I haven't been on here in a long time and thought I'd post a little update of my life.

Things are going really well for me at the moment. I've been getting good marks back from essays, which makes me feel confident that I am clever enough to be here. When I first got here last year, I thought I was an idiot compared to the people in my seminars, and that I wasn't cut out for university. It sounds arrogant but at school I was used to getting the top marks in everything - and then suddenly I was average. I've developed my style really quickly, though, and when I compare this year's essays with last year's I can see how much more sophisticated they are.

That might change with the essay I'm about to hand in though. I kind of wrote most of it in one day... Oops.

I've also been spending a lot more time with friends. Last year I often sat alone in lectures. I didn't have many course friends at all because after a lecture everyone would just go back to their halls of residence to procrastinate/have a nap. Now, because most second years live half an hour away from campus, we have to hang around between lectures, and that means we socialise more. I've formed a little "English Gang". It's so lovely. We went to see King Lear together, and on Fridays we meet up in this lovely authentic Italian cafe in town where they do amazing coffee and pastries. I spend far too much money on food here (I'd say I go out for dinner at least twice every week!) but since I spend almost no money on club entry/alcohol like most other students, I can afford to.

On Monday my housemates M and A are taking me to see Romeo and Juliet for my birthday! It was so sweet of them - they drew me a card on which I am on a balcony and Shakespeare is declaring his undying love to me, and inside it said that we were all going to the theatre together. It's such a thoughtful present. My other housemate O bought me loads of lovely stuff too. I'm so grateful to have such a nice house - I've heard stories of loads of people who hate their housemates and are miserable. We get along so well and are like a little family.

What else? Oh yes. Term finishes next Saturday, but I have to leave on Wednesday, meaning I miss a lecture and seminar and of course all the end of term partying. But I have to, because I have a job interview to work at Buckingham Palace on Thursday. I'm so excited! I really hope I get the job, because I think the palace would be an amazing place to work in - I'd get to meet people from all over the world. I'd have to commute to London every day, which would be expensive and time-consuming, but I'd rather do that than work in a dreary office which is the only other alternative. After the interview my mum is taking me to see Legally Blonde the musical. So if I screw up and lose the ability to speak coherent English, which happened in my Oxford interview, I'll at least have that to cheer me up.

In terms of writing, I sadly haven't been doing much lately. I'm on Chapter Seven of the Storm Awakened sequel now. I have no idea where it's going but I'm sure the story will make itself up as I go along. Over Easter I plan to pound out loads more chapters, because I get five weeks off from uni! Though I do have 10,000 words of essay to write too. Nice.

I haven't been working much on The Novel either. However, the other day something weird happened. I had an idea for something I want to include in it, and decided to jot a few words down in my notebook - and then the floodgates opened. The Novel is going to be really autobiographical, and as I was writing non-stop for about an hour I forgot I was writing about a character and started writing about myself. Self-absorbed, I know, but I think the best writing comes from personal experience. When I read it back I realised it was one of the best things I've written for a long time, and I hadn't even tried. It just came completely from the heart.

It was basically about how I used to hate my face. I mean, hate. It sounds incredibly angsty-teenager but it was a really big thing for me. I had awful skin, and I used to put my face through all kinds of torture to try and clear it up, but of course it only made it worse. I thought I was hideous and spent hours just staring at myself in the mirror wanting to punch something. Every time someone looked at me I assumed they were thinking how disgusting my skin was and it left me with no self-confidence. Whether from the fact I'll be twenty in just over a week (ahhhhhhhhhhh) or the amazing face wash I found (Dermalogica - expensive but worth it) my skin is basically spot-free now and I no longer think I'm hideous. But it was quite cathartic for me to get out all that stuff about how I used to hate myself.

Now I get to torture my character by putting her through the same thing. Muahaha.

Well I'd better go. Today I'm going to see The Princess and the Frog - it's been out for ages but I haven't got round to seeing it despite loving Disney. Then we're having tea and cake and fajitas (not together), and then I might write some more.

Happy Easter to everyone if I don't update before then!

Addicted to Romcoms...

I'm terrible. I'd decided that once I finished Storm Awakened, I would stop messing about on FictionPress and focus all my attention on The Novel.

But I can't stop.

People liked The Healing Properties of Tea. They said it was sweet, that it brightened their days. It made me want to write more stupid fluffy romcoms. They're fun to write and I don't have to think about them. So now I am working on two more: another one about a crazy university society called Assassin's Guild, and one about a time travelling seventeenth century poet. I don't know where I get all these stupid ideas from, but once I'm in their grip I just can't escape.

On top of that, Storm Awakened was such a looming presence in my life for about two years that I can't let go of it. So I'm writing the spin-off about Anja. This means I'm currently writing four stories, and I'm probably never going to finish any of them, because I get bored about ten chapters in. You should see how many abandoned stories are gathering dust on my computer. One day I'd like to go on a writing spree and finish them all, no matter how bad they are, for completeness' sake. Maybe in the summer.

Anyway, that's my little update on my writing progress. It's reading week and I should be doing some work right now, which explains why I'm doing this.