What is a Mind?- Subjectivity

In addition to the Future Learn ‘Starting Creative Writing’ course, I’m taking a couple of other Future Learn courses including ‘What is a Mind’ from the university of Cape Town. “Explore the most pertinent scientific and philosophical concepts for understanding our own minds with this free online course”   https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind/   As it says in the…

Water

As part of the WordPress course ‘Developing your Eye’, there was a email inviting us to think about orientation with the title ‘Water’ So, one of my favourite water photos. Taken at a beach in Cornwall around 2010. The dog is my late Glen of Imaal, Murphy. He loved the beach and I’m so glad I…

Lions and Tigers and Negan oh no!

We’re three weeks into a new season on The Walking Dead and its moving on a pace, if not chronologically then at least with character introductions, scene setting and a little Daryl whumping. And it’s the new main characters, Negan and Ezekiel, I’ll be writing about.

Lists

I like lists. I often have a long list of things to do. Or I break down a task into a list of smaller steps. I have a list of birthdays. A shopping list. Holiday packing lists. A list of goals. Lists are great. So when I got an email from WordPress as part of…

Traveling

Inspired in part by my recent enforced sojourn into public transport, written for an assignment.  Laura clasped her phone like a prayer book, bound in sombre, black leather at odds with the rest of her attire. Having arrived in good time she’d been able to meet the train as it pulled into the station and…

Inspirations on a Train

Last Wednesday night my car was broken into. The driver side window was smashed and the sat nav grabbed. I work quite a distance from home so with my boss’s agreement I took couple of days of annual leave. I quite enjoy unexpected days like that. Guilt free skiving! The car was picked up and…

Stereotypes

This was supposed to be a 300 to 500 word piece taking a stereotype and turning it into a rounded character. It proved difficult to chose a stereotype not turn it into another stereotype. It proved impossible to remain below 500 words! I did edit down from over a thousand to around 600 words. I…

Adding Conflict

This latest task on my course asked us to add conflict to a character we had previously sketched out in our notebook – a collection of ideas and thoughts that might later turn into a longer work. The idea being that adding conflict or a character flaw can lead to a plot – something I…

Red bows and Pekinese

Today was an introduction to plot and the assignment was to ask ourselves some questions about a couple of lines of text, pretty much who and what and why and how.   The lines were A woman on a bus today carried her Pekinese dog inside her handbag. It had a red bow on its…

Second Draft

Today’s task was editing my previous story. I wasn’t really happy with my Evening with Schubert anyway so a redraft was probably called for. Mostly I lost the maid. She added nothing to the piece. I had intended her dullness a contrast to Katrine opulence but I don’t think it was needed. Other than that I…

An Evening with Schubert

I had to write a longer piece inspired by the first thing I heard on the radio as I turned it on.. I actually cheated a little as the first thing I heard was a pretty depressing news item that I couldn’t write about. So I switched channels. While the subject wasn’t at all depressing,…

Familiar Words in Unfamiliar Places

This was another writing exercise – to use familiar words in unfamiliar ways. I have to admit it was inspired by my lunch – which wasn’t actually as nice as Clara’s! Clara’s lunch was always an intriguingly awful event. Today’s fare consisted of a vomitus lentil and pumpkin curried soup, interred in an ocean of…