I will write when I have one of these…
Last year I attempted the Open University A215 Creative Writing course. My motivation for doing it was to try to kickstart my writing, and to develop a writing habit. Did it work? Well, I’m still un-decided. To be fair, I don’t think that I gave the course the commitment that it needed. At the time it began, I’d just started a new job and, let’s face it, I was in a state of apathy with my writing. In the end, I just didn’t give it the time that it deserved - I turned in the assignments (usually right up to the wire) but I really didn’t do any of the background reading or exercises inbetween. So, I didn’t help myself.
Obviously, your own commitment to a course like that is key, but I also think that a lot depends on your tutor and their ability to inspire people in the group. When you start, you’re divided into tutor groups and allocated a chatroom - the theory being that you develop a little community and provide encouragement and support, led by the tutor. In my case, that didn’t happen. I was disheartened by the lack of engagement from the tutor and it rather set the tone for my approach to the course. However, I heard that other people in other tutor groups had good experiences, so I guess it’s the luck of the draw. And I did get some things from the course. I got:
- a respectable tranche of short stories that I can edit and submit to magazines or competitions.
- a little more belief in my writing ability.
- a few ideas for writing practice.
Now, I’ve never been a big fan of writing practice, but the A215 course spends a lot of time encouraging practices like freewriting and clustering, and I did find them to be useful techniques. Setting yourself a time limit for freewriting can be liberating - it’s OK to write rubbish and you haven’t got to write for hours and at the end of the exercise, you’ve often got the germ of an idea for a story or a poem, or whatever you want to write.
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Anyway, the point of this post was to talk about the lovely timer that I bought, in a bid to start freewriting again.What a splendid illustration this is of my shameless procrastination…Amazon can’t deliver it for another week and so OBVIOUSLY I can’t begin my writing practice until it arrives. |
I wish I was Carrie Bradshaw
And yes, the more perceptive reader will now realise that I have spent an entire afternoon immersed in Manhattan culture, otherwise known as DVD box sets.
As of today, I have a new dining table and chairs. The entire room smells of wood and my MacBook looks rather splendid against the grain. I think my new table will be a good place to write. Carrie Bradshaw writes late at night at a desk in her window, overlooking the city. But I bet her desk doesn’t smell like mine. How could it? It’s not real.
Almost New Year Resolutions
I am not a fan of New Year, and I am even less of a fan of New Year Resolutions. However, by my reckoning, it is not currently New Year and it just so happens that I have a few things in mind that I should try and achieve in the next twelve months (please note that I did not say in the new year). These are (in order of expulsion from brain, not importance):
- submit short stories for publication
- don’t be sniffy about what publications I approach as long as they are paying good, old fashioned money
- write my novel
- learn about writing a screenplay
- do not spend months looking at screen writing software when any old text editor will do
- complete a script reading course if I have not lost interest by this stage
- get serious about freelance (technical) writing
- take photographs (I never said they were ALL writing-related)
- can’t think of anymore and I’m bored now anyway
I can’t lick my nose but Boots can
I mean, she can lick her OWN nose, not mine - d’oh!
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My cat can lick her nose which shows such great endeavour I have tried to do the same alas I’m not so clever |