Make Good Art - Make Bad Music

(All photos courtesy of Beth)

Some friends and I went off to Wagamama's to celebrate the end of our exams and the academic year.

(I was too pro at chopsticks to even be offered a fork)

We ended up buying 2 tubs of Ben & Jerry's and 3 packets of Oreos (we looked like three teenage girls who had been simultaneously dumped) whilst the lady next to us carried her Ryvita crackers and whole wheat food.

Back at Beth's, we were going to watch a movie but ended up lounging around, eating melted ice cream and talking about music. Beth is pretty good at flute (to say the least) and plays viola, and Emily plays/ed the violin and piano. I used to have flute lessons and mess about with the guitar, whilst longing for a piano and a ukulele.

"Make Good Art"

In 2012, Neil Gaiman made his famous commencement speech at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, which you can watch here:

There's a lot of great messages in his speech, but the one I love most is; whatever happens, make good art.

So that's what I'm going to do.

I want to write. It's my way of making sense of the world, and if I try chasing after anything else, it just doesn't feel right.

I've been waiting for long enough to write properly. For a while, all I could see was roadblock after roadblock, and with no idea how to get over them (I still don't). The problem is; I like to plan well. I want to know what to do at every step. So, if I write, how do I know it's any good? If I do anything good, what do I do with it? If I want to publish it, who's going to accept it? And if it published, will it be successful? What if it is? What if it isn't?

But - there's no point worrying about those problems when I'm nowhere near them. And if I'm going to even get close to these roadblocks, I'll need to actually start.

I'll be using this blog to record what I'm doing (about time I knew what I was doing with this blog), how the writing is going, and so forth, creating something to look back on.

In the long run, I'd like to support myself by writing, but money is a poor motivator for creating things. So, just make good art. Make things up and record them. Write short stories, novels, poetry, scripts. Pick up that cheap notebook and scribble down notes, doodles and ideas. We all have to start somewhere.

A Very Long Absence

Yeah. Sorry.

I might be more motivated if I actually wrote interesting things...

So over the past six months, I:

My Body Shop Shopping

There was an offer on at The Body Shop (spend £40, save £20), so a buddy and I popped down to grab some long coveted stuff:

(Clockwise, starting with the shampoo: 1 - anti-dandruff ginger shampoo, 2 - tea tree skin clearing foaming cleanser, 3 - eyelash curler, 4 - lip and cheek stain, rose pink)

We got £42 worth of products between us, they took of £20 and we split the cost evenly. So all this was £11 for me. HOW AWESOME IS THAT??? I mean, the lip and cheek tint alone is £10!

So, any good?

Harry Potter Studios

These huge buildings just off a road in Watford is the place where most of the Harry Potter films were shot (when not on location). It's absolutely amazing. If you're a big fan of the films, this will definitely be a great birthday/other special occasion treat! Even if you're not (like me), it's still fantastic for looking at behind-the-scenes stuff.

It was a bit annoying with all the tourists - you genuinely could not move an inch without suddenly having an iPhone in your face. I must've photo-bombed so many holiday snaps

Anyway: here we go (massive post, but this is probably 1/10000th of what there was to see):