Hi everyone!
So I haven’t blogged the past couple days, mostly because everything has been slower than usual. But in a good way – we’re finally all adjusting to schedules with our classes, homework, social time, etc.
My classes have been going well; in my Writing in Britain Today: Meet the Writer, we’ve been able to meet three authors so far. The really great thing about this is the author doesn’t just come and bore us with whatever they want to drag on about. Each student gets to interview an author each class! I interviewed our first visitor. Here’s who I’ve met so far!
- Stephen Brown came last Monday, and he wrote “Future Me.” The play is about a successful lawyer who has something wrong (or “something wrong”) with his computer, and asks his brother to fix it for him. Instead of helping him, he does something that no one really sees coming. It’s very controversial, well I can’t tell you why you’ll just have to read it. And although it was a little strange to read, I thought it was interesting.
- On Monday, we met Amy Rosenthal, who wrote the play “On The Rocks.” It is about how four famous writers (DH Lawrence, Frieda Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Jack Murry – who all existed in the past!) live together and struggle with love and writing. You can tell from the way that she talks how obsessed she is with these people and their past. I don’t mean that in a creepy way, by the way. It’s kind of compelling, actually. She said she did too much research, which she thought added to her writer’s block. It took her 17 years from starting to write the play to having a finished product. Crazy, right?
- Phyllida Law, who is a famous actress here in the UK, is the last author we met. And her daughter, Emma Thompson, is very famous in the UK and in the US – apparently she was in Harry Potter, which I didn’t know about. Phyllida Law’s book was called Notes to my Mother-in-Law, which is exactly what it sounds like. She compiled hundreds of notes she wrote to her deaf mother-in-law into a book, and this was originally just supposed to be a cute gift for her daughter’s birthday. Instead, it got published and turned into a success. Phyllida Law is definitely my favorite of the authors we’ve met so far; you can imagine how bubbly an actor’s personality can be, and she was so warm and friendly!
Next week we’re meeting Sarah Waters, who is one of the more well-known authors of the group we get to meet. We’re reading her book Little Stranger, which is a little bizarre, but not so bad. The only downfall of the class is that we will have read 7 books within 5 weeks. That’s probably the most I’ve ever done, and my brain will definitely be fried come October 9th. Luckily, some of the books, like the plays, are only 100 pages long. But Little Stranger is almost 500, and it’s not even the biggest one… Wish me luck.
Not much else is going on here. I did get a placement for my internship: it’s at a company called GRNLive (Global Radio News Live), which is an independent news distributing company located in London. The company provides both reporters and information to so many news organizations, including my good old friend Fox News (I interned there this past summer) and CBS News. I have an interview in the next couple weeks with the company, so I’ll see how it goes!
I’m off to Edinburgh on Friday morning for the weekend with some friends. Of course, I’ll be writing ALL about it here for you to read about, but some things we’re thinking of doing is visiting the Edinburgh Castle (which is supposed to have the most amazing view), climb to Arthur’s Seat which is on a dormant volcano, visit Edinburgh Cathedral, possibly visit the Royal Botanical Gardens, and obviously do a pub crawl. Super excited!!!
M² in London 
