English has been my favourite subject since I learnt to write when I was five. I used to spend hours at a time writing mindless stories about talking animals and fairies (though there was the occasional murder, the odd demon and a few vampires), and I still do─though I like to think they aren’t quite so mindless anymore, and there are certainly no fairies involved. I also like to believe that years of never-ending plot-thinking, character-building and location-designing have paid off as regards some of my more recent stories. My main one that I’m working on at the moment is Nocturne, a dystopian philosophical fiction where the characters know they’re being written into a book. So far I’m quite pleased with it, if I do say so myself.
“We’re fictional characters written into a fictional world. We have no free will, we can’t think for ourselves. We do what he tells us to do. We say what he wants us to say. We’re his puppets, his playthings, little cogs in the great machinery of Life. Tiny parts of his universal plan. And there’s no way to escape.”
An extract from Nocturne
But, for all I’m most proficient in English as a subject, I’ve never had any formal English lessons. I’ve been able to explore literature and language through reading and my own creative writing, finding my unique writing style as well as my love for English in the process. I read all day long, and when I’m not reading, I’m reviewing the books I’ve read, or writing my own. I read somewhere that if you can’t find the book you want to read, write it. And that’s what I’ve tried to do in creating Nocturne.
I’ve mentioned before how I’d like to go into a writing-based career when I’m older. A degree at St John’s College in America sounds perfect for me, because in this liberal arts college you can study all sorts of subjects at once, and they’re all my favourites! I’ll take the opportunity now to explain how this particular university (the one of my dreams!) works.
There are two campuses for St John’s, one in the pretty Maryland city of Annapolis and another in the tufted mountains of Santa Fe. You can choose and stick with one of these campuses for your place of study, or you can swap half way through your degree for a taste of both locations. (Yes, I’m aware that I’m beginning to sound like a St John’s prospectus.) Each campus is quite small, but everyone there studies the same degree: a huge and wonderful mixture of English Literature, Philosophy, Maths, Economics, Law, Classical Studies, Greek, Latin, French, History, Theology, Psychology, Science, Music and the Arts!
Anyway. Studying at St John’s College is quite a goal to have in mind, but would be an amazing achievement if I ever got there. Hopefully, with the help of this blog, my education and my love for literature, I just might.