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Friday 18 October 2013

Sixth Assignment





Okay so I am here - just over a year has passed since I opened the coursebook.

The Fifth Assignment is back with the good advice, observations and recommendations from Nina Milton and has been put aside to work on later.

I started the Creative Reading Commentary and decided to write only about Skellig by David Almond. It was the book that stopped me from giving up, made me think I could write a little and that I really wanted to explore writing for children. I think it's a wonderful book, full of the mundane family life, the danger of death hanging over a new born child and the finding of a man-angel-bird collapsed and wasting away in a derelict garage. The magical realism gripped me from the very first page - a real hook into any reader.

The struggle with this part of the assignment was breaking down my assignments and relating them back to Skellig. My objective was to echo the magical realism without making it appear like copying. I think I have achieved this by keeping the idea of it in the back of my mind while working through each exercise and assignment. The first draft is written and now has been put aside; it's sitting brooding on my desk and as always at this stage I wonder if it's anywhere good enough.

Two nights ago I started the Reflective Course Commentary. This I approached in a similar way - breaking each experience into the sixth assignments, detailing how each part of the course affected me, stretched me and looking through this blog and my notes to see the repeated observations and notes.

It comes down to one thing. Aside from the ideas (of which there are many, mostly half written on post-its in my note books) the recurring point is the plotting - being told by Nina Milton in a non judgmental way that I am a characterphile and therefore I need to concentrate on plotting as this was my weakness (my words) and would focus my mind and process.

I feel I have achieved what I set out to do - I have stretched again but more than this I feel empowered to think about writing a longer piece of writing for YA. The plotting has allowed me to focus and build the confidence to write and dream.

So now I wait, just a few days, allowing the two essays to languish and drift. When I am ready I will look over them again with fresh eyes and then re-draft them both.

A year has gone so quickly. I have learned to strengthen more of my muscles. Gained more weapons in the pursuit of the discipline of the writing habit.

Thursday 19 September 2013

Fifth Assignment - Awesome





The Fifth Chapter of the Writing for Children Course was about fantasy worlds, examining the ordinary and making it extraordinary and menace; or creating a tangible sense of dread.

One exercise was about collecting and creating names - I have always collected names and working with legal documents of some age and quality of quirkiness I have always been gifted with some of the most outrageous names. I have notebooks full of names, half names, some with question marks showing that I appreciated them but wasn't quite sure what I could use them for, while others have definite comments; like "village idiot", "dangerous man" etc).

The others exercises were about examining an ordinary object say a chair and creating an extraordinary story/happening with that object and creating dread/menace.

The fifth assignment is split into two - 1,500 words each and to be targeted at separate age groups. The latter didn't bother me. I targeted the first story, The Sycamore Chair at girls 7+ and the second, Keeper at boys 10+.

Gathering ideas was easy for the first - mainly from an exercise in the chapter and a property programme with a quirky cottage which fitted the setting I wanted to create. The details flowed into my mind as my character, May, explored. My tutor uses the term Characterphile (meaning that your imagination or writing is driven mainly by the character in your head rather than the plotting) and I love it. Once someone tells you where you lean, where the strengths are, you can look to your weaknesses and adjust to compensate. I need and will always need to plot - once I do this - thinking through each step of the story - my character seems to have more concentration on the adventure - I faff less.

Gathering for the second story was more difficult and the thoughts of menace kept bringing to mind a local legend about full moons and barrows and the sound of dancing faeries. This story took more time. Worse than that, after the first draft I felt that the character of the title, Keeper, wasn't complete; he didn't feel real to me or I wasn't being given enough room to create his back story. I stalled. I didn't want to work on it; so I returned to the first story and worked hard on that.

Sometimes the hardest decision I have is recognizing when to ask for help. This was one of those times and I took my resistance almost all the way to my deadline. Once the reply was received from Nina Milton, my Tutor, a huge weight was lifted. Her advice was to treat the second story as a "first chapter".

THAT was it! Suddenly I could see how the Reverend Clement who constantly goes around his church looking for a way into the realm in which Keeper is a prisoner, is a victim of madness; how all the Vicars for this parish end up being slightly odd due to the sounds of the partying and mischievous faeries and the fact that Keeper was former incumbent's "house boggart". Since he went missing each of the vicars has thought the house was missing something, not really understanding what, and they become increasingly odd in the way they act.

How Keeper got there, why he helps Alan escape after falling into the barrow and why he will never be allowed to leave came in a flash - all because I could tell that later - this was a first chapter.

I worked on a third and fourth draft and thought it was time for my partner to read it.

The response I got shocked me. Very positive - so much so that the character of Keeper was vivid, sympathetic and endearing. I didn't know what to say - literally stunned to silence. My response was "Really!?"

Of course I worked on the stories again and worked through them with the reader always in mind - enjoying the reading out phase again which always highlights fuzziness.

This has been rewarding, but I think Nina Milton and her advice regarding "treating it as first chapter" was awesome to my process. It freed me up to relax and not try and tell the entire story, landscape etc in one go. More than that it put into my head that there was a second, third and fourth chapter just waiting and that plotting was the key to achieving this.

Awesome!

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Implied reader





The Children's Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2013 has great articles in it. I am working my way through them, in no particular order, but they are all useful and insightful; a must for any aspiring writer.

Page 87 - Who do children's authors write for by Michael Rosen  has made a block fall fully into place at just the right time.

We all write with a reader in mind but maybe not fully in mind as it were and this maybe one thing more I have to cultivate and learn in a more conscious way. With this course I am writing for a specific "section" in mind and they are distinct from other areas of society - despite the fact that they come with all sorts of ideas, dreams and interests all affected by age group etc. This is something that I have come to terms with and I am enjoying; the cut and thrust of tailoring a piece for boys or girls of a certain age group etc.

With my latest assignment I found myself writing a story about a girl. She is an adventurous, fearless type who takes the opportunity to explore the forbidden and finds herself embroiled in a magical and dangerous experience; which she suspects her Grandmother, if not fully, is aware of. This story came organically but with the insight of the article above I realize that I am writing this specific story for a particular type of girl.

Add to this, after raising my fears about the word count restrictions of this assignment, Nina Milton offered the advice to treat each story as "as 1500 words of a chapter of a book" and a huge weight seemed to come off my shoulders.

I knew whom the first story, the first part of the assignment, was written for or at least the character identifies closely with her, how she was when we were children.

My "implied reader" is my Sister, Barbara. 

She was a tomboy. Fearless in outlook, strong of character, a bender of the rules and she broke a few, but always adventurous. She took life and still takes it on with gusto; there are no areas she considers off limits to her and if there are she questions why and usually breaks down barriers - and yes she does get rewarded with magical events happening to her and her family. 

Quite a revelation to me that I have an implied reader of this kind, so close to home. I kidded myself that I was writing for an imagined child in this instance, someone generic and remote. It again shows me that not only the fictional writing examples are of use but also this helpful collection of articles.

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Not sure...flagging or lazy or bubbling?




Each course always has that point where doubts arise and motivation is tested and it's always that point at which you feel the most rewarding happenings happen.

I have been trying to dictate to myself a timetable of effort and this is not working at all. I have slipped. Now, this is not new and if I look through my past posts and courses I could find and examples in each one where the wind has died and I am be-calmed. This time feels like I have imposed it on myself.

The challenge of the Fifth Assignment is it's brevity. Two 1,500 word stories about fantasy and adventure and a little menace resolved by magic. A flood of ideas, flurry of notes (post-its and whole scenes) and a storm of images all predicated from the exercises from the manual. The first story came because of a strange conflagration of events - a television programme about renovating a strange cottage with a tower attached to it (built for a missing grand house for it's Head Gardner's use), a memory of a childhood passion - Sycamore seeds - and a strange little chair seen in a junk-shop. Then I stalled....

I recognized the feeling and after a week of drifting, as I call it, in other words reading a little else, I asked Nina Milton (my Tutor). She was supportive and full of reassuring advice which is always calming. The only thing I began worrying about was whether I was becoming lazy and losing focus on my degree path.

Then a memory came about my seeing a Vicar when I was a child. He scared the hell out of me. I cannot remember the occasion, or what age I was BUT I remember his stillness, the darkness of his robes/attire and the turn of his head around to room to seemingly peer into every corner. It may have been my christening - I was christened late, by most standards, as a Methodist with my Sisters, the youngest of which was a babe in arms; I must have been around four years of age - I had my protagonist. This ran on to a local story about an area called Bincombe Bumps - some burial mounds that local children in the fifties used to say were the realm of a devilish party that could only be heard at midnight on a full moon night. The dichotomy being what child would find themselves on that hill, at that time, away from their parents safe, warm and protective house/home?

Then I remembered the rolling humpy, hillocky field next to our local church, St Anne's. A perfect, scaled down version of the larger Ridgeway Bincombe Bumps......then the bubbling began.

Two days later, I sat down and in the midst of this drifting phase and after plotting out the story, I then moved straight on to write the first third of the second story.Breakthrough! - and more importantly, a lesson in trusting my process.

So, right now I am on a second bubbling phase - because essentially this is not a single assignment, after all it has two parts - while trying to unwind on leave from work for two weeks; trying NOT to get wound up or worrying and above all trusting my process and writing when the bubbling phase has finished.


Saturday 15 June 2013

Admission and revelation....





Sometimes a comment passes you by. It's not that you don't notice it, it's just that it slides away on the wave of the other comments that are in the general hubbub of words.

Nina Milton, my Tutor, has always been supportive and open with her suggestions and observations of my work. With the last assessment she made a comment that during the narrative of my second assignment lost focus in a transition in the narrative and I had repeated this in the third assignment. It was in a part of the narrative where the character was traveling - one through a hedge and the other down a set of steps down a cliff at night....

I nodded. My partner nodded. I recognized it and returned to each piece, post assessment, to tighten this wavering in positioning and clarity. Of course Nina was right. What has struck me with my fourth assignment, which is heavily dialogue based, is that both lapses happened in similar positions in each piece of work.

Strange! But then - not really, not when I reasoned it out.

I plot heavily now - or at least compared to before this course; I put together a list of numbered notes that link and form the basis of what the characters will do within the story. I am a "Characterphile" (Nina's word - my weakness being in plotting). This seems to work - astounding to me because I thought I would never plot the way I thought others did. I preferred a romantic idea of finding my character and allowing him/her/it to run about in the world I wanted them to inhabit. But this course and Nina's advice/observations have changed my mind. I HAVE to plot - simply because it works.

Back to the subject - the lack of focus appears in the same part of the narrative. Then the revelation - which came after a few days of thinking about it critically....the way I write the first draft of the assignments.

I plot - making my list, allowing my mind to skip along the surface without delving too deep but adding little notes along the margins and post-its to ensure I slap it on the page without getting into the nitty-gritty. I walk away...letting it bubble in the back of my head.

Then I begin - 3,000 words - so I plan to write the first draft over three days or so with few breaks between the three evenings. During this time I write nothing else - every time I sit at my computer I only write this.

The drift in focus occurs between these "gaps" in writing - it's almost a misstep in my stride. I am walking along in the writing and then, when sitting down to continue, I stumble forward and the reader suffers.

This revelation happened when writing the first draft of the fourth assignment - I had completed the first two sessions and had to take two days off because of family commitments. When I came back I continued....then read back through the first paragraph of the last session and mused on how it joined with the last session and it didn't!

The gap was there - well....gaping!

A simple comment and a lesson learned.

I have paid special attention to the link and hopefully have remedied the problem. The second and third drafts will be the test and my partner will read it before submission but I will have to read it like a reader....something I realize every writer needs to learn.

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Light in the eyes...




I learned yesterday that I was changing teams at work and going to work for a new manager and, in fact, a completely newly constructed team.

As usual the new manager walked the office taking each of us into a private office for a quick "chat". This is standard and is used to break the ice while also feeling out if you have problems with your other team mates, personal needs that need consideration or outside commitments that your manager should be made aware of.

We got talking. I had very little to say; so i thought. And it is here that I digress a little to fill in some background detail. I talk about my degree to my friends at work because they ask. And only because they ask. My partner constantly checks how things are going or how I feel they are going....BUT amongst my outside work friends it is not a topic that interests them; or at least the majority of them that is. There is one who asks every time I see him.

So, I am sat in this, rather dull, interview room talking to my new manager. He's a bit of a jack the lad type; fun, light and laid back in manner. He was wearing jeans and a football shirt (West Ham I think...but I'm not sure). I mentioned that I would need a few study days here and there this year and probably more next year - my final degree course - and I would try and give him as much warning as I possibly could so the team wouldn't have problems.

He didn't know I was studying. He said it would not be a problem. I explained I was NOT studying with the OU, but with the Open College of Art. He was intrigued but seemed reluctant to probe further. I explained that I would try and keep my studies out of the work round as much as I could.

He then asked whether my degree was creative; I said yeah, Creative Writing.

His eyebrows shot up, he tilted his head and said "Really! Wow!"

I am not used to this kind of reaction and unless asked I rarely make it know that I am "on the path" as I like to call it. So I thought this would be all indifferent business - how it affected the team, the time I would need etc.

Interest, genuine interest was something new.

"So are you hoping, at the end, to take it further?"

I didn't know what that meant at first. I nodded and said yeah but I must have sounded unconvincing...he carried on.

"What I mean is, in a few years, will I be able to download something you've written onto my Kindle."

I was taken aback - he would have been the last person I would have expected to have been a reader.

"Yeah, hopefully," I said.

"That is SO cool", he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "I read loads, crime, conspiracy, mystery...anything really. But I would love to read something written by someone I actually know."

I had a fan and I hadn't even lifted a pen in a subject he liked.

Sat back at my desk - soon to be someone else's as I shall physically move out - and I replayed the conversation in my head. He was interested. There was light in his eyes - a light I like. Enthusiasm, genuine interest and a sort of hunger.

I felt good - not because he was interested. After all, I might not write anything he would want to read. No - it was the admission that AFTER the degree I would go further. I knew I would. I have always known that doing the degree was a way of learning, achieving a qualification and then moving on to write. But to be asked so openly, enthusiastically and with interest and not retreat into evasion was liberating....it felt good because I admitted what I wanted to do.

Confidence? Not sure about that - but an undertaking to work hard ( and harder) in pursuit of what I want.

Thursday 28 March 2013

Rituals and Word count.




So here I am with Thursday, today, off. I have granted myself a rare one day off with nothing planned. No appointments, decorating or chores to do. I take my partner to work early and return for a hearty breakfast and then sit in my office and begin work on writing the third assignment....

I granted myself the usual pre-work activities I afford myself in the evening - read the newspaper (online), check my emails and log in on Face Book as I have a nephew in Spain on holiday and I wanted to see how he was getting on. But it's not the evening - this is nine thirty am.

That done and on my second coffee, I open my A4 notebook and read the first couple of plot points I had written this plotting a few days (seems like a lifetime) ago. I know the characters' name is Amy and I know she is eight and she dislikes the water at the seashore. I begin. The first two hundred words come quickly. She is moving in the landscape, her attention on the sea lapping on the shore and the children, further down the beach playing in a way she doesn't feel comfortable doing herself - at least not in the water or even close to it. Then her Mother, reclining reading a book after their picnic, calls to her. It evaporates. I stumble, well not stumble exactly, just stop. I look at the notes. I am where I should be - or where I think I should be. There's something missing. I am missing something.

I get up and walk into our bedroom; I tidy up making the bed or rather folding back the duvet so it can air with the window open to the cold morning breeze. I am trying not to think too much. I finish my coffee. Put away some clothes, put some others in the laundry basket and then decide to go downstairs and put some washing on. I know this is displacement and knowing that I should stop. The washing machine whirrs into life and I come back to the computer and the two hundred words or so already written.

This is my day off. It almost feels like I shouldn't be working but that is a wrong thought, surely. I try and write some more - one hundred words further in and I am bumbling. I am not used to plotting first. Plotting to me is a dream of vague connections that present themselves like whispering callers each in line as I write, not a gathering of ghosts haunting around me already fully formed....that's part of what's wrong.

I get another coffee. Then water my plants....it's almost midday. Maybe food will settle me a little. I cook some scrambled eggs and find I am ravenous. I sit down and read my kindle. An hour whooshes by and I am tidying again but this time it's the kitchen and now the washing needs putting out and it's such a nice bright day, be a shame to miss this kind of drying weather.

And then it comes to me. Not the most dignified of revelation moments hanging up your smalls and your partners in the March sunlight when you realize why you can't settle to work properly. I have always been a creature of habit. Ritualistic is another word for it and once I adopt a ritual I tend to stick to it because if it works I am loathed to abandon it.

My ritual is to write at night - in the dark where there are few distractions. Not during the day. This day writing feels alien. My usual ritual is my partner goes to bed early and reads. I secrete myself in my office - check the papers etc and then after thirty minutes I begin work. I work for two to four hours depending on how well it's going and whether my energy levels are strong enough (or if I consumed so much coffee that I have no chance of getting to sleep any time soon).

This is what is wrong - this is the beginning of a new ritual; of having the time (should that be luxury) to be able to sit down and write during the day instead of doing my office day job. It feels wrong and we all know that a ritual, first time, feels odd.

Before I start to beat myself up about this, this waste of a perfectly good day of writing missed, I remember Nina's advice. When you feel off or cannot push forward - read and cut yourself some slack.

So I am - I have come here to write something and this feels good. I have broken one ritual in creating a plotted scenario. The second is to get into the habit of writing when I can - rather that at the set time I am used to. I have the Easter Holiday with my partner working every morning - so this is my chance. I look at the two hundred plus words and feel a little better.

If I am going to challenge myself on plotting in detail then why not try other things as well - if it works it will bed in and stay - if not I shall discard it - try something else or return to what works for me. Tonight, at eight thirty I shall return to my evening ritual and tomorrow morning I shall try another two hundred words maybe a lot more....rituals are just practice and perseverance after all.


Monday 25 March 2013

Something weird this way comes..




Chapter Three - Assignment Three of Writing for Children Course - Nina Milton (Tutor)

I moved onto the next Chapter in the course and worked through the exercises. The chapter is about plotting and I thought I understood what plotting was; or at least I had an idea of what I thought it would be as far as my writing.

I think about the assignment and then work with what occurs to me. It's organic, unforced or a flash of interconnected inspirations -  if I get stuck I wait and the idea will present itself or inspiration will arrive. What's wrong with that? Gives me an excuse to waste time and think - which is working right?

Mmmm. Every time I think I have a handle on my process, on how I work, something comes along and pushes me this way or that or hits hard and leaves me changed in my outlook.

"Journey by Night" is the title for the 2500-3000 word story. Pretty simple - sit down - see what jumps to mind and write the points down and create a story...

We NO, not really - this assignment gets you to write the plot down, play with it and have an ending before you start writing. This sounds so simple and I am sure that many will see this as ordinary; but not for me. I have never done this. I never know the ending. Never! I have a visual image occur to me that fits the title or ideas expressed in the chapter and I work with the characters moving in that image. I write and find the story runs/gallops or crawls it's way to the end that seems to fit or is logical. Or at least the one that feels right to me before a lightning bolt of a suggestion from the tutor changes everything and makes it better/tighter or more realistic. Which is always good and always annoying - but in a good way, because you are learning from a person of such great experience and openness.

So - back to the assignment brief. I hated the idea immediately of writing about a child traveling on a train, boat, bus etc. I wanted the child to travel on foot....at ground level, in the dark which would make any landscape scary.

Didn't think this plotting thing would work for me. So I thought about moving through a landscape - it would have to be familiar during the day and then contrast it with the night. This is my way of working with the plotting thing by approaching it sideways. This would mean the child would walk through with a parent the first time and without the second - or else why would she be scared? She - okay so it's a girl...(unexpected)...then something strange happened. I opened my work book, wrote the title and began writing a point by point breakdown of each step. The scene, settings as they appear through the story, the transgression which will lead to the night time journey and the ending - resolution. One sitting, an hour and a half of jotting, notes scribbles and post-its added with more detail or ideas...I closed the book and felt unsettled!

I am not saying it's ready. I am not saying I can start writing now. What I am saying it that I thought it would be hard, it would break with my formula and leave me struggling. But it challenged me and instead the story, in a note form, seemed to flow. I have put it aside now to allow it to mellow and I have added one post-it which came about because of the word "causality" used by Nina Milton in my last assessment.

I suddenly saw the final scene - the finding of the girl, in a place she shouldn't be, by a distraught parent who has followed her to that point because of a note left by the child.

I think I now have a little bit more understanding how Derek Landy can produce a plot layout of 80k plus words before he starts writing. Mine is 3000 words and I put together four pages of notes - a novel would create much much more -  the thought almost makes my head spin.

Now all I have to do is work through the notes as I go, stay true to the causality of the story and stick to the plot idea. I feel like I have been stretched - in a good way - and this could become the template for my future work.

Who would have guessed that this organic, dreamy, "wait for it to come along" wannabe writer would find plotting quite such a comfortable revelation!

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Websites and insights...





A few days ago I was stuck. Not stuck exactly in the writer-block-thing but more the exercise that the Writing for Children Course had suggested was consuming me and causing me stress. I have experienced this kind of thing before....so I bit the bullet and sent an email to Nina Milton (Tutor and lifesaver). 

As always she told me that I should move on, my email, while rambling (my opinion), demonstrated that I had learned the intended lesson and I needed to forge ahead.The dam burst and I was back reading through the course looking at structure and recognizing plot, plot types and story models easily. The enthusiasm flooded back.

One exercise calls for you to look at interviews with Jacqueline Wilson and Sophie McKenzie talking about how they write - trouble was that the websites listed either had changed or been dropped - no joy. It annoyed me I must confess BUT after a few minutes of frustration I moved to my personal book list read so far and began to surf. I looked up the sites for David Almond, Patrick Ness, Derek Landy and Michelle Paver. 

It is clear that the process of writing and plotting is as varied as the writers themselves - no news there I guess - each one fits the writer and I concluded that finding what fits me might be the hardest part of this chapter. 

Derek Landy – (website/blog entry address – http://dereklandy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/up-for-air.html) writes in his blog how he hammered out the plot to his book in  84,726 words BEFORE he pushes forward with the writing itself. I saw this as his way of building the scaffolding or bones of the story before the flesh is applied (ironic because the book includes a magical skeleton detective!).

David Almond advocates an organic approach - writing, playing with words and day dreaming - he doesn't mention plotting in the way that Landy does. 

And then on the OCA website ( http://oca-student.com/node/66680) I listened to Jacqueline Wilson talking about how she writes; rising in the morning and writing five hundred words (about half to three quarters of an hour) and then she has "written something". In my opinion this is someone who feels the pressure to produce (which we all do) and if you have written a certain amount then you have DONE something.

This I can relate to because when I have written something even if it is meandering and obscure I have little problem with my insomnia - my head hits the pillow and I am gone (if only for a few precious hours of deep sleep).  Then it occurred to me that I already do this in a way that suits me and especially works when ploughing on with the course. My partner rises very early and so goes to bed around half eight in the evening (spending 30 minutes with head in book) - I sit down at my computer at that time and allow myself 30 minutes for emails and catching up with news headlines etc. After 30 minutes has passed I start work - whether it is exercises, re-reading or writing something for the course assignment.

The OCA website videos and the reading of the advice of established authors shows how the process has to fit you as a writer – right from whether you prefer pen and paper first draft, computer second and then edit quickly before sending off to the agent/publisher (like Jacqueline Wilson stated in her video) or you spend over eighty thousand words plotting out your novel before you get the write the story itself. 

Hearing and reading that these authors write in so many different ways is comforting because it makes you feel, as it did with me, that it is a process and all you have to do is keep at it, find your path, because it is there and it fits you.

And if I get nothing done for the rest of this evening at least I have written this blog entry.

Monday 25 February 2013

Walking on eggshells.....




The second assignment is in - first person narrative from the point of view of a working class boy. The theme was "Hiding" and I decided that I would create a narrative that would a child not only physically hiding but also emotionally. I was always told by my Granddad that I daydreamed too much. With his stern manner and constant chore-based energy I was discouraged from making up stories in my head - he made me feel guilty because of my flights of imagination. In his mind there was no place for it - it had no usefulness unless it solved a problem which I couldn't, at that age articulate or demonstrate.

Staring into space appears very wasteful to a practical man like he was. Even as a child and young adolescent I hid my thoughts and ideas. I have my character justify his escaping to the woods away from his father after finding his friend is not at home by him painting his Dad as a ogre. Everything in his world is a disjointed amalgam of action and fantasy; at first this was a very odd idea and the more I thought about it the harder it seemed to get. Then I remembered a child walking along a road. He was carrying a stick which in the space a few yards was a hobby-horse to ride away from pursuing marauders and then a cutlass to fight off attacking pirates...there may have been a flowing narrative in the child’s mind but that's where it was - in his mind. To any adult sat waiting in his car he appeared to be "messing about wasting time".

In the story the child escapes a local Policeman (he pictures as a Vampire - the worst kind, one that cannot be burned by the sun), escapes into the fields and woods, away from his Dad working in their garden (he pictures him as an Ogre slurping up worms from the mud and scattering the pulverized bones of children as fertiliser); then avoids a farmer (who becomes the servant of a Dragon on which he sits which is an old tractor dragging cutting equipment behind to clear a path). The final character is a belligerent farmer who becomes a grasping giant...actually he was based on a real person!

As always I made the mistake of putting in too much description - or as my partner pointed out "noticing too much, would he see that?" So I edited ruthlessly and worked and re-worked. I now have a sense of relief when putting a story aside - mainly because for the hours that I become editor rather than writer (or should that be nit-picking critic?) I inhabit another part of my brain. To put it aside and come back to it with the writers’ brain firmly back in the saddle is then a joy.

So in it went...two days early! I know - not something I am used to and I hope I put as much effort in as I think I have.

I moved on and immediately hit a brick wall that has taken nearly two weeks to figure out. The course gives a breakdown of the plot to Cinderella. It's a classic! It then asks you to re-write this classic from the point on view of four characters - easy I thought. The plot is there, the characters are all known and the setting is generic. First person narrative for the Fairy Godmother - took me a couple of days and I worked hard to try and get a flow while working. I tried to get it to be the character telling the story and filling in the plot which would not be seen in the timeline (i.e. something that happened before the Fairy Godmother comes into the story) - this was hard.

I moved on - these are exercises and as such you should work on them and move on not spend days and days re-drafting (even though I wanted to!). I began to write the story from the point of view of the handsome prince and I stalled. Third person narrative should have been easy and more flexible than the first (in my opinion) but I ground to a halt - deleted everything I had written and started again. Paused - hated what I had done and discarded it again. On the third attempt I told myself I would NOT discard; so instead I put it aside and spent a week reading instead.

It then dawned on me that the problem was that I saw the story as a classic - and that was the problem. Every time I sat down to write it felt like I was going against every telling and retelling of the story. I was cutting a Turner out of its frame, break dancing to Mozart or blowing raspberries at an opera performance. And what’s more I had no idea how to “get over it!”

The only thing I have done is read – a piece of advice that Nina Milton gave me the last time I got stuck on our previous course together. So I ploughed my way through a few articles in Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2013 and skipped through a few stories (short stories for teens) of Roald Dahl.

This has worked because the message from the Yearbook, from all those writers who were just like me at one time or another, is to keep going, to learn, to make mistakes and move forward. So – as I wait for the return of the second assignment I am bracing myself to get back into the classic and however carefully, walk on eggshells…..