Archives for Study - Page 8
A215 What They Teach you at Creative Writing School
I read this article about Hanif Kureishi's views on what is missing from the teaching of creative writing to people. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with Hanif Kureishi. Perhaps if he'd studied with the OU he would have had plenty of practice in recognising the plentiful supply of good ideas that we have. He might also have been taught some techniques to fire up his imagination and to harness it to produce material. On the other hand I do agree that there is (rightly) a lot of focus in text books on the 'hard' skills that writers need. On use of language, structure and the practicalities of how to produce good prose, poetry etc. This is not just down to creative writing schools though, all disciplines have a mixture of 'hard' and 'soft' skills. The masters of the discipline can…
A215 – Meta Poetry
The third online tutorial is now on the go, following a poetry day school last weekend (where I read out some Burns since it was the 25th). Anyway the exercise is to write a poem based on the model of Amanda Dalton's How to Disappear. So this is the second draft of my meta poem, a further draft (poetry as a process) will be posted later on when I've had some feedback and had time to let it rest a wee bit. How to write poetry How can an ordinary person like me possibly do it? How am I supposed to get all those words arranged on the page? How do I learn to write beautiful poetry? Recognise that poetry doesn't appear ready to read. Like a block of stone, it needs careful chiselling, chip by chip, into shape. What goes…
Wattpad and a new beginning for Perfects
In reading through my blog feed I came across a very interesting article by Ian Sutherland on using Wattpad. It was so interesting that I thought I might give Wattpad a shot myself. One of the things that I have done as a consequence of learning much more about creative writing is to write a new beginning for Perfects (as well as re-write bits in the middle and what comes after the parts published so far). So if you would like to see the new beginning of Perfects, then it is on wattpad. When I finally have time, likely to be in the summer when A215 is finished, then I will complete the re-write and publish is both as an ebook and paperback. Related articles That Perfect Pitch How to: Make Wattpad Work For You Wattpad Half of Wattpad Writers…
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…