Okay, Ainsley, so you're studying writing. What exactly do you do?

I'm paying the current equivalent of $16,000 (woohoo, the dollar is gaining strength!) to study creative writing - and that's just the cost of tuition.  If I were to have studied in the States, this would have cost more, and I wouldn't have had nearly as awesome or impressive an experience in the meantime.  But all that aside, why am I paying $16,000 to study something that I could just as well do all by myself, as I have been for some years now?

Partly because I love it, and partly because I promised my little 13-year-old self that I would.  It's not a good idea to renege on a promise, especially to yourself.  The betrayal, in such cases, is brutal.  And I chose Scotland because I can drink a gallon of deliciously hot tea a day and nobody looks at me like I'm insane.

Not even I knew quite what I was getting into when I dashed off a response to the head of my program back in March saying that yes, I would love to study at Edinburgh Uni and yes, I would hand over all this money just so I could spend a year writing.  I knew that I would, well, write.  And my courses, so far, have promised me exactly that.

On Mondays, I take a course in postmodern literature.  We focus on literature written from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, and generally discuss and criticize it just as I have been doing for the past four years at Wooster.  Only difference here is, we discuss the books as writers rather than just as scholars.  Stay tuned for exactly what that means, as I'm not sure myself.  Books for the semester include Slaughterhouse-Five, Song of Solomon, and Labyrinths.  It looks like a really interesting set of books.

Tuesdays, I have workshop.  If I am presenting, I have sent a piece of work that usually doesn't exceed 3,000 words (about 12 double-spaced pages, if I've got my math working right) by the Friday previous, and I have spent the weekend biting my nails and wondering whether I'm really, actually good enough to be in this program.

No, I don't bite my nails anymore, that habit was kicked back in May.  But it's a better image of nerves than, "I spend the weekend giving myself a French manicure and drinking wine that was 3 for £10, which Ana and I like to buy together every week.  As Dad should know, £5 a week isn't bad at all for a weekly wine budget."  And it's not, but that doesn't really portray nervousness.

Come Tuesday morning, I run the mile and a quarter to the labyrinthine building mentioned in my last entry, listen to other people tell me that my work isn't complete shit even if there are some changes that should be made, and tell them the same thing.  Granted, it's more complicated than that, and we talk about inane things like point of view and tense and overuse of adverbs which readers take for granted but we, as writers, add to our lists of neuroses.

Wednesdays, I have no class.  I spent this Wednesday with writers block, and therefore washed three rounds of dishes, stuffed the cracks where the windows don't shut with newspaper to insulate them a bit, scrubbed the stove, wiped the counters four times, made my bed twice (once after I got cold and crawled in for a short read), and set up a Great TV-Purchasing Adventure for Saturday so I never have to spend a day like that again.  Finally, at 9:30 PM, inspiration struck.

Guess who needs a job.

Thursdays, I have seminar.  We sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya and talk about writerly things that are supposed to inspire us and make us try new things.  There's no real Kumbaya-singing as yet, but you get my drift.  We're a bunch of artists sitting around discussing art.  I enjoy it, but to anyone on the outside, I'm sure it seems very Kumbaya.

Fridays, I don't have class.  I'll do a final edit on the story I'm presenting on Tuesday, send it in by about 1:30 or 2:00, and then bum around the flat for a while until other people do come home from courses and I don't have to do any more dishes.