Never Forget: Just Write

After a long drought and two languishing fiction works sitting quietly twiddled their metaphorical thumbs in the hard-drive, I have finally been inspired to write fiction this weekend. Maybe the Spring time flowers are helping, or the extra hours of daylight, but I am at long last ready to write again.

It all started on Saturday afternoon by binge-listening to some of my favourite music from University, and it got me to thinking how few accurate representations there are of being a student in fiction. Everything I've ever read has leant so heavily on the side of cliché that it becomes tedious and predictable. I want to write something accurate, funny, and (hopefully) heart-warming enough for at least one student, somewhere, to read it and say "This is me."

My major "This is me" moment happened last year when I read Caitlin Moran's How to Build a Girl, and wept with laughter at a plage in central France. In her main character, Johanna, I saw huge amounts of my teenage self in uncomfortably accurate HD. I want to give someone that same feeling of familiarity, of toe-curling embarrassment and of wanting to defend that person to the last. So I #amwriting.

This bad-ass elephant from the Magical Lantern Illuminations in London never forgets to write. If I could drink liquids by pouring them into my mouth through my nose, I wouldn't forget either. Elephants are ACE.