Tutor Forum Exercise

I haven't posted onto this blog for ages. What's worse is that I haven't done any exercises from the BRB since the poetry phase. I have been working on an idea for TMA04 and have an embryonic idea for the dreaded EMA, but no exercises. So, the tutor has woken me from my exercise slumber and given us a couple of exercises to do.

The first exercise involves - tell you what I'll copy the damn thing here:

The aim of this exercise is to tap into memory and recount an experience using vivid sensory recall.

Make a list of six intense physical experiences you have had. Here’s an example of the things you may include (I’ll leave it to you to work out what you can’t include –see note on ‘powerful’ material in the Assessment Booklet, p7!):

• Repetitive work on a factory line;
• Travel sickness;
• Giving Birth;
• Falling in love with someone’s voice;
• Being part of a festive crowd;
• A dramatic haircut or restyle;
• Learning to swim;
• Singing in a choir.

Select one experience and write an account of it, including as much sensory detail as you can about sights, sounds or smells, as well as what you thought and felt.

Post your piece in reply to this thread.

I selected learning to swim as I thought it offered plenty of opportunities for sensory detail. Now I'm wondering whether to reproduce it here as I'm conscious of TMAs to come. Notably, 05 for which I have no material whatsoever. It's a shame this business of not being able to stick work on your blog in case there are loftier intentions for it later. As a compromise I'll reproduce the second activity which was, I think, far less impressive.

The aim of this second exercise is to get you to experiment with pacing, a particularly important skill in life writing because you will constantly have to choose what to dwell on, and what to summarise quickly or omit.

Summarise ten years of your life (or your subject’s life, if you’re choosing to write biography) in a paragraph or two. Then pick one event from of those ten years and write a paragraph or two only about that.

Post your 2 – 4 paragraphs to this sub-forum.

This second exercise was about through-lines, though the term as you can see, is not used in the above text. My first effort missed that point so it wasn't particularly well received - typical shit sandwich deal, plenty to like here, but... you know the drill. So I refashioned it to reflect what I hope was more of what was looked for:

Because I hated school for reasons I now cannot fathom since I've loved learning ever since, I left as early as I could with very few academic qualifications. This meant that I became a job drifter (this was the early 1970s and it was possible). During this period I worked on building sites, garage workshops, timber yards, farms, shops, offices and factories. It really was quite simple, when I got fed up, I left. If I didn't like someone there, I left, if I thought I could earn more somewhere else, doing something else, I left. Finally I shook myself up and realised that I was on verge of becoming a loser, so I joined the RAF and asked them to get a grip of my life. But I was not easy to lick or kick me into shape.

Before I knew it I was fully kitted out in ill fitting dungarees, a backpack with a sleeping bag badly buckled to the top that threatened to topple over at any moment, and a pair of stiff new boots that we were told to urinate in before wearing, if we wanted to avoid blisters the size of golf balls half way round the perimeter track we were going to be force marched around. I could feel the dampness around my feet as the march started. I could smell the acid mixing with the sweat and the mustiness of these old uniforms. This was the start of the weeding out process. Those who couldn't hack it would be on the next train home. I walked faster than I'd ever walked - felt my shins stiffen immediately. Pretty soon it felt like I was wearing splints. My helmet was spilling over my eyes one minute, biting into my skull the next. A little man a full six inches shorter than me wearing stripes and whose sole aim seemed to be to break our spirits, pushed his face into mine as I walked and gasped and sucked in air trying to stay within touching distance of the leading group. He called me a useless fucking twat for falling slightly behind. Even under this physical trauma I noticed the tobacco stains on his teeth, the flecks of spittle at the corner of his mouth and the mock hatred in his eyes. He was acting, but this was no game.