Hi,
Sorry, it's been a while since I posted anything. There's a few reasons for that, I've been a bit run off my feet and feeling like I've been running as fast as I can to stand still (stealing blatantly from Lewis Carrol). That's left me feeling stretched and struggling to focus, if I'm honest. And that in turn has made me feel a bit depressed... Which is a word I hate to use, because I don't suffer from clinical depression, but what I've been feeling has been, for me, a bit more profound than just feeling sad. It was particularly bad when I came back from Southampton; I just crashed from fatigue and regret, feeling utterly black, and it was a relief to feel a bit brighter the following day.
At the moment my feelings are pretty well encapsulated by the post LM Cooke put up on her site a little while ago, time doesn't feel very much like a friend but there's so much to do that I find that I'm procastinating and struggling to achieve anything!
I must confess that, whilst the Fiction module I'm doing at the moment is good, I'm having some difficulties keeping up. There seem to be so many exercises and so many of them are things that I've either never thought of before or that make my head hurt; for instance last week's were all about metaphors and similes which I really shy away from; largely because whenever I've tried to include them into my work my readers seem to miss the point I'm trying to make. I don't know how much of that sort of thing will make it into my work, especially as I am by nature a genre writer; my main focus is telling a good story rather than illuminating aspects of the human condition (I'm not sure how much difference there is between these two things to be honest; I'm not convinced that most writers think about subtext when they write).
That being said, my tutor hasn't hated what I've written for the module so far, even if its a lot more uneven than the work for Creative Non Fiction was. I have more work to do for my first short story for assessment, Gaming Night and I'm about to start to on a second piece, taking the Murder of Crows idea from the Random Stories and mucking about with it. I have some ideas for making it quite stylised and hope to evoke the spirit of John Wyndham if nothing else.
As a result I'm conscious that Kingsford and the Transatlantic Project have been horribly delayed (and that the poem stuff at Soundcloud is... well lacking seems to be an understatement at this point doesn't it?) but I'll try to get those back on track next week. Time permitting of course.
More positively, I got my mark back for my first piece of coursework, the Goth book pitch: I got 66 for it, which I think puts me in the Commendation bracket. I'm really happy about that, especially as I enjoyed writing it so much (dovetailing my interest in books, subculture and weird stuff paid off, who knew?). I know the mark isn't so important, getting the work published is the priority, but Higher Education is like a game; marks are how you keep score.
I'm currently in the process of reviewing it and trying to boost the prose to a higher level, as my tutor wants to send it to his agent (which is fortuitous as I'd really like to write the book).
So things are hard, but the trail was always going to be steep. It's just a case of putting my head down and keeping going.
Sorry, it's been a while since I posted anything. There's a few reasons for that, I've been a bit run off my feet and feeling like I've been running as fast as I can to stand still (stealing blatantly from Lewis Carrol). That's left me feeling stretched and struggling to focus, if I'm honest. And that in turn has made me feel a bit depressed... Which is a word I hate to use, because I don't suffer from clinical depression, but what I've been feeling has been, for me, a bit more profound than just feeling sad. It was particularly bad when I came back from Southampton; I just crashed from fatigue and regret, feeling utterly black, and it was a relief to feel a bit brighter the following day.
At the moment my feelings are pretty well encapsulated by the post LM Cooke put up on her site a little while ago, time doesn't feel very much like a friend but there's so much to do that I find that I'm procastinating and struggling to achieve anything!
I must confess that, whilst the Fiction module I'm doing at the moment is good, I'm having some difficulties keeping up. There seem to be so many exercises and so many of them are things that I've either never thought of before or that make my head hurt; for instance last week's were all about metaphors and similes which I really shy away from; largely because whenever I've tried to include them into my work my readers seem to miss the point I'm trying to make. I don't know how much of that sort of thing will make it into my work, especially as I am by nature a genre writer; my main focus is telling a good story rather than illuminating aspects of the human condition (I'm not sure how much difference there is between these two things to be honest; I'm not convinced that most writers think about subtext when they write).
That being said, my tutor hasn't hated what I've written for the module so far, even if its a lot more uneven than the work for Creative Non Fiction was. I have more work to do for my first short story for assessment, Gaming Night and I'm about to start to on a second piece, taking the Murder of Crows idea from the Random Stories and mucking about with it. I have some ideas for making it quite stylised and hope to evoke the spirit of John Wyndham if nothing else.
As a result I'm conscious that Kingsford and the Transatlantic Project have been horribly delayed (and that the poem stuff at Soundcloud is... well lacking seems to be an understatement at this point doesn't it?) but I'll try to get those back on track next week. Time permitting of course.
More positively, I got my mark back for my first piece of coursework, the Goth book pitch: I got 66 for it, which I think puts me in the Commendation bracket. I'm really happy about that, especially as I enjoyed writing it so much (dovetailing my interest in books, subculture and weird stuff paid off, who knew?). I know the mark isn't so important, getting the work published is the priority, but Higher Education is like a game; marks are how you keep score.
I'm currently in the process of reviewing it and trying to boost the prose to a higher level, as my tutor wants to send it to his agent (which is fortuitous as I'd really like to write the book).
So things are hard, but the trail was always going to be steep. It's just a case of putting my head down and keeping going.
You're an inspiration Steve, and I'm glad you're more up than you were after Southampton. You're so busy at the moment, I hope you have time to enjoy the wonderful writing you're doing.
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