I feel fat and horrible after, but I don't care.

Christ, another week gone by. Where does the time go? I can't believe it's December tomorrow. Scary.

Anyway, this week has been kind of good. I've been getting myself back into work mode after last week's hectic graduation weekend. I had such a great time with Ian and my family down, but it took a couple of days to recover. It didn't help doing life modelling on Tuesday when the last thing I wanted to do was stand naked in front of a room full of people. Admittedly, it's not often the first thing I ever want to do, but Tuesday was hard bloody work, and I agreed to do two sessions next Tuesday. Why?! One is a two and a half-hour pose, which makes me feel a bit wobbly just thinking about. Still, I'm just thinking of the money and, besides, I'm not here much longer so I should embrace all my Falmouth experiences.

So, yeah, graduation weekend went well. The ceremony itself was actually really nice. The guest speaker was Jill Murray who wrote The Worst Witch books. She was very encouraging and motivational and by the time she finished, I was like, 'Yezh, whoop! Let me back at my novel.' A few hours later, however, I was slurring my words and telling everyone, 'I'm very easy on the eye.' This has become something of a habit of mine when I'm drunk, but a friend had the best response, which was, 'Yes, you are easy on the eye, but you're not easy on the ears.' Cheers, Sara!

Oh, I had an uncomfortable moment the other afternoon. I popped out to get some Baked Beans (let's be specific here) and was waiting in the queue when a woman came up carrying two (large) turkey drumsticks. I'm quite keen on talking to people in queues and things, so said, 'It's busy, isn't it?' So, we got chatting, and she held up aforementioned (large) turkey drumsticks and said, 'These are gorgeous, these are. You a vegetarian?' I shook my head. 'Ooh, they're gorgeous. What I do is I stuff 'em with stuffing and then eat 'em. There's enough for two really, but I eat 'em all myself. I feel fat and horrible after, but I don't care.'

I don't know why this made me feel a bit sad, but it did. It was kind of like she know what she was doing wasn't making her feel good, but she couldn't stop anyway. I was tempted to snatch one of the frozen things from her and clonk her on the head, 'Stop,' but decided that I was next in the queue and didn't want to be lugged out by security. Who wants that on a Tuesday afternoon? No, no. Not me.

So, the week has actually been pretty productive. Kath has gone back to Cardiff for a week, so I'm cat-sitting and have learnt this evening that cats can be very, very loud when they're fighting. I was sitting down reading just now and heard two cats knocking hells bells out of each other, so I opened the door and called, 'Larios, Larios,' (the cat's name). All went silent. Sat back down again, and then, 'Yolwwwl, yoooooowlllll.' It was horrible. I had visions of him walking back into the house with no eyes or something, but he came back about half an hour absolutely soaked but with all limbs attached, thank God.

But, I was saying, productivity-wise, I have got quite a lot done and aim to have 40,000 words by next Thursday. If I don't, I will eat a hair sandwich. And that is that. I don't know why, but I kind of think I wnat to get that much done before sending it out to agents. Some might call this procrastination, but I prefer to think of it as 'effective time management.' I just think I only get one chance to make an impression with an agent, and I don't want to bugger it up. The more I write, the more my beginning changes and the more foreshadowing I am doing. It's a really interesting part of the process and I can see why people finish their work before sending it off. During the course, we were encouraged to send only the first three chapters, which I think is fine in terms of drawing attention to my writing and the story, butm as a first-timer, they need to know I have the longevity to finish a works of that length. And so I want to get to 40,000 words because that's near enough half way. I figure if I can get to half way one side, I'll be able to get the other half done too. If that makes sense. I think it does. I'm confident, anyway, whatever. Saying that, I'd quite like to get it out before I turn 25 in January. We'll see.

Right, I'm off. I have a great book I'm reading at the moment, 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' by David Sedaris. It's so funny, I've almost wet myself twice already. I say 'almost' in the loosest sense of the word.

xx