Living the dream: in the beginning...

One day there will be a new blog, and it will be called something like claireindc.wordpress.com, and it will document the beginning of the journey, and the beginning might turn out to be yesterday.

Or it might turn out to be the day I borrowed Emily's laptop to watch a Friends episode but instead ended up watching the DVD that was already in there, Season Two, Episode Five of a little TV programme called the West Wing and thinking "you know what, this is actually really good".

Or maybe the beginning was moving back to Belgium: maybe there's something in the air here, writing stardust or something  Here was where I wrote my first poems, my first "novels". Here was where people began to talk about me as a writer and believe in me when I was far too young to warrant that kind of title or that kind of confidence.

Or maybe it's not the dust, or the water, or anything about my childhood. Maybe it's the chance I got to write articles that reminded me there was far more to my love of language than a passion for correct grammar in three languages.

Or maybe it's the fact that I moved here with no big agenda, had no television, and one July had no social life either, and the only two things that kept me busy were work and the West Wing, and one day, walking down the street after a lesson with a Russian diplomat I thought, "wouldn't it be fun to teach Bradley Whitford French?" and suddenly, there was my novel.

Who knows, really, where it began? But yesterday I got an email, the email I've been waiting for, except I thought I was waiting for a letter, and I thought I was waiting till March. It said, "It's the Director of the MFA program at American University. I wanted to touch base with you personally and let you know that you've been accepted into the program starting fall 2012."

At this point, I don't know much. I don't know if I will get the scholarship I need to make this feasible. I don't know if it's God opening a door, or just me shoving at it really hard.

But I reserved some blog domain names just in case. Just in case I get to write about living in DC, studying creative writing, and campaigning for the Democrats. Just in case, in other words, I get to live my dream and tell you about it.