This week, each of the three blog posts will be on a lecturer from one of my three years at Bath Spa University. So, today I’ll write about one from first year, Wednesday one from second year and Friday one from third year. Each of them have had a significant influence on me and my work and so I just wanted to dedicate a post to each of them. As you may have guessed, today’s is about somebody named Emma Hooper.
    Emma taught the core (compulsory) module for Creative Writing in first year and it was those classes that convinced me that I had made a very good choice in doing a Creative Writing degree. This class was right in the middle of a nine hour day (11 a.m. to 6 p.m. of classes, plus at least two hours travelling all the way from Corsham to Bath) but I still always looked forward to this class because it was such a fun environment for developing writing.
    Emma herself always seemed to be especially full of energy and I imagine it was a great help for those who may not have been feeling entirely enthusiastic. I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but while other classes would have writing prompts that weren’t all that exciting, I remember that I was always eagerly writing up my piece to workshop in the next of Emma’s classes whereas with the others it was occasionally a bit of a chore. Perhaps it was because she gave such excellent and positive feedback, or perhaps it was the prompts that were excellent, I don’t know, either way it got me to write more. In fact (and I know this because I list all of the writing I do) my year with that class is the most productive I’ve ever been writing-wise and I’ve been listing my writing since 2004! I’m sure that’s no coincidence.
    I remember once, I was wearing my Tetris badge (a kind gift from Chris Hunter) and she spotted it almost as soon as I walked through the door! That made me very happy. The same thing happened when I was wearing my Christmas badge too (she also held an excellent Christmas class too). I think the best thing was that she made every class member feel important and really encouraged everyone with their projects, while at the same time being a really fun person to be around. In one of the last lessons we were listening to music (working on song writing, I think) and she played the song “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen and it’s quite a sad song, so I felt especially sad that the classes were coming to an end and whenever I hear it now it reminds me of those classes. As I’m sure you can tell, I’ll always have extremely fond memories of my first year of Creative Writing with Emma Hooper.

Years ago, when I went to Corsham Regis Primary School, I remember being told very often by teachers and MDSAs that I was living the best years of my life. At the time, I was rather surprised, not because I was being overly pessimistic, but because I just assumed life would get better. Sure, life was nice, but I imagined it getting much better as I got older. Before long, the time came for me to leave Regis and so, of course, a big celebration assembly was arranged for me and all the other students in my year. We were all told to pick two cherished memories of Regis to say on stage. That was hard. I didn’t really have any cherished memories. In the end I just picked an arbitrary conversation I remembered having with my friend Davey four years earlier and something about getting hurt while doing rock climbing.
    From there, I went on to The Corsham School. I was still occasionally told, though not as often, that these were the best years of my life and unlike when I was at Regis, I actually started to believe it. As I aged through my teenage years, I developed into the person I am today and formed strong bonds with lots of people who I’m still in contact with today. I had so much fun, and had I been asked to give two cherished memories of my time at The Corsham School, I’d have struggled, but this time the struggle would have been narrowing it down to just two. At the end of compulsory education, there was another big leavers’ event, but I didn’t really see it as an ending, because I had two more years there in the sixth form coming up. When I got to the end of the sixth form, however, I felt rather sad. The best time of my life really was coming to an end. Each of the year’s tutor groups I had to make a presentation, and since my group wasn’t very keen, I pretty much made the entire presentation myself. People found it hilarious, “wonderfully dry” the head teacher said to me afterwards, but there was actually a lot of emotion in it. I felt rather gloomy that day, really, as I watched all of the presentations. It really felt like life would never be that good again, I’d be going somewhere away from all my beloved friends and the routine I’d be used to for seven years would be gone forever.
    Then I went to Bath Spa University (today is officially my last day as a student). I loved it there. I met several new people and I grew to love them just as I did my friends from The Corsham School. I was expecting the worst, but then that turned out to be the time of my life. I’ve never been happier than during my time at Bath Spa Univerisity. I’ve been able to work a lot on my writing and to take it in a more professional direction which has been infinitely helpful. I’ve had such close, intense friendships with several people and I feel that I’ve been enriched as a person because of it. I recently found myself walking alone around the university’s campus fairly late at night and I knew it would be one of the last times I got to be there. I felt so sad because all of the wonderful times of the past three years were running through my head and now it was over. I was feeling very emotional indeed and I wrote a few text messages to different people, trying to express the feeling, but I didn’t send any of them because I didn’t feel I could capture it in words. I slowly walked up to the bus stop and got onto the 15 bus. I love riding on the bus, but as I sat and looked out of the window, I couldn’t enjoy this bus ride because I knew it was taking me away from my fantastic time at Bath Spa University.
    But while this is an ending, it’s also a new beginning. I’m sure that in three years’ time (or however long it takes for the next change to come along) I’ll be sad that the next ‘time of my life’ is over, because life just seems to get better and better as the years go by. As life goes on, endings get harder and harder, but we mustn’t forget that each new beginning can be better than the last.

(Don’t miss today’s, related, Finger Puppet Show!)

I tend to find it extremely interesting to read about the writing habits of other writers and so I thought that the writers in the audience may enjoy reading about my writing routine. Not that I actually have any real writing routine, so to speak, but I’ll talk about my habits nonetheless.
    Firstly, there are the regular posts here on the Trusty Water Blog. I never write an entry in advance, I always write them on the day (except book reviews, which are nearly always written on the day I finish a book and then saved). I suppose it seems a little reckless, but I’ve been doing this for over three years now and I still manage to find time on every update day. I took a break from updating for a couple of weeks in the early days because my laptop broke (if that happened now, I wouldn’t stop) and other than that, I’ve only missed an update once so, I’m quite proud of that. Usually I have three vague ideas for the entries at the start of the week and then they may or may not end up being what I write. Sometimes I’ll just be talking to a friend and then I’ll be reminded of something that happened to me and then that’ll be the entry for that day.
    Then there’s the second of my ‘public’ works, the Finger Puppet Show. Unlike my blog, I fairly often do this in advance. Usually, at the start of a week I’ll have the two strips already uploaded and ready to be automatically posted at 12 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday. Last summer, I actually had ten weeks’ worth of strips ready and waiting. That’s not to say I’ve never been up late the night before getting one finished! Oddly, despite it being a rather childish thing about talking animals, the inspiration for these often comes from real life. Sometimes I’ll be in a conversation with a group of people and somebody will say something and then I’ll think “Wouldn’t it be funny if somebody replied with …” and then I make that into a comic strip. At the moment, this might be the most fulfilling writing I do.
    Finally, there’re my short stories. I’ve written 240 short stories of varying quality since 2004 and the 241st is in progress. As I like to list things, I noticed that when I started writing this blog, I also started writing fewer short stories, presumably because my creative energy had to be spread over a broader area and I’ve noticed that I’ve been producing fewer still since I started the Finger Puppet Show. Sometimes I’ll think to myself that I need to focus less on the Trusty Water Blog and Finger Puppet Show and focus more on my ‘real’ writing, but I quickly reassure myself that that’s silly. First and foremost writing should be a pleasure and if you’re forcing yourself in any direction, your writing might be of lower quality. At the moment, I’ll usually go weeks without doing any of this ‘real’ writing but then I’ll get an idea, and these ideas usually come at about 3 a.m. and keep me up for hours, then the next day I’ll write it all in one go, no matter how long it turns out. On the other hand I am currently working on a story that I’ve been slowly adding to for the last month or so. It’s an idea I really like, but I always find myself doing other things, so I should probably focus on it more.
    I so often think to myself that I don’t write enough, but I don’t worry about it for long. Every writer I’ve known has expressed similar concerns to me about themselves at different times, and I think I know why. I tend to find that I just have an infinite number of ideas and no matter how much I write I still have loads of new ideas. Perhaps I, and others, feel that I don’t produce work because any amount is small next to infinity. I’m sure this is true of most other artists (not just writers) too.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

Just yesterday I was talking about drink driving with my brothers. I’m not going to make an entry about how or why drink driving is bad, because it’s so very obvious, but while I was discussing it I thought of a way that the number of drink driving related accidents could be cut down quite easily. Why don’t they just install breathalysers into cars? Not just arbitrary ones either, ones which are used to actually start up the car. If you’re over the legal limit, the car won’t start. Somebody be pressured into having a drink or two and be able to mentally reassure themselves that they’re good enough drivers to get home and it will probably all be fine anyway. But if you knew your car would be stuck there all night if you drunk, you wouldn’t do it. I don’t imagine it would take much work for this to be added to cars either. Remember, years ago, cars didn’t all have seat belts! So, I don’t really see any real reason that they aren’t added.

One nice new feature in Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the Dream Suite. The Dream Suite essentially allows you to visit a version of people’s towns which is just a copy of their actual town. You can cut down trees and dig loads of holes, but that’s all reset once you go. You’re also unable to take items from dream towns. But, anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is because one of the towns is really creepy and mysterious. It seems to tell you the story of a little girl, neglected by her parents who then went on to kill all her friends at a birthday party (and maybe herself too?). There’s a lot of room for interpretation as a lot of it is very symbolic. I took several photos of the place last time I went so you can all see it. If you have the game and would like to visit it yourself, the dream address is: 2600-0218-7298