Tag archives for Open University A215 Creative Writing
Themself – now available on kindle
Today is publication day for my latest book Themself - Confessions of an open university creative writing student. As the sub-title suggests it is about my experience of studying creative writing with the OU. Although Themself goes further than that and includes the things I've learnt from my experience of writing, studying and self publishing. Themself - Confessions of an open university creative writing student You'll find some of the content in Themself here on the blog, but only about half of it. You'll also find that I've edited it since I first published it on the blog. Although I've tried hard to keep to the original character of the contemporary blog posts about how I was feeling. The bits I've updated are where I'm summarising what I've learnt. There is also a lot of new material. All of the stories and poems…
Meeting the Bechdel Test
I first came across the Bechdel Test on Charles Stross's blog when he was discussing its importance for pushing gender equality in fiction. However what has prompted this post is this article on Rochelle Dean's blog about her current work in progress. Since becoming aware of the Bechdel test I have consciously tried to meet the spirit of it in all the stuff I write, and as much as I can the actual conditions too. The Bechdel Test The rules There are three rules to the test: There are at least two named female characters in the story The women have a conversation with each other The conversation should not be about a man The Spirit of the Bechdel Test What I think is most important though is meeting the spirit of the test, which as I understand is that there should…
A215 Creative Writing is done
Handwritten notebook entry Last week I got the results for A215 Creative Writing. I got a Grade 2 pass, which I'm pleased with. So far I'm half way through the degree and the level 2/3 courses that count towards Honours classification. If I maintain my consistent Grade 2 passes I'll get a 2:1, and if I manage to get a distinction for 60 points of the rest then I'll get a first. Unless I get Grade 4 passes for all of my remaining 120 points at Level 2 & 3 then I'm pretty safe on a 2:1, not bad given that I'm working full-time, being a school governor, scout leader and a parent at the same time as studying for the degree! A215 has been the most interesting OU course that I have done so far. Part of me wishes that…
Hunting Nazis – Commentary on writing the story
I've written a short story titled Hunting Nazis for the End of Module Assessment (EMA) for A215 Creative Writing. The target word count was 2,500 with an upper limit of +10%. The first draft weighed in at 5k words, double the target length. However some of this was because although I plotted it I needed to tell myself the story in the first draft. Once I got to the end it was much easier to re-edit and take out some of it. Hunting Nazis The central premise is that Reggie and Dot (from the earlier story Planting the Past) have been hunting down nazis guilty of war crimes against the members of the French resistance and SOE agents supporting the network that they were both part of during World War Two. The story takes place in Berlin in 1953 when they are tying…
Still here
I've not been able to post much for the last couple of weeks, I had a bout of cellulitis in my left leg which knocked me out for a few days, followed by lots of antibiotics. On top of that I've been spending what time I have for writing on the end of module assessment (EMA) for the creative writing course. This time it is back to fiction rather than continuing with poetry, because fiction is what I want to write (the poetry has been fun and interesting and it takes lots of craft, but I find writing stories more interesting). So far I'm 5,000 words in to a 2,750 word short story. So there needs to be lots of editing done (which I'm sure will be fine, there is lots of detail and dialogue that I can pare down now…