One of my worst nightmares came true over the summer: the day I was supposed to fly back to London from the Southampton Writer's Conference, I went to the hospital instead.
I don't know why, but every time I travel somewhere I go with this semi-conscious paranoia that something will keep me from getting back to the place that I'm supposed to be; now that 'the place I'm supposed to be' happens to be a country where I don't have citizenship, the paranoia has gotten worse. It doesn't matter that my apartment, my school, and most of my life is in Norwich, if Border Control says they aren't letting me in there isn't much I can do. So going to the E.R. instead of JFK, though not quite as bad as having entry denied and being put on the first plane back to the US, is pretty far up there on my list of 'things I get worried about when I can't sleep.'
I did get back to England, after chilling for a week on a creepily empty campus and crying at British Airways when they refused to take my discharge papers as proof that I'd been in the E.R., but the experience has made me really glad that I'm going to be too broke to travel much for the rest of my degree.
The Masters dissertation is getting done, but its 15,000 words are paling in comparison to the 100,000 plus word behemoth that my first novel is turning into. Interesting to note, when you hit 100k, MS word stops giving you a word count at the bottom of the screen and just provides a page count; even the computer gives up at that point. It should be through the final edits and going out as a submission by the end of the month, but right now it tracks me in my sleep and has made me a horrible girlfriend, sister, daughter, and all-round relational individual.
Real reflections on writing to follow when I get my brain back.
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