A New Day

I'm back on my feet after a three day enforced break. I managed to read A Graveyard Book  by Neil Gaiman while I had the migraine - in bit sized portions - and loved it. What an imaginative book, that plays with the idea of family and ghosts and prophecy and all the usual monsters (werewolves, vampires, ghouls) but in such imaginative incarnations. Highly recommended for children and for adults, though the older you are, the more you'll need the light on at bedtime.

Working on my poetry for TMA05, I've reworked a very painful scene from a bit of fiction I wrote last year about my sister's funeral. I don't cry easily, but something made me cry all day that day, as if something I'd been hanging onto for years was untied. The poem was very simple and not very good, but a few lines stood out and have become a pantoum that fits very well with the sestinas I've written. Pantoums make you repeat lines, so they have to be flexible enough to fit with different meanings but good enough to be worth repeating.

I'm completely homesick today, I haven't been home since January, and I'm playing Ludovico Einauldi's Divinire, which I last played at home, the curtains drawn, the fire lit, and the scrabble board out. Music, like smells, can evoke the past so intensely. It's only thirteen days before a Bear turns up to take me home. I'm taking some stuff with me, books and DVD's that I've read, winter clothes... to make it easier to move back home in June.Then a whole month of music and scrabble... and a few assignments, and the children. I miss the view from the window, I never tire of looking over the nature reserve, listening to the river, watching the birds. 

Week 6 of Fantastic Fiction was a bit different. We sat in the dark while our tutor read us a ghost story by candlelight. Having discussed Breathe by Cliff McNish, which I thought was excellent except for the cop out ending, we talked about ghost stories and how they work. We have homework - to write a short ghost story from simple prompts. That should keep me busy, along with the assignment.

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's one of those people I knew more gossip about than poems she had written. A363 gave us You're to play with, and I've sat down and read Ariel now from cover to cover. I fell in love with Tulips. The poem is about the black and white scene of a 1960's hospital ward...

Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in

...with the almost violent intrusion of the scarlet tulips:
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their swaddlings, like an awful baby. 

Plath talks about her husband and child as smiling, the smiles catching on her skin with little smiling hooks. The focus of the poem, like many of the poems written in the last months before her death, is about the relationship between rude life and the tranquillity of death. I have mainly avoided Plath - and Woolf for that matter - because the exploration of depression and suicide is something that I have experienced in my own family. But there's something powerful about Plath's poems that makes them so much more about her vivid experience of life than just about the lead up to her suicide.

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,

And comes from a country far away as health.

Perhaps it is that too vivid experience of life that created an intolerable stress for her, but fed her poetry. I often feel with writing poetry, you could be lost in it, just fall into it. As you try and describe authentically feelings that don't have words, you are forced to re-experience it, even if the poem is about something else. Your poetic palette is your own experience of feelings, including anguish and agony. I found this with life writing, too, you have to delve into memories and complex feelings. I started a poem about the children's ward my daughter was on (for most of a year) surrounded by children with life shortening illnesses, which is a polite euphemism for circumstances where you feel flayed alive, more by hope than by bad news, which are braced for, but the loss of hope... and all around your personal disaster movie, are all these others. I think it has the makings of a good poem, but I sit and cry when I edit it. As a therapist, I can see the benefits of draining that agonising collection of pain. As a poet, I suspect it would be better to leave well alone.

Back to School

Next week, the new semester starts so I have sharpened my pencils, bought a new notebook and am ready to start. Being overly anxious I have also read 80% of the reading lists including the poetry and am having sleepless nights about maths tests I haven't studied for and not being able to find the right rooms. This is all about meeting new people, really. I'm starting to think asking to sit in with a poetry class for no earthly reason is a bit daft but how else am I going to get ahead in poetry? And it fits with A363. Oh, seem to have answered my own question.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll start poetry, Tuesday afternoon is full-timers publishing project and Wednesday is fantastic fiction. Incidentally, I have just read Cliff McNish's Breathe, a ghost story for children with tougher skins than me, apparently. It scared me half to death. Excellent read if you keep the light on anyway. My mind seems to either write poetry or fiction, and it needs a week or so to change gear, which is a bit of a challenge. I seem to be less flexible now I'm older, in all departments.

Meantime, the time away has given me time to think about what we want to do after the course ends. Of course, I will have a dissertation to write and an EMA to hand in for A363 but then we need to settle down to another strange year. No. 1 son's final year at college but first serious look at university, older daughter's year away travelling, no. 3 son's first year at the local college, middle son's middle year at university (yes, kid, now the work begins!), youngest will hit her teens next year... the house we bought for us and a batch of tiny spongers is now bursting at the seams with all these young adults and their partners and friends. So going home means long talks, looking on Rightmove for new houses, falling in love with our present house...it's all very confusing. Kids leaving home is difficult, but them not leaving home appears to have its problems as well. I'm looking forward to the distraction of studying again, as soon as I can get back into it.

TMA03 is in!

Well, the critique is in and despite all my avoidant tactics, it wasn't bad when I came to it. My fellow student had written something that was sufficiently ripe for improvement for me to come up with a few ideas. The one thing he didn't do was identify a main protagonist early on. Now the course talks about Tobias Wolff's story Bullet in the Brain, and it's clear from the first word who the story is about. I think that helps you identify with the character, are more willing to suspend disbelief and go into that world when you care about (or in Anders case, are interested in his fate). I was surprised by the exercise, it did make me think about the role of courses and writing books in the development of my own writing. Sometimes, you feel like you're out on a  limb doing something creatively different because that's where it took you, but often you find that, actually, you've stuck to the basic format. You've internalised all those 'rules' and 'suggestions' that books and courses provide, and that makes it more accessible to the reader. By the way, I liked the story and the second half was excellent, once I was involved with a character.

Meantime I've been left with nothing apart from the novel to write and a long list of books to read. I did a bit on the novel, that was fun, and have read White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick. It's a gruesome Gothic horror for kids that takes three points of view - in different fonts no less. One, a 1790's cleric, a new girl in a  seaside village, and her contemporary, a strange little character. I loved it, though the head swapping is a bit much between the girls sometimes, especially at the end. It does say something about how complex we can get with the more sophisticated young audience. It's really dark, but not gratuitous though I did get a bit spooked out in the dark with Rebecca, in the horrible mansion with all the deaths. What can I say, I'm easily spooked - I worried myself writing bits of Borrowed Time.

Fiction module

Ouch. That was much harder work for me. I like the tutor enormously, but the cosy little group from Mondays has been added to by the second year part-timers from last year, who are an established group and a bit territorial. Lots of group dynamic stuff going on, shuffling roles. We had to do a writing exercise from a prompt which was very tricky anyway. I don't work that way, I usually do a free write, come up with a conflict of a point of tension and work from that. Being started with a first person perspective and a song was tricky. I did manage to read without stammering so that, at least, was good. Next week we are all taking in work to share and then we are on a schedule to bring more developed work to have workshopped. I volunteered to go early in the schedule, partly to get it over with and partly because I work better with feedback for structure, pace and voice rather than language. I don't need so much dissection of the actual language. Apart from my lacklustre piece, there was a genuinely creepy piece which I enjoyed immensely and a rather funny, snappy piece from another. Anyway, the exercise broke the ice.

These workshops are for two pieces of work over the semester, and reasonable big (2-4k). They can be any fiction from beginning of a novel to short story. The tutor suggested we would need 4000 words to write a short story but I love really short short stories so that might be a problem. If you hand in something really small, I wonder if it would get put under the microscope. I've got time to work something out.

A363 came on line today. Having done most of the work, it seems friendly and easy, though the standard of writing it has pulled out of me is better. It's so structured. I found the drama fascinating but difficult. I'm still wrestling with film. That strict structure is a bit of a  straitjacket too, but this way I have the freedom to use anything that wanders off into a bigger, better piece of work for the EMA (end of module assignment) or the MA. I shall put A363 comments and reflections on my other blog, except where they are general writing observations. I've received a lot of encouragement to do this year, for which I am really grateful. It's a lovely thing to be able to do, and for that I have to thank my family who have given up the most. (Suddenly I'm at the Oscars, dazzled by the lights. I shall try not to cry.) Anyway, now I have completely befuddled myself as to what I have to do when so I'm about to go out and get a proper diary to keep everything in order. The rest of my whole life is in my Mslexia diary. 

Sensory modalities and reading/writing

My husband and I listen to music completely differently. I just wander away into it, no real thoughts, just feelings. I like music when it's familiar, I've heard it a couple of times. He listens to it, for want of a better cliche, with his head, admiring how it was written, performed, the technological efforts that produced it. He loves new music. He also loves radio plays, just sits there and enjoys them (or occasionally doesn't) depending on the subject and the play itself. I don't seem to be able to listen and engage my brain at the same time (oh, this explains a lot of my school experiences!). On the other hand, he looks at text and gets slowly bored. He likes short sections of text, possibly autobiographies, preferably the shortest writing for the maximum information. Reading bores him, listening is easier for him. I hate course CD's and download the transcripts. I like long books, big stories, and get immersed in them.
When I'm writing, I 'hear' my characters' dialogue very distinctly. I see the locations (though my characters are a bit iffy, I describe them when I remember from actors' bios and pictures). The words, as read visually, have music for me, they build up lovely sequences of sounds and meaning. Reading them aloud makes them sound stilted and slow to me. Yet my radio play efforts sound clear in my head at the speed at which I can type them. It's only when I come to read them that they look odd.
One of the advantages of A215 is that I can look globally at my writing and judge whether it's good or not (at least, when I don't have a deadline looming). And, bizarrely, the radio plays are good. It makes you think about realistic dialogue, expressing more of the story in less cues. It's a very helpful exercise. Defining not only who the character is without any visual cues or internal thoughts, but also their emotions and ideas entirely in speech or sounds is a fascinating exercise.The BBC encourages people to submit scripts, even if they are the wrong length etc. and are willing to allow a bit of devlopment of a promising radio writer, by the sound of it.
It's all taking my mind off the move in a couple of weeks time, anyway! 

Packing and radio plays

What exactly do you need to go away for a year? But still leaving stuff at home because you have to come home for Christmas and Easter. If I pack all my favourite books I feel like I'm leaving for good. So I'm just packing all the literary masterpieces I have bought in the last six months but haven't really read. I also seemed to have accumulated dozens of books on writing. I must just write a list. I go around thinking 'Oh, I must remember that...' and the list is growing. It's easier to focus on what the kids need, to be honest. But if I'm going to feel at home there (very important) and be able to relax enough to work, I must remember the desk and the computer chair, and cutlery is OK but without plates... I swerve between 'It's going to be exciting' and 'Oh, help, what the hell am I doing?'.


I have started chapter seven of A363 which is about radio plays. Now, I can't stand radio. I can't even listen to story tapes. I don't mind music of course, but I read fast, and anything going slower than my normal reading speed loses my interest. Strangely, I think this might be the dramatic medium that suits me best of the three on the course.The exercises get you looking at two short stories: A Real Durwan and Violin lessons, and frankly, I can't stand either of them having looked at them so much. I'm cheating and using my own short stories to write plays etc. from. Besides, that helps with the whole TMA thing, as one at least has to be a radio/stage/screen play.  We had to look at Rose Tremain's play, Temporary Shelter, which seems pretty straightforward. The problem is, the radio plays I have recently read off the BBC website are nothing like this sensible, structured, 'here are all the characters in this setting and here's what happens next'. So I had a go at activity 7.2 (Write a scene or two which establishes a holiday destination known to you (up to 700 words) and before I knew what was happening, I was pushing one of my charcaters off a cliff. 

I'm meandering over the poetry chapter too - it's essentially a free standing unit. In fact, it would work quite well as a last chapter of the Big Red Book poetry section. I decided to have a go at a sestina - but have decided it is ridiculously difficult to keep interest in 6 words repeating over 36 lines. The poetry TMA is 80-100 lines, and most of my poems are well under 20 lines. they have to be in sonnets or in sestinas, villanelles or pantoums. (I love that the spellcheck reads these as 'villainies and phantoms').

I watched an interview with David Almond and how he wrote Skellig. He had one line, sat down and let the story write itself. He was astonished as the readers to find the tramp in the shed has wings... when I'm writing well, that's what I do, just follow the characters (not as successfully as Almond, clearly!). The problem is, planning and trying to write more 'literary' work stops that flow, makes me self conscious and question. I've set myself the task of reading all Almond's other books, see where that first book flow took him.   

A363 activities 6.1 and 6.2

Working through chapter 6 I'm in new territory. I don't like plays (or radio plays, in fact) because they seem too slow to me. Reading a book you can slow down the action, read it again if you need to sort something out in your head or savour the moment. So I don't know much about how plays are staged, but chapter 6 is making me think about things like sets and theatres.

I had to start by creating a scene where the character does very little dialogue, and the action is given in stage directions.

WOMAN is in office clothes, shrugs on coat. WOMAN walks through double doors of office building to the outside. WOMAN fumbles in pocket for matches and cigarette packet. WOMAN takes a few goes to light cigarette in wind. WOMAN smokes, blowing away from main doors. PHONE rings.

WOMAN:     Hello?

Anyway, you get the idea. So, we have to develop the first idea. Her story progresses. It's bad news, even though we only hear her few words. Then she stands stunned outside. A co-worker walks past, calling her name. Finally she opens the phone again and calls someone.

WOMAN:     Hi, Sam...It's about Dad... (CURTAIN)

Anyway, it's an interesting exercise because it makes you visualise very intensely the scene you want to create. This is when I write best, when I can see it or hear it. I wonder, is this just me? Am the only one who needs to have a film or a scene playing in my head for it to feel real? By the time I've worked on a short story, I could probably pick my characters out of a line up in the dark, from behind.

I'm working on a short story idea at the moment, about a character who is represented but isn't actually present. He's the centre of the story, but he's revealed through other people. (I used this for a character sketch ages ago). This time, his estranged daughter is coming to find out about him, and his death, and she is a fresh pair of eyes, with her own agenda (blame him, blame his friends). I'm also enjoying writing the story of an old woman who wants to conceal from the world that she needs help, in case she loses her independence. She's stuck at the bottom of her stairs at the moment, but about to start her survival challenge.  

Working on material for the ECA for A363 and MA

I know no-one ever takes advice but if I had one piece for students it would be, think ahead, don't just react to the course as it goes along. Treat assignments as if they were commissions. Find out as soon as you can what's involved and start thinking, planning, researching. So when the assignment comes around and you go blank, at least you made some notes when your brain was halfway normal. A363 has an ECA, so does the MA in the form of the dissertation. I know I will have the option of writing a substantial piece of fiction or a critical essay for the MA, I know I will take the fiction option. I know in advance I will take the beginning of a novel option for A363 too. So, even this far back in the process I am looking at what I can start writing for these important assignments. Unlike A215, when building my confidence was important, A363 just needs a good pass for my sanity, I can live without the 90+ marks I was going for before. I just want to do well on the MA, I don't need a distinction. I mostly want to create a good advanced draft of a novel.I've decided to look in detail at the YA novel I started, work on that.

I'm feeling strangely homeless as we wait to hear if we've passed our checks, if we can go to Winchester and rent a house there. The process has been so difficult. I'm wondering what it will be like to set up a separate home, to walk into a university full of people the same age as my children, and face a cliff face of learning how to write, how to read differently. I've asked my daughter to stay a couple of extra days, to help me pack the right things to make the house good for the boys, for me.

Meanwhile, the writing has stalled, in the practical difficulties. So, today, I get back on with writing new stuff. I've set myself the task of writing some new words, even a first draft of a short story or poem, that's actually new rather than redrafted old stuff. My magpie rescue is declining gently, and I have to make the decision to put him down, soon. All part of moving to Winchester, I suppose. I am going back to basics, and writing a freewrite about the bird.

Getting old and A363

For the first time in my life (so far), I have genuinely been treated as if I were old. A few days before my fiftieth birthday, this is particularly annoying. I have had estate agents talking very slowly, explaining things every carefully and refusing to comprehend that I am about to attend a university (again). The fact that son no.2 is about to go to uni for the first time is part of the confusion. So I just had to send off every tiny detail of our combined lives and an explanatory letter. Yes I am fifty. Yes, I am doing an MA. No, I'm not leaving my husband. No, really. Yes, we are broke but we can afford this. With a lot of financial juggling - I even have savings in the bank. (Everyone in the world who knows me will find this difficult to believe! But that's how serious we are about doing this.) How do people normally fund an MA? I imagine most of us create a financial crisis but do it anyway.

I am looking at the drama in Chapter 6 of the A363 coursebook (with my stated aim of trying to break the back of the course before October - which is now looking less possible). I've just worked out I have 10 weeks before the MA starts. I have nailed a first draft of the first two assignments but really need to be working on the ECA and a 2,500 word short story. I'm starting to panic at the workload, and living in Winchester looks scary. I suppose I ought to be using the stress as raw material. I'm getting more and more insecure about being able to do the MA. This is daft, they had a portfolio of my work, they can see what I can/can't do. But I'm having nightmares about school and failing things. I suppose, even if I didn't pass it, I would still have improved no end and have learned lots. And both boys would have got through their courses.

I feel bad that no.1 son's life was derailed so completely by an accident which was none of his - or the driver's - fault. A young man overtook into a corner, and we were around that corner. But it was crushing for all of us, on some level. My husband nearly died. His only injury from the accident was a fracture of a bone in his foot. Immobilising it caused a blood clot that travelled to his lungs and almost killed him,. If he didn't have a chest like a bear's and blood vessels like hosepipes he would have done. Kez seemed fine. He'd had two bangs on the head and a cut on his eyebrow which has given him a rakish scar. But he was fighting  PTSD from the start and depression eventually followed. My most mellow child became a raging, angry, self-destructive danger to himself. Two years on, he is trying to go back to his life and at 90% back to normal and a pocket full of Prozac he's going to be the other adult on the lease. So we're taking a fair amount of baggage with us down to Winchester. Maybe there's a piece of fiction asking to be written. Maybe it's for A363.

A363 TMA 1 and reading about writing.

I'm trying to get on top of the coursework for A363, the Open University's advanced creative writing. I've researched the last two years assignments and they follow a simple pattern:

TMA01 - Short story (1500) and commentary (350) or in 2008, there was a life writing option. (15%)
TMA02 - Stage, radio or film adaptation of TMA01, with a running time of 15 minutes and 500 word commentary. (25%)
TMA03 - 1000 word critique of a piece of work someone else has posted to the tutor group forum (this is difficult if the forum is a quiet one, and I can't really get ahead on that one!) (10%)
TMA04 - a proposal for the ECA of 500-750 words, it's compulsory and can be for any form taught on the course BUT it doesn't count towards your course mark.
TMA05 - write 2,500 words of either a short story or life writing OR 80-100 lines of poetry and 750 words of commentary. (40%)
TMA06 - either 1000 words of fiction OR 30 lines of poetry (in the forms in A363, sestina, sonnet, pantoum or villanelle) OR 5 minutes of drama of a section of your ECA. (10%)
ECA - A short story or the start of a novel or life writing (4000) OR 30 minutes of one of the forms of drama suggested OR  140-160 lines of poetry in an associated sequence and a 1000 word commentary.

I don't really understand the weighting of the TMA's but still! It does mean I can do TMA's 1 and 5 now and maybe have a go at TMA02. I don't have to do poetry unless I really want to (80-100 lines is a lot to commit to!) and since short fiction and long fiction are my strong points I can avoid life writing and poetry if I want to. All this assuming they don't change dramatically next year, I can get on and write two good chunks of fiction now and maybe the screenplay, then start work on the ECA. I reckon I can put together a first draft, get feedback, incorporate my combined learning and then get a reasonable ECA in.

I realise some people think I'm barking mad but I have already committed to 180 points at masters level next year, so while the courses are complementary, if I don't want to be overwhelmed I need some TMA's in draft at least, or better still, a bunch of fiction pieces that I can work on during both courses. I managed not to overlap my last two courses by submitting the same piece to both, in any form, but lots of the pieces have subsequently been sent off to magazines and competitions. So that's the ideal, some starting points. I suspect the MA will spark loads of original ideas and masses of new writing, but it would be reassuring not to have to polish more new work for A363!  The reason I have overwhelmed myself with too much work in the first place is that the diploma in literature and creative writing is being withdrawn at the end of 2011 so if I want that, I need to pass A363. All my marks for A215 were between 83 and 93 but I can't guarantee the same next year.

I'm reading books on writing again. I'm presently working on the interesting (and slim!) volume written by a lecturer on my MA. It's called Writing Fiction: Creative and Critical Approaches by Amanda Boulter. It looks at the two processes involved in creating fiction: the mad, freewriting, throw-it-on-the-page process and the thoughtful, informed process of critically revising and constructing the work.It seems (so far) to be offering an argument that creativity can be inportant in both parts of the process. But by understanding the critical process as well as the creative one, writing can be improved.
She quotes Hemingway who said: 'I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you.' Anyway, I'm onto chapter 1 for a bit of light reading!

Creatively, I have a new short story on the go and it's from an unusual point of view. I really should be writing it!

Chapter 4 - into drama.

OK, deep breath, hold it...and dive in. I'm really nervous about the drama bit, even though I have a feeling one of the three forms (radio play, stage play or screenplay) will probably be fine. I had to write a piece of dialogue between two characters and had some fun with it. I must admit, as I write the voices do start to sound in my head.

Me: I have no idea what I'm doing, really. I mean, it's not like fiction, is it? Fiction is my thing.
A363: It's exactly like fiction. You are making stuff up, characters and settings, and making stories happen. Isn't that what you do in fiction? Anyway, I recall that chapters one, two and three were all fiction.
Me: Well, I don't like plays.
A363: You said that about life writing.
Me: But...
A363: And poetry. A fair few tears over poetry, as I remember.
Me: Well, I can't stand radio. I can't even listen to story tapes.
A363: I'm not asking you to listen to radio. I'm telling you to write one small radio play. You can make coffee, can't you?
Me: Of course.
A363: And do you like coffee?
Me: Can't stand the stuff.
A363: I think I have made my point. Do you think your husband puts on the radio and brews two litres of coffee in his office to keep you out?
Me: Hadn't thought about it...until now.

As time went on 'Me' became a sulky child and 'A363' a smug bastard. I wonder where this double act is going. 

I can really recommend the BBC writers room website for its brilliant advice and even better, template for Word.  It was a bit of a fiddle to download (well, to find it in my antiquated version of word!)

Birdbaths and blogs

I started the day with a bird bath. The magpie we rescued is refusing all suggestions that he might like to splash in the dog bowl full of clean, fresh water provided. It's a first for me, most birds love to bath especially if they can cover a wide area with splashes and preferably poo as well. I got a plant sprayer and started squirting him gently on the worst bits, below the tummy, where he tends to sit in poo. I'm trying to teach him to perch - which he is doing at the moment just to show off. 'I can perch if I want to,' he is saying, 'but I prefer to sit in a puddle of poo.' All corvids are bloody minded. Magpies have a reputation of being the worst of the bunch. And he hasn't got a name yet because I am still not sure he isn't on a one-way journey to the vet.

I'm gently pottering through A363 chapter 3, working towards the TMA which I hope will be a short story (there's bound to be a short story at some point! Surely!)

I started with activity 3.1, looking for a news story and came up with one on the BBC website. Two people had crashed their car, which burst into flames but two men rescued them by bashing in their sunroof. The exercise made me look at where the sources actually came from - the people concerned didn't write the article, there were only secondary sources available. But the story was written up to be as dramatic and accurate as the reporter could make it - if made exciting to read so his editor would print it.

The next section looked at research - what efforts we have to put into making a piece seem real. Sarah Water's wrote The Night Watch and the research may not make it authentically historically accurate but it feels right for the 2010 audience. In my romance writing era I had to look carefully at language etc. to make a Regency period piece seem a bit Jane Austen like but not too old fashioned. Georgette Heyer's regency novels and full of archaisms, yet have a very thirties and forties energy and post-suffragette lively characters. We're living in a  post-pill, post-sexual revolution world, how can we make a Regency heroine who sits on her sprigged muslin arse and waits for Mr. Right (or Mr. Darcy, for that matter) to ask us to marry us. Even if we then exercise our little power and say no, thus committing social suicide. Heyer got it right, because she did masses of research but I don't think many historical writers do. I was completely convinced of Water's world.

We then looked at Liz Jensen's War Crimes for the Home also set in WW2. Again, the little details make it seem spot on, creating an authentic feel. I have ordered both books, both dragged me in. I chose Lindy-hop from the list of topics to research in activity 3.4 and came up with several ideas for a story, just from the research which was riveting. I can see this is a rich vein of potential ideas for original stories. Just this one idea got me into racial integration in the early 1930's, the cultural message of the GI's during WW2 (also in Jensen's book!) and a wide range of other sources.

I was surprised to find that Stef Penney when she wrote The Tenderness of Wolves had never been to Canada, but good research and a powerful imagination put her there. There's hope for the widely read but thinly travelled me, then!

Rejection

I've been getting rejections - but for the first time in my life, I'm not hiding away crying. My latest wasn't that bad anyway:

Unfortunately we felt that your writing relied a shade too heavily on its plot and, as a result, the characters did not get a chance to spring to life. Sorry we're unable to use your work.

Definitely progress! I expect to see further criticisms of my settings, dialogue and characterisation but each magazine is a new market and it takes time and practice to find what works. I have so many pieces of work out there at the moment I don't feel too bad about the rejections. The board presently has eight competition entries or short stories out there. I put more out there and get them back every week. I have three poetry entries to go off - that's my next job. I hope to have 12-20 short stories to peddle around while I'm working on my MA, just ready for a bit of tarting up and tweaking for each magazine.

Meanwhile, I'm reading the Bridport Prize anthologies to get inspired for the first TMA for A363 - a 1500 word short story. I need something that would be 'easy' to adapt for drama of some sort. But the Bridport and Mslexia short story competitions have told me something - concentrate on an unusual theme. Tell a unique story rather than a commonplace story cleverly told. Back to A363, chapter 3.

I did play around with activity 2.10 and came up with a cute freewrite giving it a lyrical treatment then changing the pace:

Folding the laundry (Long slow version)

I find in the basket a nest of clean memories: the day we walked in the rain into town and found the comedy T-shirt my son loves; the colourful socks we bought half price before the Co-op closed down; washed and rewashed sunny days of our youngest’s favourite colourful top. The scent is unique to laundry that has been hung out in the garden, refreshed by breezes flowing off the Atlantic, winding their way down the valley, running aerie fingers through pants and shirts, socks and jeans, on their way to the east. I gather a T-shirt to my face, to inhale the last of that sea air, the fresh detergent, and underneath, the scent of my family. Tumbled in some soapy soup, socks wandering into jumpers, sleeves waving in the bubbly softness, turning, waving through the porthole on their journey to the garden. I smooth the softness in my hands, arrange in piles. A T-shirt remains from my daughter’s exodus, and is held a little longer, a small part of her presence in an uncertainty of her return. The top I took from my sister’s wardrobe after she died, one of her favourites, silky in my hands. It is a little smoother, more glamorous than any of my clothes, it retains some thing of her personality.

Folding the laundry (short fast version)

I find the basket is a nest of clean memories. There’s the day we walked in the rain into town and found the comedy T-shirt my son loves. And, before the Co-op closed down, we bought these colourful socks half price. Here is our youngest’s favourite top, washed and rewashed: a memory of sunny days. The scent is unique to laundry that has been hung out in the garden. Refreshed by breezes flowing off the Atlantic, winding their way down the valley. They run aerie fingers through pants and shirts, socks and jeans, on their way to the east. I gather a T-shirt to my face, to inhale the last of that sea air. There is the tang of fresh detergent, and underneath, the scent of my family. Tumbled in some soapy soup. Socks wandered into jumpers, sleeves waved in the bubbly softness. They turned, waved through the porthole on their journey to the garden. I smooth the softness in my hands, arrange in piles. A T-shirt remains from my daughter’s exodus. It’s held a little longer, a small part of her presence in an uncertainty of her return. The top I took from my sister’s wardrobe after she died was one of her favourites. It’s silky in my hands. It is a little smoother, more glamorous than any of my clothes. It retains some thing of her personality.

 I don't know why I called it short - it's the same length but punchier. Both serve a purpose, it is going to make me vary my work more, anyway.

A363 and activity 2.4

Working through pages 18 and 19 sparked a lot of ideas - looking at the story from the antagonist's point of view can reveal different conflicts and plot twists. This came out of activity 2.4, telling a story from the POV of someone you don't like/sympathise with. I then elected to leave the protagonist's part out all together, as if you were listening to one half of a phone conversation. Hopefully, imagination and empathy from the reader will fill in the blanks. I'm only putting part of it up, as I'm working on it for a flash fiction comp - I'm better at flash than I thought, as you hack away all the unecessary verbiage you leave the story clean of extra weight.

Of course I remember you. Nineteen eighty eight? George and Janice Fisher, carers, I have the file here.

Do you know how highly people thought of the Fishers?

George stood up for you in court…you know, when your mother—when she had her breakdown.

Most kids like a bit of rough and tumble. And kids love being tickled, my own grandson…and you did ask to go back to them. How old were you then? Nine? Ten.

He always spoke highly of you. You were placed there for six years and did very well. That was after your Mum died, wasn’t it?

I think you should consider everything he did for you. Just because there were a few silly games you didn’t like…

I don’t think an eleven year old would even know what an erection was.

This kind of conflict immediately ramps up the tension, compared to say, the description of someone nervously approaching this officious social worker or whatever he/she is. I imagined her as a late middle aged social worker trying to fend off a potential lawsuit.

Having enjoyed activity 2.5 and read V.S. Pritchett's short story, I tried to follow this with the story of two women, both mothers, sitting together in a hospital corridor. At first, they seem to ahve more in common than conflict, then I let their differences come in. This is VERY first draft.

Trina looked in her handbag for a mint, a bit of chewing gum maybe. Nothing.
‘My Marcus, he’s at college now, you know.’
Marilyn looked straight ahead. ‘I heard. Engineering, wasn’t it?’
‘The government give a grant, it’s called a bursary. They need engineers that badly. He’s doing really well, passed everything so far.’
‘Good for him. At least he’ll be able to get a proper job.’
That stung. Trina sat up. ‘What do you mean? My husband works very hard. It’s not easy to get work around here.’
That wasn’t strictly true. He had been a very hard worker when Trina met him, but now they got by on her wages at the Co-op and the odd job he would manage off the books.
Marilyn rolled her head towards Trina, not quite meeting her gaze. ‘I didn’t mean nothing.’
Trina sat and smarted for at least a minute. ‘At least I got a husband.’ It was supposed to be under her breath, but it came out louder than she had expected, in the echoing hospital hallway.
‘I’ve got a husband, too. We’re separated, that’s all. Marriages go through bad patches. Andy’s been very low since his Dad died.’
Trina snorted, but in a ladylike way. Bad patch.
Marilyn’s voice sounded softer. ‘We shouldn’t argue, not now.’
Right enough. Still no news.

I've now got 7 short stories out and five more pieces for competitions. I had to come up with a filing system, and gave the stories proper cards and stuck them on the notice board - it looks like a writer's room (except for the admittedly quirky accesories: a giant box of lego, a basket of mismatched socks, a spare door for an Aga, a sewing machine and a sickly magpie in a cat carrier.

Amazing revelation no.73

I'm not actually counting how many revelations I've had about my writing recently, but it's got to be at least 73. Yesterday I went to a local village hall with a very small group of amateur children (very young kids, some of them) and heard them speak the words that I wrote. Not literary masterpieces, in fact the children told me the characters and stories, at least in overview. I just filled in the words, in first draft, for them to edit and trash and rearrange and ultimately own. They used them just as they were, pretty well, and I had the magical experience of hearing my words as I imagined them, spoken by a lovely cast of kids. Maybe I would feel the same about a radio/stage play for adults. The A363 course focuses partly on dramatic styles, and like the life writing which terrified me and the poetry, I can see how how it will inform my fiction. This is the first scene of one of the plays - beautifully acted by the young lady who came up with the story.

Characters: Jake: an outlaw woodcutter who lives with his grandparents
Storyteller: An olde worlde reporter who follows people around looking for a good fairy story.
Pops: Jake’s grandfather, who is old
Granny: Jake’s grandmother, who had arthritis
Volcano: Just the voice of the volcano oracle, who gives people wisdoms providing they tell the truth.
Witch: Evil witch who lives a hundred miles away and keeps a monster as a pet. She grows magic flowers to feed her pet, otherwise he will attack her.
Monster: Non-speaking acting part
Herald: brings news from the king, a bit pompous and self important!


SCENE ONE:

THE GARDEN OF THE HUMBLE OUTLAWS’ COTTAGE. JAKE IS CUTTING WOOD, AND STACKING IT UP. THE STORYTELLER IS ADDRESSING THE AUDIENCE.

Storyteller: (dramatically, to the audience) Our story begins in a lovely little land. (shakes his head)
No rewind that. (thinks a bit)
Our story begins in a land full of fear and terror.

Jake: (cutting wood) Fear and terror, hah!

Storyteller: Yes, fear and terror. Hey, you – local person. Tell me more about the fear and terror.

Jake: You mean the king.

Storyteller: Is the king a terrible tyrant? Is he a bully, does he chop people’s heads off? Does he torture them to death in dungeons beneath his castle?

Jake: (sarcastically) Oh, yes, he’s a terrible tyrant is our king.

Storyteller: So what’s so terrifying in this (looks around, pauses) charming little land.

Jake: Actually, nothing. It’s the king that’s terrified. He’s frightened of his own shadow. We call him King Henry the Trembling.

Storyteller: He’s an anxious king? Scared of spiders, that sort of thing?

Jake: No, I mean literally scared of his own shadow. They’ve painted all the walls grey so he can’t see his shadow following him around. He’s a nothing king, no-one takes any notice of him, unless they have to pay his taxes.

Storyteller: Well, this isn’t going to make a very good story, is it? Where’s the drama in a slightly annoying king and a few taxes?

Jake: Well, I’m sorry about that but I have to get on. All this lot of wood has to be loaded onto the boat for the trip down the river.

Storyteller: (Looking more interested) Are you going to rescue your true love? Is the wood in some way magical or special? Maybe you are on a quest?

Jake: Nope. So either get out of the way or help me move it.

Storyteller: (picking up a small piece of wood to Jake’s huge armful) So, boy, what are you doing with this wood?

Jake: I’m taking it down the river to sell. My Grandfather is old and my Grandmother is ill. So, I have to bring in the pennies, ha’pennies and farthings.

Storyteller: Your grandmother, is she under a curse? Maybe she has offended evil fairies or has eaten poisoned apples? Come to think of it, your cottage is a bit – (looks around with disdain) run down.

Jake: This is the Outlaws’ Cottage. It’s a bit damp. And small. And dark. And the well isn’t very good, and the privy is falling down, and the thatch is full of rats. It makes my grandmother’s arthritis worse. But if I sell all the wood, we’ll have a few shillings, enough to buy food for the winter. But lots of people won’t deal with us, what with us being outlaws. We just get the leftovers from the market and then they overcharge us.

Storyteller: (to the audience) There must be a story here somewhere. (Turning to Jake) How did a boy like you get to be an outlaw, anyway?

Jake: I haven’t got time for this. Pops! Granny!

THE GRANDPARENTS STAGGER OUT OF THE COTTAGE.

Jake: Pops, you know what they said down the market. There has to be a way to cure the king. Maybe then he will be grateful and stop us being outlaws.

Pops: Now, Jake, remember what I said. Just go to the market. I know they talk about the volcano oracle in the market, but that’s too dangerous for you. Just buy as much food as you can, and hopefully we can just get through the winter.

Granny: They probably couldn’t even cure the king, he’s been scared so long. He was always a bit sensitive for my liking, even when he was a little boy. Do your best, Jake, and whatever you buy, we’ll make it last.

Jake: Well, hopefully I’ll get a good price for the wood and we’ll get some decent food this time.

Pops: Flour without weevils would be nice.

Granny: And vegetables without maggots, and cheese that isn’t hard and green. But you just do your best, Jake. We’ll be OK.

Storyteller: (to the audience) Not even a good human interest story, really. There isn’t much of a market for fairy stories about the elderly.

CURTAIN FALLS

Meanwhile, I'm working on the course. Activity 1.3 got me reading the short story 'Violin Lessons' by Derek Neale to identify genre. It's got a lot of elements of fairy stories in it, a man in a workshop and a boy, the local woods, machinery that can kill you, a young girl... But the threats that emerge are more crime - he fantasises about the machines drawing her in and killing her - then the girl goes missing. But the man is, in many ways, sexually naive, it is the children who are knowing and rather aggressive. It turns out the provocative girl has run away with her violin teacher. So it raises expectations from one genre to the next, then does something unexpected but bot jarringly so.

I also had a nice rejection letter for a short story, which would have left me sobbing in a ball in a cellar somewhere (I know we don't have a cellar, but metaphorically, that's where rejection used to put me. Woman's Weekly beckons, I think!

Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for submitting Moving the desk for consideration by the Candis reader panellists. On this occasion, I’m afraid your story has not been selected for inclusion on the fiction pages of Candis. As you know we can only accept twelve short stories a year from the hundreds we are sent in so please don’t be discouraged. What may not be accepted for Candis may well be quickly snapped up by another publication.

I do wish you continued luck with your short stories and look forward to reading other submissions from you in the future.

Very best wishes,

Debbie

Debbie Attewell
EDITOR

Moving smartly on to A363

Well, enough shaking and wittering about A215, as it's a done deal, in the past, over and out. Until the results come out, of course... OK, a small amount of wittering still to come! Anyway, A363 starts today (for me, anyway!)

So, I had a look at the very beginning of chapter 1, and it started looking at genre. Not just big genre like poetry or fiction or drama but sub-genres like crime or romantic fiction. So, we got a short passage and had to look at it as if it had one of five different titles, which each suggested a different genre. I must admit, the title does set up certain expectations! Then we had to write a follow up (in activity 1.2) from some of the titles. So in the crime drama/mystery beginning, the body lies across the church doorway and the figure glides away, the body that of someone who has majorly pissed someone off and the figure - maybe the killer - or someone who witnessed it? If the same words were part of a romantic mystery titled 'The Betrayal', my focus was on the person who found the body and the woman who glided away, the inference that the characters will be central. If I was to write 'My Problem with Peyote' the body in the doorway wouldn't even be dead! So, pages 1-3 sorted. On my way!

There are also some top poetry comps coming up:
National poetry comp 31 October
Bridport prize 30 June
Wells Festival of Literature 31 July
Mslexia poetry comp 26 July
Poetry London Comp 31 May (OK, this one is a bit close!)

As usual, Mslexia are full of ideas for editing. Here for inspirational approaches to editing.

I tried the babelfish thing too! Babelfish, if you don't know, translates English into other languages, just put 'babelfish' into your search engine. Then translate it back - and the words are different, pick out any interesting changes!

So:

She never lies, she never says ‘no’.
Her hands are smooth in memory,
Her body slender, unlined, pictured
Forever at twenty three or thirty two.
No demands of flesh, no meaty needs.
Her brain does not snip or snipe
As she rests, under a blanket of grass,
A silver birch, waving to the road.

becomes

Elle ne se trouve jamais, elle ne dit jamais le `no'. Elle des mains sont lisse dans la mémoire, Son corps mince, sans doublure, décrit pour toujours à vingt-trois ou à trente-deux. Aucunes demandes de chair, aucuns besoins de viande. Son cerveau ne coupe pas ou ne tire un coup de feu pas d'un coup de ciseaux Comme elle se repose, sous une couverture d'herbe, le bouleau argenté d'A, saluant la route.

and back again!

It is never, it never says the `no'. It with the hands smooth in the memory, Its body thin, without lining, are described for always with twenty-three or thirty-two. Aucunes requests for flesh, aucuns needs for meat. Its brain does not cross or does not draw a shot not d' a blow of scissors As it rests, under a cover d' bleaches on grass, the birch silver plated d' With, greeting the road.

I love greeting the road, for example, and hands smooth in the memory.

ECA finally gone

Oh, well, it's gone now, it's probably good enough for a 2 and is within a chance of a distinction, which would be my very first ever. Would make a nice starting point for a BA too! The Open University is a bit addictive - we should just have holidays like normal people...

Onwards and upwards to A363. Apparently we are going to learn more about: ways of writing (looking at writing for readers); Writing drama (for which we have to adapt a piece of writing for a dramatic medium like film or radio); and developing style, to create more interesting writing. That's the intro sorted, now I just need to get on with the actual writing and reading exercises. there is less guidance in this course, so I might spend more time on the exercises and TMAs that I otherwise might have. The plan is to get this (smaller) book done by September with drafts of TMA's on fiction, drama and poetry sorted. Then I can maybe sort out something for the other TMAs when the actual assignment book comes (9th September, apparently). Then I won't feel so stressed, I suspect.

Daughter has had end of year exams at uni, and with the ECA I seem to have picked up a bit too much adrenaline, I think I need a few days in a darkened room. Pretty unlikely to happen, though - the kids have their Chaucer project on Sunday and I have things to sort out for the trip to Winchester. I shall breathe more easily when we have found somewhere to live.

In the meantime, I have fiction to go off and short stories to edit. What I would like to do is to start a few first drafts, something to work with for the course(s) coming up . maybe next week!