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Of (Open) University Challenges September 30, 2008

Posted by Jen in : A363 Open University, Journal , 27 comments

Nearly October?  Really?  Oh my giddy aunt.  My aunt’s giddiness is because Nearly October marks the start of my next OU course.

‘Just think,’ said lovely bf cheerfully on Sunday, ‘this time next week we’ll be behind with our coursework.’

Now this is most unlike me so don’t tell anyone, will you?  But I, um, decided to get ahead.  I might get a hat too soon.  A special writing hat.  Yes indeed.  Anyway, I lugged out the whopping course book and read the introduction.  Then I started on the first chapter.  Tonight, Matthew, I shall be Playing with Genre.  Ha! Playing with Genre? my inner wibble screeched.  Who do you think you are, talking about that sort of thing?  You nitwit.  Go and watch Emmerdale or something and stop being so silly.

I put the book away again.  Ooh, flippin ‘eck.  It all sounds a bit complimicated.   The tutor group discussion forum wotsit has opened and we are, as instructed, doing our ‘getting to know you’ exercises.

‘80 words and the first thing you’ve posted and still you manage to mention donkeys and porn stars!’ exclaimed lovely bf, while perfecting his much-used eye-rolling routine.

Oh dear.  In between finding new ways to procrastinate, I must try to be more sensible.

Now where did I put that pantomime horse?

Of Exceptional Education September 23, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 18 comments

I’m still a little amazed that No. 1 Son has started his GCSEs and even more amazed that he has time to accomplish anything at all in between stinking out his room and surfing the web for semi-naked women.  Honestly, in my day boys had to manage with the Playtex section of the Freemans catalogue for their education in those sort of matters.

Anyway.  Now and again, by way of novelty, I try to engage him in conversation.

Me: ‘So, No. 1, how are you finding your courses?’

No. 1 Son: ‘Well, they’re not as good as things like Citizenship.  We’re still in mixed ability for that.’ He sniggers a bit, which sounds like thunder and makes the room shake.  ‘The teacher says we’re gonna discuss abortion, yeah?  Then she asks if we all know what it is.  There’s this girl, Flo, yeah?  “Abortion’s what they have to have in Africa”.  Teacher looked a bit confused, yeah?  Then Flo says, “yeah, cos there isn’t much food, so they only get a small bortion”.

No. 1 looks at me knowingly.  “And I owe it all to you, Mother, that I have learnt to be disparaging about other people’s stupidity.”

Aaaah.  That’s my boy.

Of Indecisive Idiocy September 17, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 26 comments

So I’m sitting here, looking at the blank page. My head is empty: no thoughts, no inspiration, no urges to carry me forward with a burst of ‘oh yes!’. This is most unlike me. I usually have loads to say. Very loads, in fact.

I need to start writing again – I feel liberated from The Novel and am neither disheartened nor joyful. It’s there, waiting, fermenting. Or festering. Whatever. I can dig it out, give it a dose of antibiotics and hey presto, it’ll be a work in progress again. I have the bare bones of an idea for Novel 2 which I intend to work on as part of the OU course A363. Or not. I’ve also had an idea for a short story which initially seemed quirky and twisty and unusual. Yeah! I thought briefly. My imagination is beginning to fizzle with new ideas. But then the thought burnt out entirely. What if it’s simply banal, nonsensical? Why had a story inspired by a memory of Rentaghost seemed a good idea at all? Perhaps the crappy critique has found me out?

What I need to do is read. Read, read, read. But, actually, I don’t know what to read. I’m bored with chicklit. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just doesn’t satisfy or entertain me the way it did. I don’t want to read it and I don’t want to write it. But I might not be good enough to write anything meatier. I haven’t read a ‘proper’ book for such a long time, I’m almost afraid to see if I can still do it.

I feel adrift somehow. At a crossroads where all roads lead somewhere either scary or duff. But I haven’t time to find my bearings – only 3 weeks until the writing course starts which really isn’t long enough to seek out my emotional compass.

Oh, flippin ‘eck. Who am I again?

Of Crappy Critiques September 10, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Novel , 46 comments

Hmmmmm. Now I thought that, when writing a critique, it was the polite thing to do to sandwich the misery between two pieces of nice. My RNA critique, which I received yesterday, began thusly:-

You’ve written a novel, well done! Sadly, it’s crap.

Ok, I’m paraphrasing but, actually, not that much. Mrs Crit does say that I ‘have the ability to write’ though I suspect, having digested the rest of her words, that she means it’s surprising that someone like me has opposable thumbs and can actually hold a pen. Pfffff.

Here you go, have some lowlights:

Your plot does not work. This is because your characters do not work.

You classified your story as Romantic Comedy but where was the romance and comedy?

Two characters in first-person does not work for a reader: I have never come across a published novel where two principal characters are first-person.

You get the gist. She even told me that a man in his fifties would not wear a paisley scarf! Yes he would!! And I was slated for not using exclamation marks!!! Oddly, every book on writing I’ve ever seen has said that exclamation marks were pretty much forbidden. Bloody Nora.

So. One character was too bitchy and the other a stereotype who should have a bit of ‘gumption’. And the third should not be ‘officially sick of thinking’ but ‘heartily sick’. Heartily? Did I write the novel in the 1950s?  Good grief. How can a literary critique complain about a scarf?

Please rest assured, dear reader, that as Mrs Crit is no doubt sharpening her teeth, ready for the shredding of someone else’s words, I am a little bit hungover. And a failure. And not funny.

Oh, woe is me. And bugger. And other swear words.

Seeking September Sanity September 1, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 33 comments

So it’s September how? Good Lord. And hello. Here I am, back from my jolly jaunt to Jersey. Off I went, full of longing and sentimentality for the place I grew up. Hmmmmm. 5 days of bullet grey skies, the beasts - severed from their PCs and gadgets - moaning about their terminal boredom and 1500 quids later, it all feels like a dream.  Not a sentient dream but one of those crazy feverish dreams where everything is melded and blurred together like a watercolour left out in the rain.

My travel writing book went unread.  My camera groaned at the drizzle, mist and monotone drabness. The barbecues on the beach as the tide whooshed in and the sun bent low went un-barbied.  But hey ho.  We swam in the sea and let the waves buffet and shove us about until my hair turned into a giant shredded wheat.  I saw my little sis for the first time in six years.  Caught up with the domestic doings of my parents’ neighbours.  Listened to my daft duffer of a dad on repeat.

Daft Duffer, yowling with laughter (other diners looking over and tutting a bit): “Hilarious eh?” Isn’t that the best story you’ve heard?’

Son No. 1, smiling indulgently: ‘It was very funny the first time and reasonably so the second.  It did lose a certain something on the third telling.

Gawd.

I really have changed since I left Jersey 6 years ago.  We don”t notice time ticking on until we’re forcibly transplanted back in time.

Anyway.  The travel writing?  Pffffff.  That can wait.  In the meantime, I’ve been ploughing through Sophie King’s How to Write Short Stories.  After the Cheggers chapter, I’ve learnt my lesson about dissing others. So I won’t mention the punctuation cock-ups in Sophie’s book.  No, I won’t mention them at all.  My teeth are itching though, that’s all I’ll say.  Besides, I’m not sure I want to write ‘feelgood’ stories.  I want to write stories that make people gasp.  Make them wail.  You there!  Stop that smiling!

Time to dust off my lesbian vicar, methinks.  Misery and weirdness are the way forward. Maybe with just a smattering of feelgood jollification, just in case I bump into it on life’s inevitable return journey.  Being poked in the eye by one’s own story is so not good.