Notes on Blogs and Notes.

One of the less hysterical of the myriad celebrations taking place in my house at the moment, following the end of A363, is me coming back to the blog or blogging - perhaps where this writing fixation began. And this will be a very ordinary blog as opposed to something lifted from the spotty inspirations generated from A215 and latterly A363. An old fashioned blog entry where one sits at the key board without a copy of Developing Dramatic Technique individual Style and Technique sitting on my lap - or within spit-rattling distance of its precursor Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings. No. Just a blog to say it's over. Though what 'over' actually means in this context should perhaps be interrogated a little.

I would say that to answer my own question about what it's 'over' means it would be no longer writing to order, being incredibly fussy about word length, trying to fit in as many techniques as taught as possible lest one is marked down for not applying what has been learned. But not writing.  Writing's not over. Don't be silly.

If writing is not over the problem I have now is where to take this newly polished skill. I feel in a way - all dressed up with nowhere to go. Feasted and gorged with nowhere to throw. I started, once I'd unraveled the arcane business of dialogue construction and getting to grips with show over tell, writing short stories.  I enjoyed this, but always knew that I was too heavily dependent on my own life experiences. No surprise when life-writing as a genre came up I luxuriated in it, though my cupboard of stories was quickly depleted leaving very little of interest for any fiction to come. I enjoyed both and I suppose that's where my future might lie - a kind of blended genre of life writing and fiction - though I certainly would have to apply many of the principles taught on the courses for this to succeed.

Chief among these advice principles according to A215 is in always carrying a writers notebook. I can't argue with this. So simple an idea, but so wide ranging a concept. It doesn't have to be a physical notebook - though this is a good start - it cold just as easily be a note taking application or vocal recording device on a smart phone. Either way it would fit several functions. It would motivate you to see, hear, smell and remember things that you encounter, it would provide inspired nuggets later when you feel the cupboard is, if not bare, not prompting any thoughts, and it would allow a reference list of ideas for later - given the twists and turns of the vicissitudes of daily life. I'm not writing about sunflowers at the moment - but I might need to describe them sometime in the future. Who'd have thought I would be writing about lilies, heather, and nightingales prior to May 2012? Or differing brands of cider presses or wildlife found in the Andean Cloud Forests of Peru during 2013?

All good stuff. But it's a shame beyond utterances that the writer's notebook remains something of a rare species about my body despite my knowing its inestimable qualities.  I can talk it up with the best of them - but I need to literally put words into action. Trouble is I'm so badly organised. And my efforts largely have led to broken pens, ink spilled all over my underwear, shirt, hands. Notebooks that look so broken and battered they might have been retrieved as artifacts from a war trench. Illegible writing - missing pages, pages falling out. Smudges, scratchings  doodlings, and mind-numbing examples of mundane life that could never be mistaken for artistic observation,  like shopping lists, car prices and currency converters.  Left behind at home in this or that other pair of trousers. the litany of failure goes on and on.

I'm sure I can bring some of this learning and experience to some kind of fruition, but I know I'll not get very far unless I sort out this business with the writer's notebook.

So much for that. Over the next few weeks I'm sure I'll be free writing about other things post writing courses.  The' free write' of course is another technique - one I'm using now - that requires a blog entry all of its own.

Tutorial 1 Part 1

A senior admin assistant and a bread roll.

He sits and looks at the object,

regards it from every angle.

Decides that it looks inedible so,

picks it up and throws it out of the window.

Then, realises that he has performed a selfish act,

takes off down the stairs at the speed of fright,

pushes open the fire-doors,

emerges into the daylight

and hears the alarm he's just set off.

Then gesticulates wildly as security start to question him

and, pointing to the bread roll, now squashed in the road

Looks sorry.

And cries.

Tutorial 1 Part 2

Write a central character monologue based on the earlier scenario which should have involved nothing but actions. 

'And what are you looking at eh? Think it's funny that soon I'm going to be living in a poky flat with a landlord treating me like a student, surrounded with furniture bought off eBay, or from clearance auctions or liberated from recycle centres or gifts from charity minded people. What do you have to worry about - wrapped in your cellophane envelope and your sickly looking innards spilling through your sides? Ham - it'll be that watery stuff she always buys - looks like meat, acts like meat - isn't really meat, just pink fat and utterly tasteless.   Lettuce - brown at the sides, like me, showing its age. Lettuce bloody pray. Someone ought to pray for me for Christ sake.  Why on earth did she make the thing for me if she wants our marriage to end?.  "I've left your sandwich on the kitchen top - just next to the toaster." . she shouts down the stairs this morning with her hand cupped on the speaker part of the phone.  No doubt making plans for the day with her new best friend Shelia she met at spinning class.   Plans that don't and never will involve me. . Yeah, well, why did she even make you if it she hates me and wants to move on, find herself,  have 'me' time instead of 'us' time. What the hell is 'me' time anyway? - doesn't even work, 'me time' - makes me feel sick. 'Me time' - too much day time TV, too many of those life style shows - too much talk of self-empowerment and confidence building and I-will-survive-crap she's been drip fed by her chattering friends at that bloody book circle thing she goes to.  Most of them are divorced or have new partners. Partners.  Everyone has a partner these days, Whatever happened to man and wife. Old fashioned I guess. She thinks the same. I'm no longer required. Defunct.  I'm yesterdays news - like you, like a  bread roll. If I eat you, you're gone. As gone as I'll be. If I throw you from the window you'll be gone.  Maybe I'll follow you out of the window and we'll both be gone. Maybe we should both make a pitch for our own little bit of freedom, Maybe we should both look for a little bit of fucking 'me' time and go window flying. "Your sandwich is on the counter next to the toaster."  I should've left you there. '  

Tutorial 1 Part 3

Write a piece of dialogue involving the central character and one other - neither of whom are capable of saying what they really want to say.  

Admin Assistant:  Mr Breckenridge, I was hoping that you’d had time to sign the…sir are you all right.

Senior AA:  (distracted)   Uh-huh. Sorry Jenny I was just… what do you see there?

Jenny:  Where sir?

Mr Breckenridge:  On the table, there – what do you see?

Jenny:  Well nothing – just your sandwich, is it?

Mr Breckenridge:  No Jenny it’s not just my sandwich, it is in fact the last meal of a condemned man, wrapped tight in an invisible skin, just like me, ready to be consumed. As I am. (looks at open window)

Jenny: I’m sorry sir I don’t…

Mr Breckenridge:  No.  Course you don’t.  Course you don’t.  Everything all right with you, Jenny, is it?

Jenny: Oh yes Mr Breckenridge. Going out tonight with my friend Hannah, can’t wait – we’re all meeting at the skate park and going on to that new…sir, are you all right?

Mr Breckenridge: Yes Jenny I’m fine – you run along to that umm – skate park with ahh…Leona, is it? And, I’ll be along directly.

Jenny:  Mr Breckenridge?  Sir?    No, I what I meant to say was that I’m going out tonight with my friends not going anywhere at the mo -.  You are all right aren’t you, Mr Breckenridge?

Mr Breckenridge: She’s leaving me.

Jenny: Who? (longish pause). Who…’s leaving you Mr Breckenridge?

Mr Breckenridge: You see that bread roll Jenny – ham and lettuce, my favourite fillings. Mrs Breckenridge made that for me this very morning. Left it on the kitchen top. By the toaster.

Jenny:  I… don’t understand.

SAA: Nor me Jenny.  Nor me. More things in Heaven and Earth eh?

Jenny: I’ll just leave these on the desk if that’s all right Mr Breckenridge. (exits nervously)  

           

Activity 2.10

This is the consequence of Activity 2.10 which I posted on my tutor forum. Apart from the tutor who's paid to look and comment,  it's been met with a stony silence from everyone else. Can't say I blame them, I've yet to comment on anyone else's  work - surely this is that hardest part of this course: peer critiquing . That said it is a  part of the course and you won't pass it without getting involved in one another's work. Activity... 

Two voices one agitated and pissed off the other a model of calm reasonableness. The idea behind this activity is to practice putting together two opposing viewpoints. This is my first go.  Any resemblance that might be detected from within my own life is purely coincidental.  

'The mother in law has threatened to come and visit next Sunday. Christ, she must realise that's the only day Jane and I have to catch up with our busy lives. Sunday is our day, in my mind at least, and I wish I could protect the day from the unwanted interference of others.

I include the whole bloody lot of them. All the kids have left home. About time too. Now it's me time, or rather 'us' time. It sounds insufferably selfish I know, but I'm fed up with sharing Jane with everyone else. They'll all be bringing their problems with them on their week-end visits between now and Christmas and expect us to spend time solving them, talking through their problems with them, spending quality time with them. But what about me I say. Us, Jane and me. When do we get good quality time? I work all week in north Wales and watch telly or read a book in the evenings sometimes ending up climbing the walls with boredom. She's in Aberdeen all week staying in a hotel. The week-ends should be our opportunity to rekindle our friendship and try to reignite the fire in our relationship. How the hell can we do that when we have the cast of Ben Hur (figuratively speaking) waiting in the wings for our attention every bloody week end.

The dog goes mad every time people come into the house, jumping on the furniture, and given his advanced age for a springer spaniel he's now taken to relieving himself on the hall carpet or even in the lounge with the utter excitement of it all. Dirty bloody thing! And as for the mother in law, how long before she gets to that stage? Already I have to help her up the stairs and have to carry her bags to her room like a bloody Sherpa . And she's going deaf which means the TV has to be turned up to an unfeasible volume whilst we sit watching crap like the Antiques Road Show because 'mother never misses it!' Give me strength!

*

It is nice to have an extended family. It's such a cozy affair when everyone rallies around at the week-ends and we get to catch up on each other’s lives. This is what family life is all about. Jane and I understand that we have to take the adult lead and sacrifice some weekends to help support the others who are still finding their way in life, in the case of the children, and the mother in law, who has recently been widowed and doesn't enjoy the best of health really likes to see us and, to be fair, when else can she other than on the odd week-end bless her. 

Apparently she’s ordered hearing aids; I've told her people will think she’s in the secret service if she wanders around ear-wigging people’s conversations in supermarkets which she’s said she’ll do once she has her new ears attached. She’ll probably be furnishing me with story plots before we know it.  Quite a character the MIL. Frank next door will be relieved, he’s no fan of the Antiques Road show, but pretty much hears most of it through the walls when she stays. He says he doesn't mind, his own mothers addicted to Deal or No Deal which he says is far worse as you don’t get to see Fiona Bruce.  Have to agree with him there.  

She never comes empty handed either. Always fully loaded with cakes for us and biscuits for Rufus who adores her so much sometimes he can barely contain himself. He's not long for this world now so we all take it in turns should he have the occasional accident. All part of being a pet owner. All part of the buy in as they say. Jane and I don't see as much of one another during the week due to professional commitments and getting stuck in different and awkward geographical locations, but we compensate for those absences by having at least three holidays a year and dedicate all the time when on holiday to each other.  This is called being a responsible adult and we often laugh about it together knowing that our time will come.  Frankly at the moment I don’t think we’d have it any other way.  

TMA01 is almost finished. An inspired pieced culled from my memory and imagination, the result of which is part life writing part fictional story. Like all stories I guess. I shall demur from describing it too much on the basis that it's just too early.  But I'm happier with it  than I thought possible. I seriously couldn't think of a damn thing to write at the start.

*

The question I have to ask myself as I progress with it is, can this be dramatized?  If so how would I go about it?  And how will I refer to this and other developmental ideas and means of progression? perhaps i should have asked myself these thing prior to writing it, but that's not really how I roll. On a positive note i put together a little piece on commentaries in answer to someones query about why they should be done, and what a commentary actually hoping to show and achieve.  This is my response.  Not too pompous I hope.

'I think for me I see the commentary as something that provides an opportunity for the OU to see students showing an element of academic proficiency (as it is a component for certain suitable academic degrees,) how the learned techniques of successful writers as discussed in the (degree level) course book and other material, and how your own individual inspirations and creations can all come together to help you  create a ‘what works for you and how’  writer’s mind-set,  with the creative work submitted as a demonstration of this.

The commentary then is a series of parts synthesised into a whole which would include the likes of:  I had an idea from this; I thought I would try that.  I tried this technique (on page?) but didn't like it. I tried this idea from my notebook and thought it better, then realised it was similar to a technique discussed (on page?) so really went with it.  I liked the technique used by this writer (on page ?) which made me think of a dream I had or line I read I which prompted me to write this sentence, paragraph, poem,  or about that theme or in this manner.  Etc.  etc.

To that end, for the commentary to be valid as an integral part of a university course in creativity, it has to focus on the process rather than the work. You could say that it puts an academic spin on the fictional nonsense we write. Which sounds unkind, but I guess that’s the way students of physics, geology and mathematics might put it. The commentary pulls us back closer to their world by actually suggesting that there is an academic drive behind the creative arts and if you can’t always see it in the creative work itself, it’s because its primary focus is probably one of entertainment. 

So, here is the explanation of the work, also known as the commentary, which shows the inspiration, the research, the experiments, the successes, the theories, the highs, the lows, the laughs, (and particularly for me!),  the sweat, and the tears behind its creation.  Having to write the commentary and then looking at what it should include shows that being creative on a creative writing course is no picnic.'  

*

Well it got me thinking at least. I didn't post it as a reply though because it seemed a little bit too swottish and  made me sound like an agent working for the OU, rather than someone who probably should be seen and heard taking an adversarial view point more often. But I think I can see the point of commentaries. 

Ideas

I groan audibly when I hear or read that a fellow student has an idea for a TMA. I never have an idea.  Yes you read that correctly. Never.  I have to do that Ian McEwan thing every time and just write until ideas emerge whilst on the page and then develop and grow, or not, as I progress. I can honestly say I have never felt that sense of fizzy anticipation as I sit down to write having hatched in my sleep or down the gym or whilst watching telly a really good  idea. How dies this eureka thing work?   Why don't I have it?

My latest offering for a TMA involves a little bit of developed life writing.  I just thought about describing a work place, put myself in it, sort of remember how I felt about being there then started thinking about how I might have acted if I'd been a little more impressive than I actually was. At the moment it's crap with a capital T like this C not this T.  Not a great eureka moment is it?

Another way I've heard is successful for some is to invent characters first then let them ask you to be placed in a story line. It all sounds a bit deep and psychological and perhaps a little overly decorous in the case of the characters - 'we're here, how would you like us to disport our duties kind sir?'  Could it work?  I don't know.