A single hug.

My Dad hugged me last night. He put one arm around my shoulders and pressed his hand to the back of my head. He stroked my hair. I do not remember him ever hugging me like that. 

I've never had a bad relationship with him. We have just never seen the need to be emotional with each other. More recently he admitted to not believing in depression. He is not an ignorant man, he has just never come into contact with someone with mental health problems. And to have his own daughter diagnosed must have been a shock for him. His reaction when I first told him should be in a comedy. He one arm hugged me, said he needed to go to football, whilst looking at the floor, and left as soon as he could.

Perhaps he is ignorant. Perhaps he is hurting. It might be that I just cannot see it. Either way, as much as I like to laugh at it, it effected me. The man who I had always expected to be there suddenly wasn't. He didn't even believe that there was something wrong. 

It has been around two months since then. I hit a wall at uni yesterday and my step-mum brought me home. I had dinner and said I was going to bed. That was when my Dad hugged me. It doesn't sound like much, but to me it is a big step forward. 

Women and men and changing things. (The worst title for a poem, ever)

If there were a mirror, bigger than the moon,

maybe then I could see your source.

But, the moon reflects only light.

Those are your words not mine.

Glass is worthless, you say.

Yet, you are young, 

and your hair was cut short.

And mine has grown. I let it.

There are things that have always been.

And I realise that I know them,

now. Better than anyone else, I know.

I want to tell you to roll with them.

But, they will chew and keep on chewing.

There is no spittle for people like us.

The moon can see our fated progress,

it has a light and is enough.

For when you are nothing, the faintest light

can bring you to a page.

I will be blunt, we are not all artists.

I will be worse, money is king.

And a king is a man who can

make a woman a queen.

Teaching Creative Writing

I am in the third week of my third year. My very last year at the University of Winchester, studying creative writing. I can not even begin to tell you how excited I am, how scared I am. But, I don't actually want to focus on those parts of it. What I want to focus on is my degree itself, and how amazing it has been. 

There has been a lot of discussion in Britain as to if creative writing can be taught. In America they seem to already have it sorted out, they offer MAs in it as well as MFAs which people over here seem to have only just gotten to grips with. Britain has often been of the opinion that creative writing comes from the person almost entirely and so no one can teach it. But, walking comes from us, and we can teach that. 

Personally, I think that creation cannot be taught. The drive, the light, the spirit of a creator cannot be transplanted. Their mode of creation, art, science, writing, is also up to them. But once they have found their mode of expression I think it best to help them along it. We would not trust a scientist if he had not had a single lesson. 

There are some lucky, natural writers, but even then they have been taught at least the basics of english. And I believe that they could benefit from taking a class, because education forces us to challenge ourselves and modern writers need that. I offer myself as living proof of this.

At the beginning of my degree I refused to write anything that was not fantasy, and I believed that short stories were worthless to me. I remember being in a class that we had to read a selection of short stories for, I remember turning my nose up at it. I think that a part of me did not truly believe that I needed educating. I thought that I had all I needed in my fantasy books and my fantasy writing. 

Now, two years on, a huge amount of time in the life of a young writer, I am interested in writing something that is not fantasy. In fact, I have already written a few short stories that focus a little more on real life. I want my writing to mean something, I am interested in postmodernism's affect on history, I want to write metafictional pieces, and I want to read anything but fantasy. My writing is intelligent, it has themes and it has a purpose. I still have most of the year to go.

Yet I know it will not be enough. I do not think that a lifetime of studying writing and working in workshops would be enough. I am lucky in that I am going to go on to do a creative writing MA, and after that I am hoping to teach in colleges. It is the only way I can think of that will keep me learning. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you are passionate about your art, and you are wondering if it is worth doing a university degree, or an MA, it is. It really is.

My first, brief, attempt at metafiction.

I will start with you standing at a station. It isn’t a particularly new one. The benches are wooden and stained. The guard looks as old as his surroundings, and not because of his age, he has a worn kind of boredom about his eyes. It is the kind of boredom that makes me want to ink out a dinosaur beside him. I would like to see what he would do. He was athletic in his youth, his legs might still remember what it was like to run. I could remind them of that. Instead, I will focus on you.

I will tell you that you are waiting for a train, simply because I have no way of drawing your attention to the timetable. 

NEXT TRAIN TO NEVERLAND: PAGE THREE

You have been waiting your entire life for this train, so I assume that you can wait a little longer. Unless, of course, you are in desperate need of that train. Perhaps you can see your teacher walking towards the classroom, why are you reading before class? Some people would call you a geek, or maybe you are at a bus stop or a real train station and your actual mode of transport is scheduled to arrive in one minute. If you can read so much in so little time I will be impressed. You might even catch my train in one sitting. 

So what shall we do whilst we are waiting for the train? My train I mean, the one I am writing about. If it were my choice, which it is, then I would do what I always do when there is something that I have to wait for. You take a book out of your bag and you start to read.

‘I will start with you standing at a station. It...’

What would happen?

This started from a very simple question, what would happen if I came home from work to find a man lying on my bed? It turned into this, and I still have no idea what I would do.

-

There was a man on her bed and he was bleeding onto her floor. Her new beige carpet. Her first thought was that he was dead. Then he moaned. Emmy grabbed the baseball bat from beside her bedroom door; she had been keeping it there for Harry. This was not Harry. This man had light brown hair and was dressed all in black. He was lying face down on her expensive flowery quilt, one hand hanging over the side, dripping blood onto her floor. He moaned again. She tightened her hold on the bat.

Slowly the man began to move, he put one hand down on the bed and then the other. He pushed himself onto his knees and looked down at the deep gash on the back of his hand. His hair fell into his face, obscuring it from her still. 

She shifted her footing, trying to get it right.

He looked up like a dog pricking its ears. His gaze settled on her, wide and staring. He looked at the bat, and then to her face. He was tan with large bright eyes, blue, maybe grey. But did it matter? His lips parted and he put a hand to his head, his hair was greasy so that when he pushed his hand through it it stayed sticking up. It needed a good cut.

‘I haven’t called the police,’ she said, wincing as her voice came out a little to high.

‘Thank you?’

‘So you can go, no one will bother you.’

He closed his eyes and squeezed his temples for a moment, when he opened them again there seemed a sheen of tears. She still had the bat raised. Was that what he was worried about? She began lowering it and he shook his head. She stopped.

‘What is it?’ she said, ‘You can go. I won’t hurt you.’ She let the tip of the bat touch the floor.

‘No,’ he raised his hand, ‘I think, you should stay ready.’ He said it with his eyebrows drawn together as if he were thinking hard on something. ‘I, I don’t know who I am. I could be dangerous.’

That’s for sure, she thought. He was large, big shoulders, square jaw, black tracksuit bottoms and a black t-shirt like some sort of gang member. And there was his hand, which he had rested on his leg. It still oozed blood when he moved it. 

‘You don’t know-’

‘No, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who I am. My hand feels like it is on fire and I can’t help but think the bat is a good idea.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

Emmy whistled through her teeth, ‘were you drinking last night?’

His brow furrowed again, ‘you mean alcohol? I don’t even know if I like alcohol.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you know if you like burgers? Because that’s what I was planning for dinner.’

‘Dinner.’ He still looked as if he was trying to concentrate. ‘What time is it?’

‘About half six.’

‘In the afternoon?’

‘No dinner is a morning thing.’

‘But it… Oh you were…’

She nodded.

He smiled a little and moved so that his feet were on the floor. She noticed that they were bare.

   

‘Dinner or tea?’ he asked.

‘Dinner. How do you know the difference?’

He shrugged, ‘I just think we are in the south.’

‘London.’

‘London.’ He rolled the word as if he had never heard it and was just trying it out. He looked down, his hair fell over his face again. It was then that Emmy realised that she should call the police, because, well. Wasn’t that what you did when random men invaded your home? 

‘Burgers could work,’ he said when he looked up. She noticed his injured hand open and close. He was shaking. Emmy did not want to give him over, not to them. They’d sooner lock him up for breaking and entering than help him. 

She set the bat down by the door.

‘Please, keep that on you,’ he said.

Selfish, egocentric, sometimes lost.

I have always thought of my writing as deeply personal. It is something that most writers say, in fact it may even be an accepted fact. Often published works get torn apart in search of what the writer really thinks, scenes are related to their lives to try and find their beginning. People want to know if writers write about themselves, they want the fact beyond the fiction.

I am here to tell you that writers are an entirely selfish group. We write about ourselves constantly. But, before you go picking through your favourite novel for personality insights you must realise something. Yes, our hearts and souls are in that work, but you will not find us there.

What I am trying to say is that everything I write is a part of me, but unless you know what you are looking for you will never find me in it. I could relate that to the island in Pirates of the Caribbean. 'It can be found only by those who know where it is.' (Probably the wrong quote but it has the same gist) A lot of the time, even I have no idea of exactly which part of me I am divulging in a piece of work. Some make me feel more naked than others, and most of the time I do not even know why. I just know that there is something deeply personal about what I am handing out, and it makes my skin crawl.

I suppose we could add egocentric to selfish. And why not? To share our work is to say look, this is something I like, this is something I am proud of. If we go with my, 'there is a piece of a writer in his/her work' theory then that makes us extremely egocentric. 'Look, stare at this majestic part of my self! Marvel at my psyche!'

So what happens when we begin to lose ourselves?

I have been able to write little but fragments for the passed few months. I may have finished the first draft of my novel but I also feel like when I read over the ending I will not find what I am looking for within it. It is a scary prospect, that we might change, that actually that piece we held close to our heart has drifted from sight. I could read something from a year ago right now and not find a shred of myself in it. It is scarier still that I might have just completed a 95 000 word first draft only to not be able to feel the warmth that I felt when writing it.

Something has slipped, I have slipped. My writing is coming out with a more serious tone, a more realistic edge that I never thought I'd want to feel. Others must have gone through this, to think themselves one kind of writer when they were young, only to turn around and be on an island that nobody can find, surrounded by water. If we run with that analogy then really I am sitting on the edge of my island dipping my toes in the cold, ice water. I want to jump in, and really I suppose I should. It is always best to jump straight in and get used to the cold water rather than dally on the side.

Come Death.

Girl, who loves with Juliet’s first kiss,

Who, a virgin, has Venus on her lips,

Come forth, beauty to match Helen of Troy,

Leave crazy Heathcliff when just a boy,

Step into the dignity of Guinevere,

Give to men that which Arthur should fear.

But take not your share of virtue when,

Passionate throws give to Helen ten

Thousand ships that travel on the wake

Of the poison ruined Romeo must take,

And with haste Guinevere will leave, 

Afresh with winters warm blood breeze.

In Sparta Paris saw nothing, no shadow amiss,

When it was he who shared Juliet’s first kiss.