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Sunday 27 November 2011

Second Assessment....


I always find the observations of my tutors challenging, but then that is what they are supposed to be doing when they read our work and then push our decisions, imagery etc. They make us justify our writing without emotional attachment or favour.If it works how well? If not why not and how could it work?
          It was relief that made me feel so up when I sent in the last assessment; don’t get me wrong I wasn’t happy with what I’d written, because I never am, but I felt that at least I had put together something – at least. I pressed send and felt good. It was done and I would wait for the observations.
          The assessment came back midway through the first manoeuvres with the next chapter and I was feeling the momentum of the work and exploring; feeling like I WAS making headway. I read the assessment and it all came crashing down. It felt like the only movement I had made in the course was not to repeat myself…a basic error which I always make at the beginning of every course and always in the first assignment. This time it was about the sound of the words and although I read aloud what I had written and in my head saw clearly what I was thinking, it did not transfer to the page. I think I make the basic mistake that it is the meaning that holds my attention whereas what this course needs is a dual meaning and sound – soft, hard, repulsive or welcoming. I may be wrong but that is how it translated.

My first reaction was to give up – an extreme. But I have always felt that although this course would add greatly to my repertoire and give me more discipline, I have always feared it.I simply do not think poetry....I recognise great poetry but I recognise great acrobatics but would never launch myself at a vaulting horse!
          For twenty four hours I felt deflated and pushed away the desire to walk away – knowing that it was childish and emotional! Then I re-read the assessment and slid back to my work and the computer screen. I worked through each piece, rereading and thinking about what Lesley had written. I took the plunge and ventured into each piece and did the rewriting. I have now put the pieces (revised) away in a separate file and will return to them when the time feels right.
I am yet to be convinced that I am anything more than a prose (wannabe) writer. However, I think the discipline and hard work would greatly enhance my writing and help in the degree and remaining courses. Should that not be enough? It should be. If I write some poetry that works, or works well then that will be a miracle and a bonus. For now I need to work and put in the hours, thinking and reading and writing.

Sunday 2 October 2011

Traumas, distractions and almost disasters....



Not been here for a while and not done any real work for a time. Life gets in the way of my writing. I get in the way of my writing. I am starting to think that I am my own worst enemy and that if I fail at anything it is not the odd trauma, drama and disaster but my own nature.

I have missed my deadline again. Leslie has been wonderful and told me to get it in when I have done it.

I have done some writing but between my Dad being ill, my pulling my back and the general computer dramas when a motherboard burns out, the replacement hardrive burns out - within two weeks of being installed - and having a certain popular satellite television package put in place which caused a cessation of access to the internet have all taken their toll. I find myself watching endless real life crime tv while reclining on the sofa with a heat pack on my back - forty eight hours of that and I understand while OAPs become paranoid - my father was one of them for six weeks after they got it he was security mad. Satellite TV can do funny things. Namely I have watched more about UFOs and historical battlefields that is strictly good for you.

I am now sorting out the house and the office - which given all the burn outs and installations is a hurricane crime scene in itself. The partner is away this weekend visiting friends in Worthing - the Uni kind that never fade away like seems to happen with school friends in a more local location. I have distracted myself with cleaning, sorting and washing. But I have decided to view this arid writing period as a rest from the poetry that should serve me well.

The one thing that I have realised is that a few weeks without a reliable computer forced me to return to paper and pen. Of course I was finicky about the choice of both and find it hard to write without the "right" feeling pen in my hand or the "right" notebook (hence a plethors of both, unused and waiting for their moment). It have become something of a joy to write with a pen again. to feel the drag and pressure against the page; even the weight of the notebook in my hand as astride into my office felt right.

On my previous course when things got ahead of me and I stressed about not "wanting" to write my tutor reassured me telling me to read and relax and to some extent I now have confidence in my process. Maybe I am made to be distracted and angst ridden about life getting in the way. Maybe.

If I have gained nothing from this period of turmoil I have gained a love of pen and paper again. The pleasure of sitting quietly and writing in an almost automatic way has returned. I have also gained space between what I have written for the next assignment -  so much so that when I return to each piece over the next week or so it will feel like reading them for the first time.

If this works then the traumas, distractions and disasters will have been worth it.....

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Oh .......bugger!




We've had visitors for the last week, well six days in all but over a week. Today is our first day of leave together, alone. We have completed some chores and with my partners birthday being tomorrow we are missing a special lady, his Mum, Mo. I have written about her in this blog and shall continue to do so.

We had a party at a friend’s home on Saturday and as it was fancy dress much merriment and silliness ensued. This was out public face/event. Now we are settling down to our break from work, time together and that all important please-our-bloody-selves-time.


So....I settled at the screen and began looking at the usual emails, news etc. I got some online shopping done and then turned to a quick sift through some blogs I look at. Three hours passed and two cups of coffee....when I came across this on a writers (as in successfully published)..

"Being a good writer is 3% talent,97% not being distracted by the internet." Anonymous

Oh ...bugger!!!

Friday 5 August 2011

Never to plan....


I set myself the goal of reading five poems a day and due to circumstances beyond my control - an Uncle getting taken to hospital, a Mum who is his sister being constantly worried, while still caring for my disabled Dad and my Dads 75th birthday - I have well and truly been blown off course.


It's at times like these that I am thankful for the OCA and its relaxed style of deadlines. I can already feel this one slipping with only one poem written, a few notes and another only four lines long. The assignment is about emotion and how to convey it through the poem - especially when read out loud - after all that is what poetry should be about, the sound and emotion. The only emotion I could emote at the moment would be that of a truly knackered individual.

It's at time like these I have to remind myself how lucky I am to have been able to embark on this quest - something a Secondary School, Eleven Plus Failure, like myself would never have dreamed of, or been allowed to dream of by teachers or even parents. Even when I went to Technical College my English Language tutor wrote I had good writing style but I had an unhealthy fixation on death; she never asked me why I wrote about it so much. I was focussed on the subject having lost the second most important father figure in my life to cancer my Granddad. I hated this summing up of my subject matter because it exposed me, laid it there for all to see. I resented her and showed this by handing in very little work from there until the exams; childish but I was a teenager.

My revenge on my tutor, for this awful review that was delivered in my report, was total, measured and devastating. It was also wholly unplanned.

During the final exam, where my tutor officiated, we were given ten titles and told to write a story for  on the ideas that sprang to mind; we had two hours.

"Waiting" jumped off the page. I saw it so clearly. My tutor, an emotional, motherly sort walked up and down between the two columns of students. She had the habit of pausing and reading each piece as she went - there was no cupping your arm around the page in those days for fear of being told off; it looked underhand after all. I plunged in, writing about my Nan standing in her kitchen, her two boys running in and out the back door; one was six, having been born four months after his Father had left for World War Two, the other was eight or nine. All the pictures of that period show her with a piny with a slightly torn pocket. I told how she had paid for a photographer to come to the house and take a family picture; the boys had newly knitted jumpers and she was having a new dress made from recycled material by a neighbour. The photographer came a day early and she had the photo taken dressed in her piny rather than the new dress. Her husband, my Granddad, was missing presumed dead; in truth he had been taken prisoner and had escaped three times, ending up being taken to Germany itself and set to work on a farm with the threat that should he escape the German farmer and family would all be killed; mum, dad and two girls.

As I wrote I became aware that my tutor paused at my desk a little longer than necessary; I made sure my arm remained firmly un-cupped and carried on.

I told the story of my Nan sending the older son, my Uncle, to the butchers with the instruction to stand outside until the butcher took pity on him and sold them some meat; the suit of clothes she had made for the same son out of her best curtains that he ruined falling in the harbour while pulling out a six pound mullet for tea - and the beating she gave him with a switch (a stick) every time he stopped as she chased him up the street. Then there was the afternoon nap that was interrupted when a bomb exploded up the street smashing in every door and window in the house and covering her and the sleeping toddler in glass. All the way through she wore the piny, her hand patting the pocket. Just before the end I had her retrieve a letter (written on thin airmail paper, which my family still have and treasure) from my Granddads’ commanding officer informing her that her husband had been involved in the Battle of Tobruk and was missing presumed dead - it was dated four years before. She put the letter back and returned to the sink to begin the preparation of a meal; peeling potatoes I think – it is one of my firmest memories of her.

As she stood there her youngest son came running in telling her there was a soldier at the door; she told him to ask him to come in, thinking it was one of the neighbours’ billeted lot. As she turned in the kitchen, in walked her husband, his eldest son on his shoulders; both were smiling. He slipped the boy onto the floor, while his youngest son clung to his Mothers piny. They stared at each other for a moment.

My tutor hesitated by my side but I hardly noticed, working feverishly against the enemy of every child in an exam - time.

My Granddad was thin, weighing around six stone. My Nan stepped towards him and taking a breath said, "I supposed you want a cup of tea?" My Granddad nodded and they fell into each other’s arms.

As I wrote "The End" at the bottom of the page I became aware of the figure at my side - blubbing!

I looked up to find my tutor, handkerchief clasped to her mouth and nose, tears rolling down her face. She reached down and tapped the page twice and struggled to smile.

As she walked to the front to announce the end of time other students turned to look at me; wondering what I had done. It was delicious and such a compliment to move her that way - but I always thought it didn't count because it was a true story; every incident. Now I know (perhaps) better. She never said anything to me but I like to think she might have liked to change the comment - a comment my parents took to heart and worried about.


I still have a fixation on sadness and mortality - something others have mentioned when reading my previous coursework - but I like to think it is more controlled and less adolescent. Maybe that is why I have feared this course more than any other; the exposure, stripping the words down to the barest minimum. No matter how much the deadline slips or how "exposed" I feel or should that be obsessed (?) I will complete the course and continue the quest....despite being that Secondary School, Eleven Plus Failure......

Friday 29 July 2011

Stolen half hour and a cretin....




A mixed up day with parents having a new floor put down in their home by a mate of mine who is builder; he is a rough diamond, fifteen years younger than me and a neighbour of another mate of mine. He is always happy, laughing and particularly positive about getting things done and done right. It helps that he also has a big open smile, can talk to even my rambling (almost) seventy five year old disabled father who insists on giving him his world famour bear hugs at every opportunity and he owns a big heart. He goes out of his way to put in that extra big of effort and time and I have to remind myself I have known him for less than a year and he has become a fixture in our tight little circle of friends.

His only drawback is that once in his prescence he fills you up with good energy and so you want to be around him and hours can fly by...in a good way. I left him finishing the floor and got on with the chores that needed doing before the weekend.....

Lunch was a protien shake and banana...(not a good habit, but not too wayward for one day) and I plunged back into chores. For one precious hour I had nothing to do....

I collapsed into the sofa, swiped up "Moab is my Washpot" and plunged in. The house was warm, light streaming into the south facing window, birds were twittering from the open back door...until.....half an hour into the break....a shadow fell across the windowsill. I sat up to a see a smiling young man in a suit; the tie was secured in a fat knot around a reddened face, the hair was obviously waxed in what he must have thought was jaunty yet appealing spikes....not too threatening to a pensioner who might see him as a punk in disguise. He stood respectfully at attention, anticipating.

Instead of going to my door I opened the window...which prompted him to produce a clip board he'd been hiding behind his back.

I did try and stifle the sigh that escaped but ...it escaped. He launched into his spiel about how bills were going up, how it was bad management/systems etc that caused this and how HIS company wasn't like all the other EVIL suppliers but was a benevolent fuel provider who was there to save kittens from trees, pull grannies from oncoming traffic and generally plant a tree for every cell in the collective bodies of each of their customers.....before he got any further and opened his shirt and showed me his superman suit I blurted out "No thanks, I'm busy."


I then began to close the window hoping this would prompt him to convert someone else.

"But you're not doing anything important," he snorted, tapping his clip board; it flashed across my mind that it would suit him much more inserted (or rammed up) the vertical smile he presents when running away from potentially violent customers.

I stilled myself, feeling that momentary channelling of internal power that makes British actors the best in the world playing baddies. I slowly opened my mouth, keeping my stare boring into his blue eyes.

"Go away cretin!" I didn't move. I stared. He shifted, opened his mouth and I tipped my head to one side, transmitting with a single raised eyebrow my next move of shoving his clip board where the sun don't shine. He read my mind...ticked his page and turned smartly on his heel; jauntily descended our steps, without looking back...once.....

The phone rang and I was summoned to help put back all the furniture. What a day...what a cretin!

Thursday 28 July 2011

What a couple of days.....




It's has been difficult to say the least trying to work, especially with my sisters birthday, changes in plans, going to the gym and distractions all around.





So instead of working on my next piece I returned to the advice from Nina Milton, my previous tutor, when she told me that I should not stress about not being able to work but to read. Just that - to pick up anything and read and read and not think about not writing.





So I did. I picked up "Moab is my Washpot" by Stephen Fry and plunged in. WOW! I have always found him engaging, funny and worthy of admiration but this book ignited so many memories about my own childhood that I began jotting things down on post-its to re-kindle full explanations later. Any autobiography that instantly does that is top notch in my mind.





More changes in my plans for this evening tilted me more off course. I feel guilty at not sticking to the plan for the week. I have, as most who write do, of being published and being able to write full time, at home, running around in my own little world, working through what comes to mind etc. I may in the future be able to do this for a year and finish my degree at the same time as a full time student....but that is in the future.





If this is a taste of what could happen I shall have to be very hard to achieve 1,000 words a day without being whisked off hither and thither due to interuptions. But I can still dream - after all I managed two and half days before being knocked off course.. that's an achievement? Isn't it?





I may use the post its for the next assignment ...then it's definitely not been a detour - well not completely...

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Revision....annoyance...clarification....

Second day - again check emails, read the news (shaking head), have a look on Face-thingy....

revised what I wrote yesterday and find I have no confidence that it's what the course has asked for but feel attached to the scene I am painting. The uncertainty of what to do next - what to work on, dip into or resurrect - makes me return to Lesleys assessment. I create a new folder and revise each piece working through her suggestions and observations. Two hours pass and I have been working steadily until I get to the last....


There will always be times when you disagree with a tutor and say "no, no, no I didn't mean that!" when what you mean is "I meant this and I haven't communicated it clearly enough for you to see it!" - you are angry with yourself not the tutors reaction to it.


I wrote a piece called The Cat's Meow - about blocking out a sense and what you then experience around you through the remaining senses and thoughts. I have repeated myself which is a pet hate of mine, especially in a prose piece. But Lesley states that the piece is about sound....but it wasn't...it was about sight - or at least an action which you would not do i.e. writing with your eyes closed. The lights are out and I wrote on a page about what I was hearing and feeling, with my eyes shut. The writing is full of sounds, anxiety and culminates with next doors cat (an elderly visitor to our house who seems to still look for my long departed cat) complaining at my side.


I need to revise it and then clarify it with Lesley.

But I feel embarrassed that it worked so badly and a comment that an old colleague used to declare comes back to me - "Better to keeps ones mouth shut and appear a fool, than open your mouth and remove all reasonable doubt!" But in this case I think removing doubt and learning from the mistake is preferable to silence.

Monday 25 July 2011

A point of view





When I started this blog it was to help me write. To engage my discipline gene (if I have one) and subvert the gene that makes me clean cupboards, re-organise drawers etc. So I have a week off purely to relax and write...maybe clean the car - god it needs it!



So... I thought why not come here each morning this week - or as many as I can work into my time - and write....that's a plan right?



First, I do the usual -....computer on.... check the headlines, emails, order a couple of birthday presents and then start listening to a radio play.



Second, I then turn my attention to my assessment from Lesley. I have decided that what I read, or at least take in, is not the same as what others see. My partner reads it and gushes about how the points are tinkering here and there - gentle guidance. What I read is more complex. I seem to see faults and some of them are obvious to me once they have been pointed out. The worst is repetition...I hate that! Not the criticism but the fault.



I now will pick over the submission and revise it all with Lesleys' pages alongside my keyboard.



One point made has me stop in my tracks and think. My tutor pointed out (correctly) that I didn't explain how I revised my writing and when I thought about it it is very haphazard. I have always worked along the idea that I trust my intuition and the process; some things take moments others take years. I have notebooks full of one line, an image, a thought or observation which appears useless but will, in time work to spark the original idea that is jotted down with it.



One that jumps to mind is "Leaf fall" - a disjointed, short memory sketch of an abandoned corrugated shed where my friends and I would play as children; eventually using it for sheltering from the rain, talking, dreaming and smoking tiny cigars. Strangely, the next assignment, using the sound of words to invoke emotions, sparked this memory in my mind. I will jot down some of the memories of that time, writing as much as I can recollect; most will be discarded but what I hope will come out will be a piece for submission with the next assignment. The challenge will be monitoring how I arrive at the final piece and to put it out in words.


I hear the sound of the washing machine finishing its final spin cycle....I'll hang that load out and then begin....trying not to look at the dusty car.

Sunday 3 July 2011

The Late Student

So my poor tutor, Lesley, has my first assignment.

I feel I have written too much and it feels contrived; the course suggests an immediate, natural, unforced approach to writing the pieces. I did a mixture of prose and verse whichever felt natural for what I was seeing and feeling. But I handed the work in late - about one week. Lesley assured me that this was fine but it felt bad. But there are other things that are making me feel uneasy.

I don't feel like someone who is comfortable with poetry; I rarely read it and I feel a bit of a fraud trying to write it. I did write a lot of poetry when I was teenager but these were destroyed in a teenage angst moment and since then I have written very little outside the requirements of the degree coursework. My previous tutor, Nina, thought the course would tighten my editing skills, allow me to prepare for the next course by gaining further descriptive skills etc. I trust her judgement but that doesn't help my confidence.

I have the double whammy (I believe that is the right expression) of waiting for the assessment of my last course to come through and the first judgment from the first assignment for this course. So today - having spent the whole day avoiding doing any work or even reading - I made a decision. I have always believed that making a decision is more than halfway to getting something done purely because that's the threshold; once you cross it your whole being proceeds to the destination - a bit like jumping off a cliff, you might hit a few ledges but you are probably going to the bottom whether you like it or not.

The decision is the reading. "Staying Alive" Edited by Neil Astley contains 500 poems for the course. I want to complete the course work in approximately four months so that means five poems a day to read, think about, re-read and make some notes on. I am hoping that working through the coursework will jump start my writing of poetry and the reading will inform this, allowing me to find my feet. It's a plan. Whether it will work is another matter.

I have never felt so unsure of my direction in any of the other courses I have done. This could play to my strengths and allow me to jump into things with a certain amount of abandon or it could make me flounder about.

What I don't want to happen is for my displacement activity to rear it's ugly head as it has a habit of doing when I don't feel the pull in any direction. I (generously) tell myself when I am cleaning a cupboard or distracting myself with some inconsequential activity that I am "waiting for the right (or should that be write) element to come along before moving on" but I could be kidding myself. I hope I am not kidding myself that I can write poetry and pass this course adding another credit to my degree.

I just have to work through, trust to hard work and the guidance of the tutor. It is a reassurance that Lesley was also a student of the OCA.

Monday 16 May 2011

Easing in slowly.....get back into the harness

I rarely throw myself into something that means a lot to me without thought, fear and meticulous planning and so it is with the degree. I wish I could. I wish I was one of those people that could walk to the edge of the metaphoric cliff and with only a glance about to smell the air and feel the light on my skin throw myself over. But I am not.

So the folder for Creative Writing 1 : Art of Poetry has been delivered and the first few pages have been read. The tutor has contacted and been replied to, Lesley Mountain - a former OCA student which is a comfort.

Last night I settled down at my desk, closed the blinds to the outside world, still light at this time of the year, and began to read. Befoe I knew it I had my nose pressed into the first exercise - do something with your eyes closed that you would normally have your eyes open for, observe it and then write down the experience. Even before I recognized what I was doing I pulled a sheet of white paper from my printer and took up a soft-tipped pen, closed my eyes and began to write.

It is something I have never done with my eyes closed - why would you? It seemed the most natural thing in the world. Walking round my office with my eyes closed was out of the question - I regularly walk around my house in the dark - insomnia's a bitch! So I sat with my head down and wrote what I felt and thought.

It was interesting. Strange and genuinely first time experience. I wrote it up in my notebook and put it aside; a short leap into the course and then a step back.

Tonight, I have done the next exercise; picking up an object and writing how it felt while exploring it with my eyes closed. I chose a bookmark, made of Tibetan silver, obsidian stones and hung with a small chain. I am a control freak (family and partner can attest to this) so getting someone else to chose the object was not an option. The strangeness of the object, something I carry with me everyday, was it's warmth; I expected it to be cold, and rough to the touch. At the moment I moved my fingers over it, it warmed, it's edges rounded, it transformed from the expected to what it was....

Maybe not being comfortable with poetry - I have been known to describe it as a "straight jacket" - will be a genuine exploration for me.

Luckily I have my guide and my senses; better carry my expectations lightly.....

Wednesday 27 April 2011

Drifting......

Not a word; not a single observation or noted scene has been jotted down since my ending the course and waiting for assessment submission dates to come around. Stress at work could be blamed, the spectre of redundancy and the dip before moving onto the next course. But that wouldn’t be entirely true. It’s relief at the finish, fear of assessment and fatigue.

In a rush of optimism, I sent the application for the next course Writing 1: Poetry (40 Credits) and received an email telling me that the course materials would be dispatched after May 3rd. I want to get on and push forward but part of my focus is on the calendar waiting for the day when the parcel can be sent in and then all matters are out of my hands – as far as the portfolio course is concerned.

I am taking Nina’s advice and reading as much as before, trying not to worry and snatching every moment to grab a page here or a chapter there, between living the life and working the work.

At 45 I feel the drip of time like poison. I want things to move faster but need to gather myself, finish the plan and then walk the walk and see if dreams really do come true. I have decided that this blog will continue with the next course and hopefully be of use in the habit and discipline of writing. After all it has got me writing again even if this is just a post about where I am with life and the anticipation of the coming work…

Monday 14 February 2011

Runes, judgement and fear....or just tiredness!

So... I am working on my final course overview essay – not rushing, not working every night but returning and tinkering, fiddling and vacillating. I AM working. The completion certificate has arrived and I am relieved that the journey or this part is over. The re-writing of the assignment submissions is complete and I am forcing myself to be confident that I have done enough...

BUT - and there is always one of them lurking - I am not writing. I am collecting....names, snippets of observations or the odd idea of a few lines long; but nothing more is being written. It has happened before and I am wondering whether I should just chill rather than worry; because it is now, when the dust is settling, that I begin to doubt being able to take up again. I want to write - to get back into a project - but the umph! isn’t there yet.

In this off balance atmosphere, I took up something I set aside for over a year and asked a question. The Runes stones were given to me in 1987 and while I can read clearly for others – once predicting a lover for one friend and a baby for a work colleague – the readings for myself are always clouded. Hence, I only ask when it matters – never a frivolous act, to ask for answers you might not want to hear – “be careful what you wish for” my Grandmothers wise advice.

The reading was clear-ish; I get the symbolism of a fallow field in autumn and winter and how that prepares the ground before the warmth and fertility of spring - this being the judgment on my fear and the confidence that my writing energy will return; but the cold/logical side needs proof and reassurance.

I hope this is fatigue and that the visions, sparks and wincing flashes of characters and ideas have not deserted me…just until spring then.

Monday 10 January 2011

Gear changing and gratitude for the tutor and journey...

The final assessment went in, with the usual angst and terror. It came back with all Nina’s encouragement, advice and observations. I have decided not to use the final piece for my course assessment for purely selfish reasons. I like the piece but I love the fourth one more; that was an endurance test of revising, editing and thinking. Nina was unrelenting in her advice to each inch of progress I made in the fourth assignment.

I shall return to the final assignment in the near future once the final assessment notes have been decided upon.

I have been thinking about what the course has taught me and what I can carry forward to other projects and challenges. This is the most difficult part of any of the courses, being able to put into words how the experiences, dramas and difficulties have shaped you. Life encroaches and distorts what you write, how you write and even the act of writing or wanting to write reflects back onto your life itself so that some experiences become observational fodder when you should be just in the moment without the dark-half taking in every detail, hearing every word or catching nuances that can be stored, emphasised and manipulated later. My partner describes every course as having a moment where I “changed gear” and accelerate. To my mind in this course I know it was the third assignment, Mixed up, a wholly course inspired piece.

There was something immediate about an exercise where a repetitive action would be described; I saw myself and my best friend mixing cement - I the youth and him the almost a man figure. Both stripped to the waist, shovels in hand, dust rising and the sun beating on us. The only problem I have is once I have written and in some case re-written and re-written a piece, give it a few months and I cannot recall all the details of what I have put down. I can read the piece again, months and years later as if someone else sweated through the creative process. My habit now, thanks to this course and previous courses, is that I am an immediate writer; pulling out my notebook at the most inopportune moments or disappearing off to the toilets to jot down a spoonerism from a relative in a restaurant.

The course or more importantly Nina, my tutor, has taught me that while I can jot down the ideas, see how it unfolds into a story, the elements that gravitate onto it throwing the narrative this way and that, I must not be precious about taking a sledge-hammer and smashing it into bits to create a more believable, fascinating and fantastic story. It’s a lesson of getting over myself; not viewing a finished piece as perfect, a character too essential or a vision unable to be discarded.

Would I do things differently? Yes - I would have a blog that asked questions after every assignment or even better, every exercise so I could track my way minutely. Maybe I shall make this an element of my next three courses.

For now I have to write my overview, tracking my modifications, explaining that change of gear and justifying my growth. I am lucky. I have enjoyed this course despite real life changing mine and my partners world beyond recognition; survived a very real crisis of confidence when stress could have stopped me going further - thanks to this blog keeping me writing - and, most of all, having a tutor who nudged, suggested and worked like mad to fuel and direct me.