De Profundis (read on for an explanation)

My exams are finally over, and I was pleasantly surprised to find nice questions on both the Psychology and English Literature papers. I feel confident about getting good results in both subjects. But Maths is still the main concern. I can only hope they'll be lenient on me and that I've done my best. Perhaps Edinburgh will still take me, regardless of my Maths grade, if I can persuade them that it's irrelevant. If I get an A for English my case is even stronger for them letting me in.

Anyway, exams aside. I've forgotten about them already, I just had to backdate a little bit to the beginning of the week. I'm reading Oscar Wilde's personal letter to his lover at the moment. The book is called De Profundis and other writings. I find it quite interesting as it was an actual letter to his lover written when Wilde was in jail, telling his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, how he killed Wilde's imagination with his extravangant and shallow living, and his demand for constant attention. I can imagination that it would be a damning letter to read, as it aims to inform Lord Alfred of the error of his ways, which are not slight in the least. After reading the book, I intend to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I've got all summer to lessen of the pile of books I want to read.

Today I've been into Newcastle with Paul and his Mam Dorothy for some odds and ends. The Nintendo DS and Nintendogs games will be £114.99, which I'm putting some money towards buying for Lorna. It's her birthday on 4th July, same as Matthew, Paul's brother.

I'm tired; I think I need something to eat.

Worries of a Lazy Saturday

And so it's been a hard week. My Maths exam on Monday left me despairing for my university place. Some of the questions I managed very well, but there were a lot of questions that were awful and I felt like the examiners had something against me; somehow everything they put on the paper was something that I hadn't sufficiently revised. I now have to console myself that possibly I haven't done as bad as I thought I had, or that I can't go any lower than a grade C because that was my original mark, or that my other exam papers will pull my grade up. My last Maths exam was on Thursday and that went slightly better; I surprised even myself on some of the questions I thought I would never be able to do. I collected my prerelease material for my next English exam on Tuesday. Thankfully they didn't give us something awful like an essay. I feel up to the challenge. Today I feel drained and sweaty. I got up at 9 and saw Paul to the door (we were at my Gran's for her birthday last night, during which I asked him to stay), then took a shower and went back to bed. Later we all went to my Grandma's, and after feeling guilty for not doing any work on the prerelease material and for not drying the dishes for Grandma, I fell asleep again during the Portugal v. Iran game. Now I'm just a bundle of useless sweat and I feel worthless. It's just a phase - I feel like this often when I know I've done nothing productive at all, but then I make myself feel doubly desperate by being too tired to do anything about it. Maybe if I got off my arse I might feel better, but the odds are not favourable and the motivation seems to have evaporated with the rest of me. I asked Webster from college if he wanted to discuss the prerelease material with me in the library on Monday. We could do some research together and get some ideas down on paper. Such work is best done in pairs rather than alone. I think Webster needs a little help understanding what is required of him in the exam, so I feel like I'm doing a good deed. I also need to prepare an answer for question two of the paper, and see Mike about a Psychology essay I handed in yesterday. Busy busy. After next Wednesday, I'll be tired but glad that all my exams are over, and that I can finally relax. Perhaps then I can concentrate on my driving lessons more.

I can feel now that maybe what I need is a shower so I can wash all of today's dirt away with the guilt and feel fresher and more ready for the next few days. That doesn't sound like a bad idea.

Relating to Literature

It doesn't feel like two days before my exams. I haven't picked up a revision book at all today, which should disturb me. The problem is it doesn't. To be fair, I have been revising for the upcoming exams for several weeks now, and especially during this week as I've gone into college every day to work in the library. It seems to be far too nice outside to do any work, even if I actually haven't left the house today. I'm enjoying the sunshine at my window almost as much as if I were sunbathing in it. At the moment I'm reading James Joyce's Dubliners which is fascinating because it's so full of knowledge. Besides, the notes and introduction in it are written by Jeri Johnson who lectured me at the Oxford Summer School last year. Somehow it changes things that I met the person who wrote all that. Normally I completely discount the introduction and notes in every book, but I learned from reading Charles Dickens's Bleak House that the notes and introduction give a much better understanding and enjoyment of the book. This relates back to my English exam, the one I'll be sitting the week after next. One of the questions on that paper will ask "Do you think that having a background knowledge of a text heightens the experience of reading the text?" or words to that effect, however they might dress it up. So my recent understanding of the purpose of background notes couldn't have come at a better time. Bleak House was an inspiring book for me, because not only did it open my eyes to the interest and knowledge contained in notes and introductions in books, but it showed me how a book can be constructed, something I have searched and scoured for many years. In the end notes is a reconstruction of Dickens's notes to himself as he wrote the book. Thinking this such a brilliant idea to adopt (well, if it works for him it can work for me!) I have bought a notepad in which to create my own notes for writing Melanie Black and the Ancient Hope Dragon. Back to what I was saying before: as a general rule I read the introduction after reading the text. This means I can still read the text as an innocent, and learn about its deeper meaning afterwards. It's often easier to read an introduction afterwards anyway because you can better understand to what the writer is referring in his or her account of the text. Also, the introduction may give away some aspect of the plot which would be better left unknown while reading it - you know, to heighten the excitement (and some books could do with a little more excitement, let's face it). And if the book is a disaster and you feel you've wasted your time reading it, at least you can say that you didn't waste more time than was needed by reading the introduction. Amongst all this reading and revising, I'm finding it hard to assign time to revising The Highway Code. Maybe I should have thought harder before deciding to take driving lessons in conjunction with my exams. On the other hand, driving around the region is a welcome break from the arduous academic sessions.

So tonight I'm staying at Paul's. I'm taking my copy of The Highway Code, Joyce's Dubliners and some notes and exam questions on Shakespeare and Chaucer, but I'll be damned if I find the time or motivation to get through any of these.

Never mind, I'm confident in my abilities nonetheless.

Rewriting of Novel

I mentioned before that I'd been writing a novel called Melanie Black and the Ancient Hope Dragon. It seems a shame to give up on it after so many years. I have, after all, been working on it since I was thirteen, albeit in fits and starts. But to be honest, it needs a lot of editing. I need to completely rework and rewrite some of the chapters and even some of the characters. Here's what I propose to do. I will work through it all again chapter by chapter and post them here as I work through them. It isn't finished, so once I edit the first eleven chapters, which are mostly complete, I'll be working from scratch on the subsequent chapters until the end. As a rough idea of the scale of the piece, I have written 58 pages and I predict that I'll need another 58 on top of that. And for any sceptics, that's not in size 18 font! It's in size 10. Time won't be a problem through the holidays, but I'm guessing motivation will be! So kick me up the arse if I start to slack.