clo_again

Had first tutorial of the new term, our new Poetry module to replace the old short story one. I miss George. Oh the new guy is nice, Irish, cheerful, friendly but after an hour and a half of *making* myself focus on poetry I can already tell this part of the course is going to be an uphill struggle. A tiny part of me is still stuck on the idea that the vast majority of poetry is written by people who can't/can't be bothered to write short stories, with the notable exceptions of people who write poetry well. Which is such a tiny number that wading through the reams of -- to pick up a word from our new tutor -- shite to get there seems too tedious to be worth the effort. Not to mention we were looking at a poem and he said rather disparagingly that it would take a short story writer two or three thousand words to say the same. Um, no, it could be done quite neatly in five hundred, in a drabble of one hundred by someone good enough but most short stories tend to be longer because people want to feel they're getting value for their money when they buy anthologies. (And because non-internet people seem to have this whole attitude towards drabbles; I handed in ten drabbles written around a theme to my creative writing group last year and the tutor dismissed them as "an exercise".) Fill an anthology of hundred-word drabbles and I'd bet money on it selling less than an anthology of three-thousand-word-long stories. Yet people will cheerfully pay more money than I'd spend on a novel, for a book of poems. Beats me as to why.

Thankfully we talked him into putting the deadline for submissions back from 9am Wednesday to 9am Thursday. he was thinking of having it on Tuesday! Considering I have a 5pm deadline on Monday for my other seminar... yeah, that would've been fun. Thursday morning I can cope with. And hey, at least the seminar is first thing Monday and then it's gone, I don't have to pretend to be interested in poetry -- apart from when I have to write my own terrible stuff to submit -- for the rest of the week.

I meant to spend some time catching up with everyone last night. I was so proud of myself because I'd spent two solid hours reading Middlemarch and reached page 100, so I was going to reward myself with a lazy few hours watching Curse of the Were-Rabbit, maybe drinking a JD & coke, generally getting ready for lectures. Only, joy of joys, flatmates happened. wolves8 --who I was enjoying talking too after a month of not seeing her, when said flatmates decided to invade join in -- tactfully extracted herself after a few minutes which I thought might be a hint to the other two but no! They then spent the next hour and a half looking up train ticket prices and looking for hostels in Edinburgh on my computer, after we'd agreed to sort it out Tuesday because I was too busy today. It gets to the point where you're tired and the time you'd wanted to spend relaxing is all gone and they just have to look at one more fucking map of Edinburgh when we're not even going for two weeks. I was ready to commit murder -- that or burst into tears -- by the time they actually noticed I was getting desperate and left at close to midnight. It's not even like they come to see me, they come because they're bloody well bored and think that I must equally have nothing better to do so they'll come and waste my time as well as theirs. Which is the point; I always have stuff to do, I don't mind them coming to see me for a little while but an hour and a half doing nothing particulary important, at almost midnight on a Sunday when I'd *told* them I had a busy day today -- that's pushing it.

So, I now have a Post-it that reads "PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB" stuck ready to the back of my door. When I particulary want to be left alone, like when I'm working or watching something on TV that I don't want to miss or when I just need an hour of me time, then it's getting stuck on the outside of my door. And when it's there I'm not letting anyone in, I'm not acknowledging anyone who knocks because if they're too dumb to read the post-it then it's not my problem. If I can guarantee just a couple of hours a day when I can be absolutely positive that no one will disturb me, then I think I'll cope with the uninvited invasions better. I won't have to tell them to go away, I won't have to explain when I'm feeling shitty, I just stick the Post-it up and they'll know to just leave it until later. I'm going to road-test it with Hamster's show later. I'm tired of flatmates using me as a distraction technique because they need to waste some time. They can bloody well go and get a hobby.

Oh crikey, this is an appallingly boring entry. o_O Hello Monday. Are you over yet?

EDIT: Oh Timmy, you break my heart. :( I'd even give up an Andy/Roger final for you to win Wimbledon this year you know.

Andy is, for once, working on a 'no stress for fans' principle and seems to be sailing along quite happily. Though Roger would probably mock him forever for losing to a qualifier -- mock in that quietly, teasingly smug Roger way -- so it's not like he had any choice but to walk right through this match. :)