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Freewrite, not Freebird. September 10, 2014

Posted by phoenixaeon in Children's Literature, MA, Mindless rambling that you could do without!, Tempus fujit stupidus, Time to recruit the word beavers, writing.
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I am trying. I swear I am. I am really trying to hoof my Muse into action. And freewrites suck. So bad.

 

At the moment, I am reluctantly engaged in working out my flow problems. You see, my writing ability is about as able as my walking ability. Which is to say, not so able. My writing appears to imitate the few jittery jolting steps I am able to take during the day. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Concentrate to place a foot/word in the right place so I don’t fall over. Make sure the hips/sentences are stable enough not to need some sort of edit to stay upright. It’s not fun. And it is all the wrong headspace, especially when all of the writing manuals keep telling me to go out for a walk. I bloody can’t go out for a walk! And going for a roll (because obviously I can’t stroll) takes so much planning and dependence on other people that it’s just not worth the hassle. The logistics of writing are against me from the get go.

 

So here I am. Computer on lap – because I don’t have a desk – static and locked up. Maybe I should use that as a starting point for a story, and maybe I will at some point, but right now I need to work through my inability to write through the inner critic. I need to impale the bugger on a lance of lexical confusion to shut it up for 15 minutes of quiet writing time. Sometimes, writing an essay with all the analytical jargon is that much easier for the WTF-is-she-going-on-about that it can create in the mind. I used to read essay stuff out to my Mum and she’d stare at me with glassy eyes and her mouth would be set somewhere between a smile and an Elvis Presley impersonation, and I knew I’d hit the technical mumbo jumbo just right. But writing fiction? It only creates chaos in my head thanks to my feelings of creative inadequacy. Hmph!

 

And now I will apologise to anyone reading this. Sorry for flumping my inner critical vomit into your eyespace and invading your brain with wah wah wah. Yes. I hear you. I’ll bugger off and just get on with it and stop moaning. Yes. I know I can’t write if I’m not actually writing. No. I can’t promise I won’t wah wah wah all over my blog about bouncing off the rubber walls of I-can’t-write again. And yes. I am off to try and break the inner critic’s camel-like back with a house made of words, with a lovely musical interlude.

 

And it all comes down to this… May 9, 2013

Posted by phoenixaeon in Degrees, E301, EMA, OU, Tempus fujit stupidus, The end of E301, TMA06.
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So. Today, I sent in my final ever TMA. ‘Reading is a creative act, just as writing is. Discuss.’

 

Well. Discuss, I am sure, I did not! It was honestly the worst essay I have ever written. I actually cringed when I pressed the submit button. Because submit is exactly what I did. I gave up. I could not mentally organise the reading to work out what I was trying to say. I didn’t argue, I simply burnt out and went fully with the opinion that reading is a creative act. I offered absolutely no counter argument, like I know I should have.

 

I have one saving grace in this mess of an essay. No matter what mark it receives, it’s not going to affect the overall grade of the module so far. The only thing that could bugger up the pass 2 I am on course for is the result for the EMA. Another 3,000 words of stress, set to begin next Monday. I just feel as though I have sold myself short by not producing something worthwhile for this last essay. Stupid, stupid me.

 

And talking of stupid, that is the subject for the EMA. I’ve had to choose two texts to analyse – one an ‘every day’ text, the other a ‘literary’ text. For the every day text I am using a Facebook conversation that plays on the word stupid in a few different ways. For the literary, I have chosen excerpts from a philosophical treatise, A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity, by Walter B. Pitkin. I am quite looking forward to writing this one, because both the texts make me laugh. And that is always a good thing.

 

3,000 words and one month stands between me and freedom. Passing this module stands between me and a First Class Honours degree. Five and a half long years of study have come down to this. And I can hardly believe I am nearly at the finishing line.

 

So time to get writing. Tempus fujit, stupidus!