The OU course nears

Start Writing Fiction

The course starts officially on 25th October 2008 or Saturday this week. I spent last night depleting a small rainforest as I printed off all the activities from Block 1 to Block 5. My theory being that if anything buggered up with the computer and I didn't want to fork out a fortune at the Library for photocopying then I might as well print off everything and write in the spaces the short pieces of work that didnt warrant being printed out. I do have some feelings you know!

So with that done, and still being unable to find the forum I needed to respond to the tutor, I went ahead and wrote in brief the answers to the questions he set as a small exercise, having just re-read the eTMA info about dummy runs. So did that today and sent off to him what works I like reading, and a brief description about me. So successfully sent that off, now I know how to do that, it should be easy enough when the first TMA goes away before the 28th November. This doesn't leave me much time in which to write the first block, nor does it leave me much time to write for the rest. However, not one to knock back a challenge I will be making a start on the work either sometime today or all of tomorrow.

I am looking forward to doing the course as having read through a few pieces yesterday while I decimated a forest, I could already see where I was going wrong, yet in the same way, see that I had followed a lot of the rules correctly in others. So I am not writing myself off, I am a good writer.

The one good piece of information that I did come across in all the printing out last night was this and I will be using this more often I think when it comes to my work.

'The only rule is what works best for you.'

I like that.

The only worry I have, not from that statement, but from the audio cd I listened to when I was printing was one author said that if you sent off your work, your 3 chapters to all the lit agents and your work wasn't ready, you hadn't spent the time looking at it, etc, then you'd blown it. That scared me.

But at the time I did consider my work ready, I was unaware that I wrote in commentary and not the narrative as I maybe thought I was. In the second book I'm already working on, I am writing in the narrative and it works really well, so I must do that for the first in order for it to become successful. However it does bother me that having sent my first novel out to all the lit. agents for sci-fi, that perhaps I've possibly burnt all my bridges or whatever the phrase is.

I know I will be getting my work published once I've raised the money by cutting out the lit. agent and going with the publisher, but even then I worry that perhaps it won't be good enough, despite all the training and work I'll be pouring over it. (sorry pouring is probably the wrong word, but I couldnt remember what the proper word was).

Anyway, back to why I'm here today. It's been a while since I came on the blog, too long away. I've been reading. Yes, me, picking up a book and losing myself for a few hours. Actually, the best times for me to read are early in the morning if I wake before the kids and have those few hours to myself, or in the waiting room of the doctor's surgery, their reading material is outdated and poor, and I think I've started a trend, I saw someone else bring in a book last week.

I've been reading About A Boy by Nick Hornby, it's full of narrative and script and its brilliant. I've been reading it aloud at night to my son and lala'd over the sweary words and the sexual bits or I've read them in my mind.

It's very funny and I'm using his skills for writing in the narrative for my story, it's giving my characters a more rounded appeal, and bringing them more to life, perhaps that was my problem, one or two of my main characters were just not lifting themselves from the pages and standing beside you. My main main character does, he's solid and I sometimes hear him talking - no it's not time for the men in white coats, but he feels so real that I could almost touch him. He's such angry young man, but he's loyal to his friends and family, he's a selfless person, he risks so much to protect everyone he cares about that he rarely has time to think of himself. I'd love to meet him face to face, instead he's just an image in my head, but I've known him nearly half my life.

Well this is me, I've got messages to get from the town, more poly pockets to sleeve my OU papers, time to sort out the house ready for tonight as I head into the town of Dumfries for the Film Festival event at the Rifft Valley Restaurant, Castle Street, Dumfries. Can't wait. Maybe my friends will be there from the Screenwriting Course, or maybe I'll meet up with a few familiar film directors. Bye for now.