Creative Writing

To celebrate TMA03 cut off date: 23rd February 2012, I managed to finish reading through the Life writing chapter when I came home from work this evening. This sounds rather more impressive than it actually is. I did say 'read through' - I did none of the exercises, though I did do the readings. Now I have to decide what this means to me. There's some good stuff in this chapter and I feel I know more about what is required and have a much better idea of what sort of thing I'm going to try. It might be that I don't re-read the chapter but just start listing some TMA ideas. This would be wholly consistent with my attitude with the course so far. I don't know. I need to think a bit about this one.

I was impressed with the Dervla Murphy reading which taps into my first love of travel writing. Of course to do travel writing it helps to have traveled. She has. Extensively. There is a part of me that thinks if she couldn't write entertainingly and well given the experiences she appears to have had, there'd be something amiss. But this actually misses the point because if I have picked up one thing and one thing only from this rapid read through of this chapter it is this: you don't have to tell the truth. Like with fiction writing there is always a kernel of truth, but that's it. How you dress it up for your audience is up to you. So, it's not that she lived an interesting life - though she undoubtedly did (does - she's still with us) it's that she has a novelists's imagination - see Chapter 1, we're there again. Don't forget - it's ridiculously easy to do so, this course is called 'creative writing.'