July has slipped away and Inclement magazine has accepted three poems for their autumn edition. I have also been looking at the assignment guide for A363 the starting date is only two months away now and the formatting for scriptwriting looks quite daunting. Since then I have been much moved by the tributes made to veteran Harry Patch over the last week and this has prompted me to write one of my own. The Last Tommy A lifetime lived, and then some more nearly a century of silence and then, he... Read Full Story

After an enjoyable two weeks beside the Black Sea it’s back to work and the daily routine, trying to find time to write at the same time.  I have lots of writing projects started and find myself flitting from one to the other as and when the mood takes me. The results for A125 will soon be back and as August arrives I will be anxiously watching the post. During A215 I discovered a great enjoyment in writing poetry and have built up quite a collection written during, and after the course. At t... Read Full Story

Eight months since my last post. So much for resolutions.  A 215 (Creative Writing) with OU is almost over, the final submission is sitting on the table now ready to be posted.  All my spare time since the last post has been taken up with this course either studying or writing up the various assignments. Would I do it again? That’s easy, yes definitely. It’s a great course covering fiction, poetry and life writing. I have learnt a great deal from this course both from the course m... Read Full Story

The start date for the OU A215 Creative Writing course is almost here. This week I have been allocated a Tutor and been informed that the first tutorial would be in Bristol on the 4th October only one week after the official starting date. I found this a little surprising but am pleased to find that it is close to home and that I will be able to attend. This will be the first time I have attended a face-to-face tutorial, all the ones on A174 were online.   According to my OU student homepage ... Read Full Story

Another month is slipping away and my studies are as disorganised as ever. However a look at the OU A215 Conference last week alerted me to the fact that the course materials are now available on line in PDF form so I have downloaded them and started to have a look.      Having looked at the ETMA and TMA requirements I’m glad to say that they don’t seem too daunting and I have in fact got a couple of ideas for two of them already, though no doubt I will change my mind as the various deadline... Read Full Story

Progress is still being made both with prose and poetry. It has been surprise to find that I am enjoying writing poetry much more than I thought I would, though I still struggle to understand free verse sometimes. I think I feel more secure where there are strict rules to follow.   Daniel Walters has become my answer to writers block. For some reason I can always find motivation to continue his story and so I ration myself to the time spent with him. Making myself cover other areas of my stud... Read Full Story

Is blogging a form creative writing? It certainly seems an addictive type of writing and one that I am getting hooked on. This week I have spent quite a bit of enjoyable time creating a blog site for my business. The results of which, I am very pleased with.   Sometimes I think that these posts may be a distraction from my main purpose, but on the other hand they do serve to keep me focused. I set self-imposed targets to try and achieve before the next post. Then the very fact that I have pu... Read Full Story

 This week has been more productive, ideas seem easier to find, but as always even this provides problems. Another part of “The Adventures of Daniel Walters” has been posted and another almost finished. This is something I am really enjoying and so far, as I write one post, ideas for the next seem to form along the way making writing easy.  At the same time I am working on a short story, as told by a murderer who has allowed someone else to be convicted in his place. OK so what’s the pr... Read Full Story

  It seems that taking one’s own advice is not so easy to do. In my last post I said that the ideas come if you just keep writing and I still stand by that, however lately there always seems to be something more pressing to do. Even the things I have started with the express intention of furthering my writing seem to be conspiring against me.  Take the blog sites for example, although pleased with them so far. I find that my novice status as a blogger is keeping me away from writing, as I s... Read Full Story

Why is it that the best laid plans seem the hardest to follow? It’s not that I have not been writing, far from it, but I always seem to be going off at a tangent, new ideas enter my head, or old ones resurface and suddenly seem more attractive than the work I have set myself for today. An E-mail arrived from Writelink yesterday with a competition to write a 250 word alternative history using any event from the past, of course time was immediately spent on that. The good news is that the... Read Full Story