struck by lightning (and inspiration too, but mostly lightning) + cambridge

~HEY I SHOULD PROBABLY MENTION: I USED TO BE nefelibata BUT I CHANGED TO will graham BECAUSE HE'S MY PRECIOUS PUPPY~

Okay, so. It's the second week of the summer holidays and I'm writing things. A lot of things. Things I'd forgotten about and things I'm really excited by. Some things that are fan-fiction and some things that are original. Mostly original, though, which is kind of exciting!

So after binging out on the adorable Katytastic's videos on youtube I've been struck with a bout of writing inspiration that I hope will feed me with stuff to do during the holidays. She's really awesome and funny and inspiring and her video on planning basically saved my possible future novel (oooh, intrigue) from being discarded and left to die.

Anyway, this possible future novel of mine is called The Slaughter and I'm slowly plodding through writing it with the aim of participating in a Camp NaNoWriMo at some point to get a good way into it. It's super fun to write because I love my narrator and I've been planning the hecky out of it. My plot goes from the mid-1800s all the way through to the end of the First World War so it's a pretty comprehensive piece to be working on, which is why I'm dragging Lazy Jane out of the gutter.

For some reason Lazy Jane got a lot of recs when I posted the prologue. I was rereading it today and decided to mess around with the story a bit, so you'll notice that I took the prologue down. Most of the prologue is still there in the summary, though, so I didn't really do that much. Other than actually come up with a plot besides "there's a journalist woman and some guy who I see as Michael Fassbender and THEY DON'T GET ALONG". No, this time, I have a serious plot and it's going places.

But that's enough about writing. Now onto Cambridge.

A while ago I signed up for a summer school at Cambridge University to do modern languages and linguistics and got accepted, and that was last week, and it was AMAZING. Like, before I went to Cambridge I was pretty much thinking "this is just to get an insight into university because I know I don't want to actually go to Cambridge because [insert tons of Cambridge stereotypes here]". But it's not like that AT ALL. I was expecting it to be full of toffs and spoiled brats but it WASN'T and it was just FUN and BEAUTIFUL and have I told you guys about Dr Ruehl?

Dr Ruehl is the German lecturer we had for the week and he's without a doubt the single most attractive man I have ever seen in my life. I've been set on doing German at uni since I was about 14 and he cemented it for me because (aside from being absolutely gorgeous) he was just a really funny, intelligent guy who did this really interesting seminar on Nietzsche and it was just amazing and I loved every second of it. Being there also kind of persuaded me to think about doing German and Russian as a joint degree because we did a beginner's Russian seminar and I had SO much fun learning the alphabet oh man.

At the end of our last lecture with him I hung back to ask for German lit he could recommend that I read over the summer and our conversation ended up like this:

Dr Ruehl: So are you considering applying to Cambridge?
Me: Well, before I came here I wasn't really sure, but it's a definite possibility now.
Dr Ruehl: You should really think about it. And if you do apply, you should apply to Trinity Hall [the college he lectures at]. You're a really perceptive student and I'd love to teach you.

ADKFHGADKJFHGKADJHGKJ

ANYWAY that's enough of me rambling about Dr Ruehl and how beautiful he is (seriously I cannot fault the guy, he was literally my dream man - attractive, intelligent, funny and German) and subtly pimping my stories. *flies away into the night*