Step 1 of not dropping out of university and fleeing the country

So here's the deal, people keep telling me if you want to be a writer, you have to just write. Turns out, they're probably onto something. I can't swan around coffee shops, poised over an open (but empty) notebook, nursing an overpriced oat latte just talking about being a writer forever. At some point, I've got to actually put pen to paper, or fingertips to laptop keys or whatever (you get the idea). 

If this year has taught me anything (which quite honestly for a year at KCL, is actually quite a depressingly empty statement), studying an English degree can actually be - maybe contrary to popular belief - quite disheartening. This is due to speaker upon speaker delivering a workshop in which they always manage to slip in that a writing career is attainable without the £27,000 of debt I'm £9,000 into already. Or almost every person in an English related profession being so unbearably dull that you can't imagine anything worse than becoming like them. 

Skip to 10pm on a Friday night when yet again you find yourself bashing your head repeatedly against your desk, rather than force yourself to read one more line of Shakespearian verse. And honestly I wish wor William was the worse thing I've had to study so far. It's my own fault, I should have done what Austen did: knocked out a few banging volumes with no formal training, left them for my brother to publish, and called it a day at 42. Although I suppose, thinking about it now, that's not not an option still. 

Still, I thought this whole literature thing was supposed to be creative, so why does every adult in this sector seem to have any sort of excitement brutally bludgeoned out of them by poor job prospects or mind dumbing day-to-day tasks?

My idea with this whole blogging business really is just to have the balls to actually put my writing somewhere, and not to do so in a boring, soul destroying sort of way. At this point, I need something, anything to deter me from dropping out of university and buying a one way flight to somewhere in Latin America (an idea that honestly at this point seems more and more compelling every time it occurs to me). 

Maybe it'll at least rekindle some sort of motivation and make education seem attractive again (even with the crippling price tag). Who knows if it'll be any good but, hey, we've all gotta start something, right? 

I welcome anyone who stumbles upon this potential calamity of a blog to join me in navigating life, writing, an overpriced education and general unnecessary problems that right now seem like the end of the world but 100% will not matter to us in about 5 years. 

I can't promise there'll be any sort of theme other than avoiding life threatening internal bleeding, (or you know, other, less dramatic inconveniences) but maybe I'll develop a niche along the way and if nothing else it'll be funny to see the absolute train crash this turns into.

Happy reading (and writing)

Annie x