She sits, bolt upright, and surveys the room. Like her, everyone here is a stranger to one another. She seems too rigid and false. Her hair is not carefully coiffured, it is a mess of thick wiry blond, it is reminiscent of a sheep’s coat. She surveys the scene, having arrived later than everyone else, the session is just starting, but she looks at everyone with a careful disdain. Her eyes narrow and her lips contract until a small thin pink line is all that’s visible. Perhaps she is annoyed, perhaps she is disgusted, it is hard to tell, but her look causes a bristle to the person carefully watching her behaviour.
The introductions had already begun, carefully moving about the room, conveying who each person is, and why they are here. A lot of nervous smiles and a wash of pride for every person who has gotten to this room today. Yet she sits, and she watches and she waits. When it is her turn, she conveys an authority that does not appear to be hers to give. There is something in her voice, like she has to boast of her background and what it is that she does, like she is somehow more important than every other person in the room. There is something about her that appears false, that she is something less than she is.
The hours tick by and she remains ramrod straight in her chair. Her looks suggest she is at odds with the room, like they do not deserve to be there as much as she does, what rights do they have. When the break comes and she stands to leave the room, her clothes give her away more. Clean and tidy, and carefully put together, but no brands are on show. When she returns, she perches on her seat and opens her lunch, the observer of her behaviour notes what it is and how she nibbles her food. It reminds the observer of a squirrel, holding a nut in both hands and carefully nibbling away.
Today was my first tutorial of my new OU course and two things were evident from the end of the first session.
1. This course reaffirms my belief that studying English literature was the thing to do. I just get it. I’m not struggling with the terms or what they mean and I love it!
2. Everyone there seems to want to do the same thing as me, namely, write. So, you would think that in a room of my peers I would feel at home. I didn’t. I felt outrage. Part of me seems to think this is a competition and they are a threat to my success. I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do and it worries me.
I shall perhaps explore this in another post when I have had a chance to digest what I’m thinking and feeling.
I realised this morning (thanks to a timely email reminder), that the Oxford literary festival is on in March. This year I’ve taken the opportunity to book for two sessions a week apart. I’m going to a reading by Philip Pullman and two other children’s authors (who I’m afraid I don’t know) and a workshop on creating children’s literature. Whilst I haven’t committed myself to writing for children, I thought exploring the avenues that were available to me would be a good thing to do.
Find out about the talks that are being held www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com (the link will open in a new window).
So I’ve held firm on my threat of moving. You’ll probably find over the next few days that those of you coming to emchi.co.uk/blog are turning up at emmachittenden.com. Welcome to old friends and those who I have yet to make acquaintance with.
I’ve also decided to try and take action on my plans to change direction in life. Clearly in order to do this, I actually need to do something about it. So this is my new platform. My main aim on here is to review books that I read. Given that I’m an avid reader, I’d like this to become a book club of sorts. So to all you readers who’ve come here because of something I’ve written about a book or an author you like, please add your comments and start / join a discussion.
The second goal of my site, is to keep a diary of my attempts to write my first novel, and subsequently get it published. There maybe a few editorials along the way. Ultimately I’d like to use this site as a note book, to provide me with the inspiration needed to get going.
For the old posts that I’ve migrated from emchi.co.uk, well a lot of them are going in the bin. I really have written some utter dross in the last ten years and I’d like to have a reasonably fresh start. I say reasonably, as there’s nothing quite like a notebook with a few used up pages in it, it makes it feel like you’ve achieved something, no matter how small.
