A215 – Creative Writing Assignments so far
TMA4 for A215 Creative Writing is back. So all that remains is TMA5 and the end of module assessment (EMA). Both of these are a free choice from the three taught types of writing, short fiction, poetry and life writing. Before I started the course I had mostly written fiction, in the novelette to novel range for length, none of which you'd reasonably describe as short in OU terms (somewhere in the 2,000 word range). My first assignment for A215 ended up as life writing, I found it easier to write short bits about memories than to condense fiction down to the correct word count (and I'm very good at editing things down). The second assignment was short fiction, and I managed to write a half-decent story for it. Rounds is the beginning of a longer story that I still…
A215 – Life Writing – Working in the Dark
From the two pieces I've already posted, Early Memories & Initiative at Night and another I drafted this piece as part of the life writing tutorial for A215 Creative Writing. It has summarised the original freewrites and linked them with a through-line. Working in the Dark “How many civil servants does it take to change a lightbulb?”“None, they prefer to work in the dark!”As a small child I play with lego by candlelight, a power cut. I sit beside the glass door to the balcony, the rest of the room is dark and impenetrable. The multicolour swirl pattern on the carpet is vivid. The thick green base tile and the red and white lego bricks forming into a house. In the dim Scottish winter night I can’t play for long before it is too dark. Almost twenty I spend a…
Black Belt Speed Drills
I went to watch the Choi Kwang Do black belt test of one of my son's close friends this morning at the Ellis Academy of Choi Kwang Do in Redhill, Surrey. Here is a very short video (about 50 seconds) of her doing some speed drills as part of the test. I have to say I think it is awesome how fast they go, especially as they are only eight years old! Related articles Martial arts training helps children with cancer
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…
250 Posts
Well 251 now as it happens, since this one is the 251st post on themself. I've always been a bit vague about blog dates, largely because it doesn't really matter all that much. I've been writing for decades, before it was even possible to publish it easily. There are still a couple of ring binders with stories in them and also dozens of notebooks and a couple of boxes of index cards from before the internet. I doubt many of those will ever be published, although they may well be mined for ideas eventually. This is not my first blog, and as much as I can I've imported the articles written for the previous blogs into wordpress. I've also gone back and gathered up things that I wrote for publication and added them into the archives where I can. There…