Tag archives for study - Page 3
A215 – Life Writing – Initiative at Night
Here's the second of the pieces I wrote for the A215 Creative Writing online tutorial on life writing. Saturday 13th December 1991 It’s 3am on a Saturday before Christmas 1991, I’ve only been awake for 21 hours. After a day of lectures I went with the UOTC to Redford Barracks in Edinburgh for a training camp. Since 1830 I have been on the Pentland Hills doing orienteering and solving problems with a team of third year cadets. We’ve not been good at following the approved DS solutions. To change the tire on a land rover without a jack we ignored the planks and mik crates and instead rolled the vehicle onto its side before righting it after we’d changed the tire. Our time was the fastest, but the officer wasn’t pleased. To take a casualty across a minefield (laid with…
A215 – Life Writing – An Early Memory
We're on to life writing, which is a pretty wide field I've realised. I've temporarily paused trying to write TMA4 and prep for the EMA to participate in A215's 4th online tutorial. The task here is to write three short snapshots of memories and then try to link them together with a through-line. We've not to post the original pieces to the tutorial, but rather a consolidated draft. So I thought that this would give me three ready made blog articles, but on reflection I only want to post two of them. Here's the first. An Early Memory It’s sometime in the late 1970s, I’m about six or seven. Sitting on the multi-coloured living room carpet, it has a pattern of squares with swirly bits on the inside of them. Each of the squares has a border wide enough for…
Poetry Station
my desk for writing poetry I am busy crafting poetry for the third assignment of my Open University course A215 Creative Writing. Or rather I am indulging in a little displacement activity right now. However I will be back to work in a few moments. You will see from the picture of the table I'm using as my desk a number of things. Most useful being Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled which is a very good introduction to poetry that I heartily recommend. Next is the video camera that I've been using to record myself reading the poetry out loud so that I can listen back and refine it. This is my own take on poetry being about the sound of the thing, much more so than prose. I think that's what makes poetry harder for many people…
A215 – TMA02 – Rounds
This is the story I submitted for the second assignment on the Open University A21 Creative Writing course. There will be a revised version of it eventually to improve it in line with the tutor feedback. Rounds Alice clipped the name badge onto her uniform before picking up her keys. First stop today was Granny Jack's house. She needed advice before visiting Fiona, her childhood friend. Outside it was a warm, dry spring day. Daffodils bloomed and the hedge had lost its clipped rectangular shape. Alice's car was parked on the narrow roadway outside her terraced cottage. She opened the boot with her key and checked the contents of her bag before taking it out and locking up behind. She strode off along the road, swinging the bag as she went. Granny Jack was the oldest living resident of…
A215 Poetry – Coffee Cravings
Having done the section on fiction (and written a 2,200 word short story, or rather four of them, two of which were way too long) the next part of the course is on Poetry. For six weeks or so I'll be trying to write some poetry. I was finding poetry rather baffling, I've never had a problem writing prose, it just sort of rolls off smoothly. The first chapter in the Big Red Book about it, Chapter 12, wasn't really that helpful for me, I didn't think it was offering anything new over what we've already covered at the beginning of the course. Mainly it was a series of writing prompts and exercises on inciting creativity. There was nothing about what made this stream of text poetry as opposed to prose. However, Chapter 13 is quite different, and while reading it I've…