As you probably know I’m studying Year 12 English Lit this year.  It’s driving me totally batty, there’s so much work and I have several other major projects with deadlines all finishing at roughly the same time so I’m finding there’s little time for other things.  Today is no exception, it’s meant to be my housework day but I made the mistake of sitting down to do some of the reading for my next SAC (School Assessed Coursework) and I’m finding it really challenging.

Challenging in more ways that just time.  The book we’re studying at the moment is This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff and it’s a memoir of part of his childhood.  He didn’t have an easy childhood and grew up without a father for several years and then with an abusive father figure.  Our assignment is to write a creative response to the book, we have to take a character or an incident and write about it in relation to the book and then write a reflective commentary to discuss why we decided to write that and how it relates to the original story.  The actual writing will be fairly easy once I finally get started and I already have a page of notes which include some of the ideas I need for the reflective commentary.  What I’m finding challenging and time consuming is my thoughts.

Tobias Wolff was not the easiest of children, especially as seen through his eyes and I’m finding it’s constantly taking me back to my childhood and making me reflect on that.  My current reading is a question and answer session with Wolff himself and that’s really hard as I’m finding I digress into my thoughts every few lines.  I also didn’t have any easy childhood and maybe that’s why I’m finding my thoughts wandering.  Anyway, I’ll going to take a break from it and do the housework so I’ll have a clear conscience about something at least.  I’m hoping that having written about my difficulties I’ll be able to concentrate better, it sometimes works.

Reading back through this article is interesting.  I’ve found I’ve used the word ‘easy’ too many times.  I’m not changing it, just pondering on it.  I could write a little sentence on it but that would be too punny.