Tag archives for academic - Page 5
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…
How I write poetry
Before I started studying the Open University's A215 Creative Writing course I had never tried to write poetry, even though I've written several short stories and novellas. For TMA3 of A215 I had to write 40 lines of poetry. How I write poetry With one exception, which was my first attempt, all of my poems start as a freewrite on the subject, title or prompt. Normally I discard the first paragraph of the freewrite because it is overly literal, I use words and phrases from the remainder to form the basis of the first draft of a poem. Unlike my prose, where I typically draft in scrivener, the poetry starts on paper or a basic text editor. Subsequent drafts use the track changes feaure in a word processor. This allows me to see how each poem develops. Each draft is its…
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…