Can it be called a hiatus if it's only three weeks? *scrambles to Google 'hiatus'* Phew, it's OK. I've used the word correctly. That could've been embarrassing.
Anyway, it has been a difficult few weeks. I've finished up in my job and am yet to find something else, so logic says I should be spending all my time studying or writing. However, I've been unemployed for a week now, and today is the first time I've sat down to really look at my uni work or think about writing.
... Actually, that's not entirely true. I finally received my typewriter on Monday, and have been working on typing out what I had written of my novel so far on my laptop. I think this typewriter business might become somewhat of an issue, as I already want another one! Maybe one slightly less loud, as this one is a banger in every aspect of the word.
For some reason, I have also apparently decided that now is a good time to teach myself to type properly. As in, literally right now. I haven't tried to do this since I was learning to type with that Casper the Ghost typing program we had years ago. So this could take a while.
Anyway, the assessment I am now working on is a multimedia presentation, and I'm doing mine on the gothic horror genre. So I've been reading the different readings I have to choose from, and will start making notes tomorrow I guess. The reading I'm thinking of choosing is based around Bram Stoker's opinion and reaction to the New Woman ideal that was emerging in the late 19th century as he was writing Dracula. It's actually a really interesting way of looking at the story once you understand how he felt towards women in general. I'd just been thinking of him as a sexist pig, but that's completely discounting the era the story was written in. Rookie error as far as reading goes. Or as far as any kind of story-telling media goes, really. That's part of the issue we're seeing at the moment in the US. Everything is a product of its time, whether we agree with it or not. To try to erase or change that is to try to erase or change history, and history is the only way we can learn from our mistakes.
But that's totally off topic. From the readings and from the Introduction that discusses Bram Stoker's life, I'm less inclined to think he was sexist towards women and more that he was afraid of sexuality. His female characters were strongly written and held key roles in the story (and ultimately in the destruction) of Dracula. Only the vampiric females were sexually aggressive. In an age where horror was used to portray what the author felt to be wrong with the world, maybe what Stoker was really getting at was that he felt that sexuality and the act of sex itself was something to be abhorred. But then he also died of syphillis (which he did NOT get from his wife), so I could be completely wrong. Maybe his hatred of sexuality was born from guilt for being a cheating bastard. Who knows?
Anyway, that's got nothing to do with my novel or stories or anything, and now I'm just rambling to avoid having to do uni work so... til tomorrow!
