I noticed that the brief blog I posted about Swallows and Amazons has been receiving a bit of traffic, no doubt due to the search term ‘swallows and amazons realism’ which is listed in my stats. And I know why.  These poor people are writing the essay that I have not yet started and they are googling to try to find the answer, the key to the essay, the inspiration to get started, anything which will make the essay writing process that little bit easier.  I am not unsympathetic.  I may have googled essay titles myself in the past.  I am only too happy to help although I am afraid that my post will not have helped them much since I was purposely brief and not particularly insightful.

What bothers me, though, is that I have not even started to think properly about the essay yet, and seeing all these hits on my blog is stressing me out!  The due date is next Thursday which means I have to get a wriggle on with finishing the required reading (the course materials plus Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry which is only necessary if I want to choose that as one of the novels to discuss but I would like to read it anyway).  Right now, I am in that deceptive calm period which unfortuantely lasts far too long.  This is followed by the panic-fuelled hysteria which usually kicks in approximately 36 hours before the deadline and therefore far too late for any reasonable amount of essay writing prep time.