Deep Blue Day

I finally finished my short story and sent it off to my teacher. Obviously, while finishing it and sending it, the story started to make no sense whatsoever. I eventually sent it off. I mean, how am I to learn from my mistakes and progress if I never get professional feedback. 
The plot is dark and confusing, some scenes are disturbing and it took me a while to find a title (which I did after I had finished the story). 
The teacher gave me some proper feedback and it makes me happy that I could actually hear someone taking my work seriously and not just being like ''oh yeah I like that.. Oh it's good..Well written''. We talked for half an hour and I feel very proud I must say. 

It feels like I just wrapped up an old chapter of my life. Finally concluding the story made me write new, wonderful things. Maybe the stuff I write now is nothing I'd publish but it makes me observe my new surroundings and take note of things that I wouldn't notice while I was working on this particular novel/story (for exactly 3 years). I can now begin freshly and it feels very liberating. 

Now with the spring around the corner I also started noticing changes in my mentality and in my life. I'm more eager and happier to pursue my goals and to connect with people. University is almost done for this year and all I have is 4 essays on my calendar that I have to submit before May.

For my film essays I'll be writing on Trainspotting, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Requiem For a Dream. The second film essay will be about Independent cinema and I'm planning on writing about Harmony Korine's 'Gummo' and Larry Clark's 'Kids'. All of these are my favourite movies so I'm super excited. 
My English essay will focus upon Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which is pretty much my favourite Russian Literature book. 
I love my studies, I am certainly not complaining. 

"I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones." — Franz Kafka in a letter to Milena Jesenska

A lot of stuff was going on lately. Good stuff. Stuff that made me happy and at peace with myself.
I am so glad to be here in London and have such creative and inspiring friends. I find productivity and inspiration from everything I lay my eyes upon. It is good and very healthy, I feel. My routine has changed, I have noticed that night shifts are not doing it for me anymore so I slowly converted myself into an early bird. 4 am is the wake up call and I jump start my morning with a peanut butter banana and 1 hour of writing. Currently my work on a short story is going smoothly. I am gradually managing to shut my inner critic up and just write what feels write and edit it. I have to finish it by 8th March and send it to my teacher.
I feel like life makes more sense to me when I wake up early and get everything done. The only thing, an experiment I really want to start but never truly made it: it's to record voice memos of my dreams every morning and write about them every weekend. Create scripts of stories out of them. I dream some real insane shit sometimes. Last night I dreamt that my film teacher was agent Cooper from Twin Peaks and my creative writing mentor, Hank Moody. This made me reflect a lot during the day and I have drawn my own conclusions. 
Film projects are piling up and this makes me excited and a little nervous at the same time. I am about to embark on a few month journey with my friend who's doing her faster in fashion design and we are about to start our first project. I really hope to get hold of some real equipment soon, although filmmaking is expensive.
Inspiration of the week : Godard, New Wave cinema and its attitude towards filmmaking and film as art in general, Woody Allen and his cynicism, Linnéa Sjöberg and the control over her body, people, surrealism.

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”

—  Woody Allen

Silence

The other day I was asked to write about my all time favourite character. I didn't matter if it was a character from a film or a book. At first I thought of Clementine from 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'. The idea of writing about her vanished as soon as I've analysed why she came into my mind and realised that I find her so interesting mostly because she reminds me so much of myself and this usually never occurs with characters from books or other films.

I then started to think further and only villains came into my mind. Mephistopheles from Goethe's play 'Faust' and Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris' 'Red Dragon' and 'The Silence of The Lambs'. 
I wanted to think deeper and see if I can find a good character that appeals to me, a gracious and inspiring character maybe. Nothing happened, I couldn't think of anyone. When the time was up and we had to share our scribbles, I realised that everyone actually chose inspiring and ambitious characters. Some guy from Toy Story, Grey's anatomy doctors, the little prince and some movie character I've never heard of. I was the only one having dark characters and had more time to explain myself and my fascination with them. 

I wouldn't say that my answer was clear cut but I did mention the ambiguity of their personalities, how evil easily mixes with grace, politeness and wit. 

Later that day, I gave the whole thing another thought and came to the conclusion that these villains remind me of actual people. People whom I might despise but once loved or at least felt some affection towards and cared (maybe still care) for. 

Fading into dust

I've been writing pretty much my whole life. At least, since I remember being able to write. I wrote in every language that I know; Starting off with Russian and slowly progressing towards English and French. A few years back if you have asked me what I live for I'd say 'writing'. I put myself in different kinds of situations, dealt with terrible people and ended up in deep shit each time. My excuse was always ' this will make good stories '. I believe that the thing I've been always seeking is to live something worth writing about. I never wanted to be that boring girl writing her life story that no one cares about. I did try to write about myself, my environment and I even had the phase where I'd write about every guy I had a crush on. I'd write vignettes about the blue haired punk I was obsessed with or claimed with pride that I will write a book about my first teenage love: A 14 year alcoholic whose nickname was ' Kuzia'. With time I did get bored writing about these people, guys who wouldn't notice me or take advantage of me; but that is a completely different story. 

Before getting any judgment from so-called 'adults' from my surroundings, my dream has always been to get to university and study Creative Writing with English Literature. I got brainwashed and conditioned in every possible way that I had to make 'smarter decisions' and decided to do Film and English Literature. So here I am, at a university in London. Not entirely sure about the purpose in my Film studies and regretting for not seizing the opportunity to do creative writing.
Of course, this semester I got the chance to enter a side course called something like ' Improving your English with Literature and Creative Writing.' I don't know but the fact that the title had 'creative writing' in it, made me decide to go and register there. Every week, 10 of us gather up and do creative writing exercises, discuss literature and get to know each other. The teacher encourages us to do those free writing exercises, writing without thinking. After the few times that we did that exercise I started freeing myself in several ways. Since, a few years ago I came to a point in my life where I was sure what I wanted to write about and I aspired towards a novel. I did tons of research, worked daily and became incredibly attached to something so ephemeral. I couldn't think nor write about anything but THAT ONE story. It can be very hard on your psyche and your creativity sometimes, to be attached. This is what I've recently learned and I admit, I am still clinging to this one story, to this novel and I feel like it is a sort of disorder. It is partially why I've decided to create a blog. Nothing more but writing and creative expression for purposes of personal development.