Still life

This was an interesting exercise I never write this literally which is what made this such a challenge. The first of the Exercises is to describe something right in front of you with facts of its description and as little creative embellishment as possible. you are only allowed to say what it looks like you're not allowed to use any more senses like touch, smell or feel (no fun). Ever the rebel I had to find a way around it or its just no fun so I wrote about an object that isn’t actually there but I imagined and got my inspiration from a toy.

 Gun

Metal gun ridged slide, textured grip. Worn end and trigger black ejection port and sights standing out against the cold brushed steel. Black magazine sitting beside it golden bullets reflecting sunlight, glinting.  

This still wasn’t a lot of fun to write about and I think I got more creativity in there then I was supposed to. If I do label myself however then I would say I’m definitely a fiction writer so I’m cheered by that and I allowed myself some artistic space.

 

 Bed

Creases running across the sheets forming shapes, rippling from islands of paper. Books glossy and new others creased, like the covers, bent, worn on the edges, pages folded from interest. Colours colliding, red book against the blue chequers black watch, red hands, white papers, honey bleach bed, dark knots punctuating the wood. The abrupt moving hands of the watch the only moving thing against the back drop of still isolation.

The bed was much more fun I chose to go fairly abstract with plenty of over the top literary description. What I was supposed to achieve was again a description but I could go as bizarre and random with phrases as I wanted and unlike the first exercise I could do more than a single object so I did. 

All of the coursework I’ve done is first draft and is therefore until said otherwise pretty rubbish but this is part of my course and is viewed more as a learning experience than anything even remotely saleable. A creative writing way of saying don’t judge me.  

Free writing

The next part of the course is in free writing to loosen the writing muscles and let the words flow like a cliched river from your creative mind. Or some other conceited words like that. anyway freewriting is very

difficult to get my head around and always has been. My free writes often look like a disjointed mess of nearly related words and small bits of different stories normally ending in a longer story at the end. I think that's why free writing is so difficult because its unlike anything your trying to achieve.

What you normally want to achieve is a completed redrafted and reredrafted masterpiece. If you have a look at the inserts to the left you will see the difference. First not that the finished product boasts all the threads being linked to themselves thus completed and all the thread work together to create a whole. The free write on the other hand is literally all over the place. This is why its difficult but then if everything I ever wrote came out of my head looking finished then i would be published by now.

However difficulties aside I did my first bit of research for the Blog today. I looked up the word chakra which amused me enormously because its said that its part of the body but can't be discovered by autopsy. The other first is adding a picture, admittedly it is a rather abstract but simple picture but it still counts. I also found another amusing fact, this program has a spell check and it doesn't recognise the word Blog oh the irony I love it.





Is writing like riding a bike?

No riding a bike is physical exercise and writing is mental exercise literally speaking. However I didn't mean the question to be in a literal sense I was referring to it in the way of the much used cliche for something you never forget how to do. But again my answer is no. After almost two years of sitting on my hands and humming tunelessly to avoid things like the OCA and the countless writing competitions that have been and gone I am not finding regular writing easy. Also reading through my old notes and stories I see that what I assumed once was top notch amazing final draft actually looks more like the untidy scrawl in my writers journal. This could be one of two things one I'm finally grown to realise garbage when I see it which means I'm learning to tell the difference between first draft ideas and a finished product and the other is the stuff I'm writing now will look like hammered crap when I read it a year down the line and that all I have is an over inflated ego about the rubbish I'm writing now. I like to think I've learned a thing or two like writing this, I cleverly used an ironic cliche which unless I missed wouldn't be in there at all at the begining. Also throwing american words like garbage in just because i like the word is something that again i would have thought about in case I'm critisized by the English language police, aliens or Spetsnaz special forces operatives. As has been said writing is a dangerous game especially when the English language police, aliens and Spetsnaz special forces are so interested in literature these days. Of course why any of them would be monitering my blog posts who knows, but irrational fears are named that way for a reason.

Basket case

After my recent reinstatement as an OCA student I restarted my course and continued on my writing path. I'm not sure this was an entirely good idea bearing in mind I found out I'm insane. After doing the first exercise of logging a dream into my writers journal i discovered how crazy my life is even when I am asleep. The second part of the exercise was to choose the important phrases and list them and mine looked like this:

Minecraft roller coaster
Bus shed
Fist bump, high five, poke in the eye
Snowy rock outcrops
Jungle desert
Stabbed
Jet ski
Rock pool and water fall
How long is this stair case?

I am a basket case it's official.