Older people like to say things such as "before you were born" to feel a sense of belonging. They're painfully aware that the younger generation has the future without them, so they must claim the past before their successors.

I set my alarm early an hour for something that didn't happen and now I feel like the biggest fool in the world.

Josiah and I just played an interesting variation of catch involving a tennis ball and plastic golf clubs.

I've uploaded my pictures of Ireland on my webshots account: community.webshots.com/user/AmyRose86

Imagine me, trying too hard...

Last week, my host dad took my host mum out to London for her birthday. He took her to West End to see the Phantom of the Opera. He's been humming it now for the past two days. It came up on rotation on my iTunes today, and I decided that, though I have not seen it all the way through since I saw it in theatres, tonight I'm going to make myself a cup of tea, change into my pajamas, and drag my laptop into my amazingly comfortable bed to watch it and reminisce about an amazing part of my life.

My room always smells different than the rest of the house. I don't know what it is. But I'll walk into my room at night and it will smell like what we had for tea three hours ago. Or I'll slip in during the evening and I know the neighbors are barbequeing. Or I'll open the door and I'll have no idea what the smell is that hits me. It's funny.

I relaying a scene I had visualized to a friend (it's to the song Transatlanticism, about which I've been meaning to write a huge blog for the past three weeks). This scene takes place at a train station at the end of the story, and I've been trying to figure out how to get it to mesh with a concept I'm working with that also takes place largely at a train station (can't have the same motif in too many of your stories, which is a huge myth that I am trying to disregard). It's been frustrating, because this beginning and this end that I've thought up just won't feel right. And today it clicked why. They are truly two different stories about two different things. Even though one has no end and one has no beginning, I know they would never work together because they aren't telling the same story. One is a story about the struggle people have when they try to leave and one is about people meeting each other and helping them through difficult times. Well, that's the cheesy synopsis. Truly, one is about the struggle of separation and one is about the joys of friendship and intimacy. And while it's a little, well, typical of me to have too many ideas running around, and I fear that one will suffer from this over abundance and never get written, it's better than trying to fit these two pieces together. They would be wrong. And while I've done no real writing today, I feel incredibly satisfied with my progress.

Irish blessings

I have some sort of deep attachment to Ireland.

Since I've been in England, there have been times when I've been struck with a sort of longing for Ireland. England comes very close, but not enough, just similiar enough to remind me that I'm not there. And a few weeks ago I confessed to the youth leader of my church here that while I'd love to live abroad for an extended period of time, England is not a place that I have to live. I liked it well enough, but it's just another place I'm living, really. In the end I'll leave and look back on my time with warm feelings and nostalgia (I hope, of course), but I won't have the same sort of desire to return as I have to always go back to Ireland.

I got to go to Dublin this past weekend. It's a little strange, taking weekend trips to foreign countries. I had a nice time. I bought a Claddagh ring finally, which I had made myself wait to buy until I was in Ireland again. I spent a day wandering around Dublin, spent a night in Temple Bar, stayed in hostels for the first time (they are soo cool), spent a late morning/early afternoon by the coast (the Irish coast is amazing), watched part of the English-Ecuador world cup game in an Irish pub, hung out with a Danish girl and a bunch of Frenchmen. I prefer the coast and the green mountains of Ireland to Dublin, but it was nice just to be in the country again. The weather wasn't great half the time and I had to deal with a pulled muscle in my foot for the majority of the trip, but when I walked down O'Connell street at 430 in the morning to catch my plane to Bristol, I was sad to think that this could be the last time I'm in Dublin for a very long while. I'm going to get out to western Ireland still, but another trip to Dublin will probably not be for at least four more years. The funny thing is, as I was on one of the three trains I took back from Bristol to Southbourne, I noticed places that have become familiar to me, cricket fields, horse paddocks, train stations. And I thought of the children, how this first month has passed so quickly and I only have five more ahead of me, how one Tuesday in November I'll send them off to school with a real goodbye. And now I've realized, I'm not only attached to this wonderful family, I'm attached to this land. The cricket fields, the mill pond in Emsworth, the endless train tracks over field and hill. I may never find myself living here again, but it's going to be hard to leave. Harder than I thought.

Even though Southbourne is the tiniest town in the world. There are only three places that are not cities where I would consent to live: in a villa in southern France, in a coastal town in Ireland, or wherever the love of my life waits.

Darn.

When I made the switch to screenplay writing a couple of months ago, my main concern was trying to adjust to the completely different way screenplay writing worked, as opposed to fiction writing. The different focuses, the different format, different structure, different goals. I set out to conquer this uncharted literary territory and make it mine, to see if I liked it and could make a career out of it.

Today I sat outside a little pub in a little English town and wrote for hours.

Literally. I don't know how long I was there. But I got an incredible amount of writing done, and for the most part it was easy. My last few months at university I was in a creative drought. It was awful. Here I write all the time. Journal entries, long emails, working on my screenplay ideas. It's a great switch, and I'm rediscovering some of the joy I had in writing that I lost somewhere along the way in my panic to be brilliant. However, today I realized something that made me a little trepidatious.

I'm not sure I can write two genres at once. It was hard enough to try to write fantasy and literary fiction at the same time. But today I was looking back at some of the places where I've worked as an editor, and I thought about my fiction contributions or pieces that are waiting to be submitted, and I found myself wondering if I could actually sit down one night and write ten pages for a screenplay and then sit down the next night and outline a short story. I can't do them both on the same day. Today I can't even think about touching any of my story ideas, while if I had more paper, I'm sure I could continue with my screenplay. And it's not like I don't have any fiction ideas, because I do. I just don't think I can focus on more than one genre at a time. It's exhausting. It's daunting, just thinking about it. And that worries me a bit, because - even though I know I will probably never have to - I don't want to choose which one will be my focus. I want them both.

Sometimes I think maybe I want the world a little too much.

I did not rig this.

Which fantasy/sci fi character are you?

Princess Leia


A strong-willed herald of causes against injustice, you passionately strive to right the wrongs around you.

"Somebody has to save our skins!"

Today I used the last empty sheet of paper in my yellow legal pad. It's full. That's a great feeling.

Problem.

I am running out of ink in my favorite pen and they do not sell this kind here in England.

Solution?