Writing Boot Camp.

The writing boot camp over the last three days, organised by the Student Learning Services of the university, was a much needed escape from the endless news cycle on Greece. I wrote over 8,000 words of new material, finished the first draft of a chapter and the beginning of the next one, and to my great surprise I saw a new character walk into the story and shaking things up a bit. It all went well,  very well; way beyond my expectations.

Reality was lurking just outside the door of the writing boot camp, 

heavy with portents: a room full of European Union reports, and 

a table spread with leaflets on EE institutions, agencies, and all 

sorts of euro-info. At the far end of the picture, right next to the 

door, a map of ancient China.

The boot camp took place in a small room in the Annexe of the seventh floor of the library, in an ambience perfectly suitable for concentration: a small room overlooking slate roofs and gables, with good light for looking at the computer screen, and the ultimate tool of productivity, the lack of internet connection. There were fifteen or sixteen of us, in various stages of their PhD writing, but most of them in the writing up stage. In this sense I was one of the ‘youngest' in the room, being only in my second year (well, the end of it now),  which was pleasant for a change! I work best listening to music: I listened to Handel’s Julius Caesar, Rinaldo, and Orlando, and Lully’s Alceste and Armide. During the entre-acts I went downstairs for a coffee (the cappuccino in the vending machines is surprisingly good - or I was just gagging for coffee!) or I stretched my sore neck and shoulders. I was blissfully immersed into the world of the novel, nine hundred years back, away from the turbulent present.

Lately I have often wished reality could leave me alone for a few hours at a time every day. A writing boot camp was perfect for this. I gave myself license not to care about anything else for those specific hours while I was accountable to myself for the set number of words at the end of them. I was incommunicado, which is a kind of freedom less and less available in our tech-heavy days; still I was not completely cut off, for I knew that at the end of the writing day I could catch up with everyone. I was not distracted by my books nor tempted to go off on another tangent - basically an excuse to waste time amusing myself with things that will never make their way into the book - yet I could bring one book or article with me for reference or make notes for targeted info to look up later. The sight of all those people typing busily into their keyboards was a great inducement to do the same.

No wonder the writing boot camp worked for me. The time and the tools were offered by the university; the motivation and the hard work were mine. For optimal results it takes both sides.

A night in amber light.

The Hunterian keynote event last week (already!) went very well. This is probably what I've enjoyed most so far in the PhD, apart from the writing, and some of the reading. The Hunterian Art Gallery is a lovely place, steeped in that special, mellow light - at least this is what I see in my mind when I think of it afterwards - which must be emanating from all those paintings, all those pigments. It is a place I like to nip into even for a few minutes ever so often just to catch a soothing glimpse at the dark reds and rich ambers.

But that night. Such a wealth of ideas, variety of projects, fresh ways to look at old objects, art in the making... We are lucky to live in a place and time when so much is offered to keep our minds alert and to please our senses. A living, working museum, an open art gallery are true blessings: may they a thrive, and may they always be accessible and free to the public.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself that night. There's nothing like talking about things you are passionate about to an intelligent and interested audience. But my best part of the night was the last bit, when Brianna sang an aria from Handel's Rinaldo, her full, golden-timbred voice filling the room with ripples of nostalgia and yearning.