
It’s been some 9 months since I left France and moved to Bath to do my MA. Ironically since the move, I’ve sent no group emails, published no posts, and have never felt perhaps less creative in my life. The texture of my life has completely changed. France feels like some foreign dream, yet I dare not admit that I’m relieved to live in my native tongue once again; to feel in full control of all my faculties – yet I miss it, Southern France.
I miss it and I’m relieved.
I find myself wondering, as NZ playwright, Tom Sainsbury so well put it: ‘…what has led me to this point, what sacrifices have I made to be here, all to be “living the dream”’. Sometimes in this room, my room, that overlooks the Sydney Mews and narrow strip of imposing church I see from my broken window propped up with a cricket bat, I can’t remember what I’m doing here. I momentarily lose the urgency, the pressingness of this dream; but each time I go to rest, it’s there waiting for me, a projected image playing on the inside vinyl screen of my eyelids, melting together with everything else: France, New Zealand, my family, people that I’ve met and then been told are gone, the wings of Boeings, the look of everywhere that I’ve yet to see, yet to go… And I feel a suffocating sense of terror that soon, this city with its canals and perfect buildings and fairy-tale spires will too be gone.
The last hurdle, summer, stretches out like a marathon track in front of me: 40,000 words left to write (or more aptly, begin). Gone is the cockiness of my previous posts, shunning various writers who dare to admit to procrastination and I can hardly bear to begin to tell you how much I too suffer from an inaction most acute. Living the dream, and feeling like I’m getting nowhere, going nowhere, the eyes of time gloating in some dark corner at me. Like Tom, there is so much that I want to do before my digits flip over to 3-0, but still scrambling in the sand ‘living the dream’.
Some beautiful pictures by Chelsea Jade to inspire. (For in my mind, this is how the dream should look. Long legged and blonde and grainy). Until next time.
A good book title is like a seductive glance from a stranger. That moment where you lock eyes in a public space and both feel the pull of attraction. For me, an outstanding book title is just about as good. 

Sometimes, I wonder how good a tool the internet really is for a writer.

