Olivia Camozzi Books

Nearly eight months has passed since I last wrote in this space and I don't feel the need to update anyone with the major changes in my life due to the fact that there is literally a pandemic going on, and everyone is having to deal with a major adjustment. .

I have to say, however, that being furloughed and going into lockdown gave me the time to actually take my time doing things because there really is no rush: we're going to be here for a while, so there is still time tomorrow.

It means that I've been writing more, reading more, appreciating more. I've taken up new hobbies for the pure fun of it and started taking increasing photos of the nature around me and the beauty in simplicity. It's a struggle not being able to see those that you care about and having to stay indoors so much, but we are lucky enough to live in an age with modern technology like Zoom and FaceTime to stay connected with one another, and there's games and streaming sites and books to keep us entertained.

It's certainly strange having to adapt to this new life but with all the changes I've had recently, I haven't really found it all that much of a stress, to be honest. It's just been another shift that I've had to get used to and I'm ok with it. It's just one of those things.

Managing to keep a structure hasn't been as difficult as I initially thought it might be but I suppose that's because I'm used to filling my own time and motivating myself from university. I start my day, every day, with a walk at 11am, after having breakfast and getting myself showered and dressed. When I come back from the walk, which usually is about 5k, I write at least 500 words of my novel and carry on if the flow is right; if it gets no further than that, I'm not worried. There is time to pick it up later.

After that, I'm not overly strict with myself: as long as I talk to a friend every day, do something that doesn't involve a screen like reading or painting and move myself about the house, I feel relatively content at the end of the day to just lay in bed and watch a couple of movies.

With it being just my mum and I, I think we've been getting on with this relatively well: we go on our walk together then spend the afternoon doing our own thing. However long this lockdown lasts isn't something that is stressful to me right now, and all the other things I had planned for my life this year will just have to wait. Those things don't really matter that much if they have to wait another few months or even a year. I'll be ok.

I hope to finish the first draft of my novel by the end of May. If it runs over, I'm not overly worried because at least I had all his time to write and I'm making sure to use it well.

Keep safe, everyone, and stay creative! It's the only thing that may keep us sane.

It's been a whole month since I moved back to my home town from university, and I can confidently say that it's not easy making that move and living it.

To begin with, there's being around all the people that I knew before leaving for university, including people that I went to school with and don't particularly enjoy seeing around. It's anxiety inducing. My friends from school are fine, of course, it's those... others. Experiences that I had around here are revived in my memory on a daily basis, most places that I find difficult to live amongst again when all of my university life in Worcester was so positive.

Then there is finding a job: I know what I want and it seems like a simple thing to get hold of but it's not. A lot of places require you to have experience to the point of you wondering if there will ever be anywhere that you can start, and the only places left are retail and hospitality, places that require you to work the times that you'd really rather not.

I know that you should take what you can get, but for me one of my priorities of getting through life is being able to see the people that I love and care about and spending time with them, and it's hard enough as it is to get free days matching up, let alone adding in differing job timetables. I can't get through my days without those people, and I won't factor them out for the sake of an income from a job I don't really care about.

Because that's just it: my plan is to work a job for the sake of the money at the moment, until I can get up on my feet elsewhere and finish with education. (Surprise! I want to do a master's degree.)

I'm lucky in being surrounded by supportive family and friends who understand what I want but it's still hard, when time passes and you're not getting what you want- what you need. It's tough having to face the empty space of life when everything previously was mapped out easily for you; there were routes you could choose from, whereas now you have to just step out and find something: make your own way.

No one tells you how difficult that is because you have to just get on with it. What else can you do?

So this is me getting on with it, and complaining, because life is hard and I like to write what no one else will say.

In case you don't follow my Instagram, you won't yet be aware of the exciting news that I received last week, and as my time at university is coming to its end, I thought now would be a good time to write another blog post.

I managed to get a First Class Honours degree classification and I could not be more proud of myself! I am initially very overwhelmed but beyond happy. To top it off, I got an A for my dissertation, which did make me tear up a little-I won't lie-for it was something very personal for me to write and something that I hoped to do proper justice.

This will be my last month of living in student accommodation, and I have chosen to move back home into my mum's house until I can figure out what I want to do, because other than knowing that I want to author books, in terms of a job, I have no idea where to start. I am aware of where I can go and what I could do but many places require experience and I don't currently have much of that in the work place.

For now, anyway, I am just enjoying the last of student life. I'm looking forward to having a clean bathroom and kitchen and a house that isn't literally falling apart, but I will miss the friends I live with terribly, and the independence I have come to learn. We became a little family that have supported each other through everything. We fight like a family, we stick together like a family, we hate and love each other like a family.

Leaving here won't be the hardest thing I've had to do but I know I will struggle. The best I can do is to put things in place to look forward to when I move away and to remember that there are positives.

But I do owe university so much. I am not the same person that I was when I first came here but I view that as a good thing because I have grown and matured and learned and every second has been wonderful. If you are someone who is sceptical about moving away to a completely new place where you know no one and nothing then know that I was terrified at the prospect of that and I thought I might just die of fear the first day I moved here; now, I can say that I made the best decision for myself.

My anxiety has shrunken a lot for a start: I barely left my room in my flat in first year but now I actually enjoy meeting new people most of the time and trying new things comes a lot easier. Just because the people around me gave me that encouragement to be confident and take the risks that I wished I could.

I learnt how to take care of myself properly, how to keep to a schedule, manage my time, keep in contact with people, and then of course I learnt so much from my actual course.

The friendships here are more mature and I have come to understand how to handle all of my friendships better, from both here and the friends I still have from school.

Overall, I owe this university and this experience most of who I am. Moving away from a place that has massively helped to mould me into a better person is going to be so hard; it's like moving away from a parent that nurtured you.

I hope that everyone can say that they feel the same positive things about their university experience, and I hope that everyone from my course and my house knows how proud I am of them all for the work they've put in over the last three years and the classifications they all received. They all deserve the best.

It is currently mid-assignment season at my university, as it is at almost every university at the moment. I submitted my dissertation last week and am working on the last three assignments I have left to submit before I am finished with university.

It's a scary thought: finishing university. It's the first step in life that I've come across where I now need to make decisions about what I'm going to do with myself, how I'm going to earn a living. But I'm feeling optimistic about it all: right now, I'm enjoying what is left and after, I'll be working a small job whilst I finish writing my first novel with the aim of getting it published.

'The bliss of now' is what I keep talking to everyone about. All of my friends are in a constant state of stress, which is understandable, and I keep telling them to just enjoy it because this is the last of this kind of stress that we will get. University is ending and although we have a lot of celebrations planned coming up after the last assignment is submitted, I'm doing my best to make the most of how we live now. That is, these last couple of weeks is how we've been living together for the past couple of years, how we work around each other as a house and run on each other's clocks like a family.

This is the last of the 'normal'.

I daren't wish my time away no matter how stressful it gets, for the good times would only come and go too quick. And so I am living and relishing in 'the bliss of now'. I hope that everyone else is, too.

Good luck to anyone else who is revising for exams or working on assignments- you've got this!

We are all more than aware at this point at my inability to keep up with this blog, but life gets in the way and adding daily to this blog is one of the things on my list to improve this coming year.

I thought, instead, now would be a good time to reflect on my 2018 and the good things I did manage, particularly things about myself that needed some care and attention for years but was either too afraid to do so or 'couldn't be bothered'. All of the excuses I made are lame, because I prefer myself as a person so much better now and my outlook on things is so much better; the change was worth it and it was stupid to wait so long to make that good start, for I still have a lot of growing room to fill.

I'll try not to get too deep, but some things just have to be said how they were.

I didn't start off 2018 very well: I was on a downhill slope with plans to drop out of university and plans to... drop out of life, in so many words. I was drinking a lot- too much, to be honest- and I wasn't trying in anything, like my studies, looking after myself, my friendships and relationships with people. All round I just wasn't doing so well after something that happened at the end of 2017.

Three turning points come to mind, the first of which was meeting new people; I made some new friends and then found myself in a relationship with someone who, in trying to get their s**t together, made me think, 'F**k, I really need to get my s***t together.'

As time passed from there, there came a night where we had had another house party at our university house and I'd had too much, finding myself throwing up and crying to my housemate because I didn't want to be that way anymore. He cleaned me up, put me to bed, and told me to message him the next day.

This was the second turning point: we went for a sobering walk and I talked it all out of my system: I didn't want to be that person anymore. I'd had enough. It was time for change.

Coincidentally, we had our assignment week coming up, so the first thing we did (because all my friends were there to help me do this) was go cold turkey on the drinking and the house parties, journeying to a quiet pub every other day to sit and do our assignments and rewarding ourselves with a bowl of chips.

Submissions came and went and second year of uni was over, and I travelled home for the summer. I went on holiday with my family to Cyprus and spent most of it feeling self-conscious in the clothes I was wearing or when we went swimming. By then end of the holiday, my third turning point had arisen: I wanted to feel better within myself and as much as I complained when I heard other people say it, I knew that the best way to do this was to eat healthier and exercise more.

And so that begun: I went through the summer starting my better lifestyle and the outcome is that I already feel so much better just because I eat better and I don't sit around all day. I'm so much more productive as a result, too, and the confidence that I have gained made me do other things like finally cut my hair short and wear clothes that I never would have been able to wear before just because of the lack in confidence.

Finally, my attitude to life is so much more positive. Having seen so much sadness, I have learnt to count my blessings and look for the positive in everything because it could always be so much worse, and I never want to see the side of 'worse' again.

And so 2018 was my most progressive year yet and I'm overwhelmed with myself. If I can do that just as a start, I can only marvel at what I will be able to do this year.

Here's to writing more, reading more, and maybe finally keeping up with this blog.

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted a blog entry- I'm not particularly great at keeping up with this so far, am I?

I'm not even sure if I have a reasonable excuse as to why I haven't returned to my blog for so long; writing my novel hasn't taken up as much of my time as I would have liked and I most certainly haven't read as many books as I would have liked to by this point in the year.

What I know for sure that I have been doing is working and spending a lot of time with friends. These are friends that I won't see at all as soon as the new university semester starts mid-September to October, depending where you go. Therefore, I don't regret my time with them.

The friends that I have are some of the biggest inspirations to the characters I use and write into books, and a lot of their guidance is vital towards encouragement and refinement. Spending time with them often reminds me why I want to write: to tell their stories.

Those of them that think they don't have a story to tell or that their story isn't worth telling, or that no one would want to hear it. I want to prove to them that they are and that some day other people will benefit from hearing those stories. Some day, their story could change the world or make just the right kind of difference.

I have certainly learned the hard way to cherish your friends. They are the family that you choose to have around you, particularly when your blood family may not or can not always be there for you. Taking time for your friends is so important, and putting writing aside for them is ok to do because I wouldn't write at all if I didn't have them.

Today, I would like to share a writing tip with you all that I have learnt for myself from my time at university so far.

Something that I am easily prone to is starting random new stories- or stories that I have wanted to write forsome time- when I am supposed to be working on my main project. This often happens when I'm watching a movie or a TV show episode at home and I want to do some easy writing at the same time.

As a result, I often force myself not to work on something new but to continue to go back to the main project and keep going, keep writing that, since that's what really, really needs to be done primarily before anything else is started or planned etc.

However, since I am forcing myself to write something that I am not entirely in the mood for because I feel guilty for neglecting my main project, I often end up getting nothing done as a result. This is due to thinking about wanting to write the new thing so badly but trying to encourage my mind to think about something else and coax it to produce content for the thing that it's currently not interested in.

Therefore, in the end, I have succumbed; my advice is, if you are in the mood to start something new, desperately, then start it.

Despite the fact that you won't be writing your main project, still writing is still practise. It's better to give in to what your mind wants to write about and work at your style than to force it to do something else and get nothing done.

In conclusion, any writing is practise, and any practise is great. You'll get back to that main project, and you may even have picked up a few skills or even some more inspiration on the way.

I should probably figure out the exact purpose of this blog and the best way to do that is figure out a routine.

I plan to post on this blog once a week and for now, I'm going to let that be any day that I feel like picking up and doing it because of a certain topic. I'll talk about my week, things that I've been thinking about and what I plan to do in terms of writing. Then, when the semester begins for my third year at university, it will probably be on a more definite day every week.

Since I plan on posting mostly on Instagram about what I get up to anyway, this will be more a place to fill you in on the other things going on in my life, such as my experiences at university as I go into my final year and the process of publishing a book (when that finally becomes an opportunity for me).

Hopefully, this won't be boring to anyone and I certainly hope that it won't become boring to me, since I always love to look back on past experiences that I have written about to take what I learnt and use for future stories.

After spending some time re-vamping this site and setting up a more stable social media network for myself, I've made my comeback into writing and kick-starting my career as an author.

Many people have told me over the years just how hard it is to 'make it' in the world of publishing and writing, speaking down on me as if I am everything but very aware just how vast this community is and how many people believe they are going to be able to write a book and get it published within a matter of months.

No, I know how long it takes to gather research, plan and invest yourself in a story that you have conjured from nothing; it's not a walk in the park and it takes a lot of determination and self-encouragement. Only you know what you want.

And as for publishing- that's a process I am still learning about and I gather that I will never stop learning about; it takes time and it won't be luck and fun on the first attempt at getting my work out there. However, knowing that I may well never be rich or famous or hugely successful has never seemed to divert me from still wanting to be an author.

And so here I am, trying to make it like thousands of others, with the hope that maybe I will create something that will inspire or even help a generation.

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