Well, what a day. I woke itching to get out of uni campus. Weekends stuck in a room to work, the same place you sleep, are usually not ideal for me. I’m pleased to say today was a total turn around. We spend so long here each week it can be nice to get away. Today though I wrote for most of the day and spoke with my fellow students in the living room of our apartment. We talked of stories, the challenges we’re facing in plot, our pressures of writing for this week, our excitement about the weeks ahead. What a great working environment!

I spent most of the day developing my story ‘Forget’. It’s about 4000 words now and quite complex. It’s about a man who has a computer brain. Since he was six he’s held every memory he’s observed. Can you imagine what life would be like if you could never forget? Sounds like a dream, maybe, but think of how good it is to discover things again and again that you once knew. It would take the fun out of it, don’t you think, if you learnt everything only once.

I’m not sure whether the story works, exactly, but it’s different and ambitious and I’m pleased about that.

We played ‘Mafia’ tonight. About 13 of us, with this week’s tutor. This is a seriously fun game. If you haven’t played it and have a group large enough, it’s definitely worth checking out. Click here to take a look at the rules.

I think I’ve overloaded on coffee and coke and, with all the excitement of mafia, there’s just no way I was getting to sleep. So I decided to start writing at 1am (it’s 1:40am now). I’ve started a new story. I wanted to do something really short and contained, something a little bit cute. So I’m writing ‘The Man Who Laughed Out Loud’. It’s in the classic traditions and I wanted a change of style (something a bit more focused) than ‘Forget’.