Let's laugh

If I didn't have laughter, I'd have tears.

That's why I prefer books with humour as opposed to books with sad topics. Sure a balance is cool but leaning too heavily on the sad is a sure-fire way to turn me off a book. Life is too serious for me to seek that out in fiction as well.

People who enjoy reading emotional tear-jerkers amaze me, simply because I'm not like that. I suppose it all boils down to personal preference (which I don't have to tell you varies greatly from person to person).

Live. Love. Laugh. That is all for now.

Writing on the train

Exactly the title. Most people bring out a book or newspaper when travelling via tube. I've started whipping out my notebook to scribble something when the mood strikes. Usually it will be a continuation of a larger scene in a story created on my laptop at home, so I'll just begin at a seemingly random spot in the plot.

It's great to simply pick it up like that, but what I find hilarious is people's reaction to it. They eye me warily before deciding that yes, I'm human (cough) and returning to their reading text of choice.

Only their attention is never completely diverted away from me. I catch their eyes flickering back to me and my conspicuously pink notebook, actually reading over my shoulder at times. It's a bit disconcerting but mostly I find it funny, since they have no clue about the ideas behind what I'm writing, so they're all very confused commuters.

Once I had a woman actually smile at me as I snapped the notebook shut in anticipation of my stop. She'd been watching me write from London Bridge to King's Cross, and seemed in an altogether exceedingly good mood. The flowers in her hands suggested she had someone in her life who cared about her.

I couldn't help but smile back. I'm a writer, not a grump.

You'd never guess these commuters

were such a nosey bunch.

No direction = freedom?

I recently enrolled in university, to do an English degree. On Monday there was a department party, in which we were supposed to drink wine and mingle. The only thing I drank was water and my mingling was me standing off to one side, texting a friend who was at another university.

Eventually, I did come across a couple of people I had met before and I stuck to them like glue. One of them invited another girl into our tiny circle, increasing our small number. I swallowed my fear and introduced myself to a beautifully tall yet shy girl and this brought our number to five.

Our conversation was awkward at first but we soon warmed up to each other and got so carried away we were one of the last to leave the party. Even as we made our way out of the building, we didn't stop talking and the topic turned to what we wanted to do once we finished university.

When I expressed my wish to become a writer, they asked why I was just doing English when so many others were doing English and Creative Writing. I shrugged my shoulders and the conversation moved on, but I haven't stop thinking about the answer to that question since. Why did I choose to do straight English?

Part of the reason was because my English teacher told me to. She's kind of my hero so of course I'd take her advice. But there's more to my decision than that.