Hello ladies and gents.
So yes - I have not been on lately. Well, for one thing my cousin was visiting. I haven't seen her in ages so it was good to do so. We did lots of fun things together, from going to ABC to seeing Alice in Wonderland (at last - I liked it). And we went for a wander around the West End.
I have also had essays to do - eek! Two due within four days of each other - and I lose a day on one because I'm going to Newcastle D: Sigh. I cannot fail these essays either, they're both worth a large portion of my overall grade. Remind me, why did I not take classes I could actually muster interest in? It doesn't help that my uni's library is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I might actually have to venture to one of the other libraries in the city to obtain sources relevant to my subjects. The only thing that reassures me is that both essays are now at about 40-45% of the approximate required word count.
What makes it worse is that my uni are holding their annual writing competition and the deadline is the same day as one of my essays. ARGH. I really wanted to enter this year. Okay, with the standard of writers on my course (I can assure you all now, I am NOT the best one there) I probably have no chance of winning. But I got commended last year. Admittedly little effort went into last year's...ahem...effort. I used a play in Shetland dialect that I'd had for years, it was so old it went into my Advanced Higher English creative writing portfolio from 6th year of high school. Commended is not bad. Commended is acknowledgement, it gets into the booklet and therefore still exists. That was all I wanted for years and I got it. I suppose I'm happy with that. The bother is, I have a new idea, but I'm not sure I have the time to write it. I guess I could try during study breaks?
Ocht...I'm fed up now.
Photo by Chris Scott
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Job Hunt
So...in the flurry I got into about abandoning a work that had consumed nearly seven years of my life, I forgot to mention - my graduation ain't too far off.
The other day, I received the forms and information etc. concerning the aforementioned robes-n'-parchment fest. If all goes well, I graduate on July 12th of this year at 11am. Fun times...provided, of course, that I have a job to fall into.
So here I am, applying for many different things. For one thing, I currently have an election campaign on the go. I've stood for a position in the student executive for a year. Since it's the most contested election this year and I've been very slack on finding a campaign team I've little chance of getting it. I've officially started applying for other jobs too, and will tell these people I can start in May or June depending on exams.
Oh boy...I'll surely find something out of all the stuff I'm looking for. Just sign up to as many job sites as I can. It's not a good time to be a nearly-graduate right now. Better than it was last year, that's for sure, but still not good.
Trouble is, of course, I have no cash behind me. If I can't get a job in Glasgow, or even Edinburgh, I'm screwed. I have to move back home to Shetland, which, to be honest, I don't really want to do any more. There would, of course, be a graduate scheme with the council back home, but that's hardly any kind of guarantee really. Really I'm still keen to work in the media, but that's a bit of a dying industry, and my course has kind of put paid to that idea in so many ways. The class of 2010 will be the first batch of graduates to leave ill-equipped for the real world of work in that sector, all because they made major changes to the course that we didn't ask for...but I can't go into that for various reasons. One of those being that the whole thing still pisses me off.
As well as this...dissertation! See, I told you I wasn't laying my current work to rest completely. This is because the dissertation contains The Good Bits. Well, my supervisor thinks they're good, and I'm more confident in them than I am with the rest of it. Just need to write a commentary that doesn't just say 'It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and a distinctive narrator', and I should be okay. Ah.
The next few months are going to be busy academically. I just hope I can cope with it all without needing sectioned by the end...
The other day, I received the forms and information etc. concerning the aforementioned robes-n'-parchment fest. If all goes well, I graduate on July 12th of this year at 11am. Fun times...provided, of course, that I have a job to fall into.
So here I am, applying for many different things. For one thing, I currently have an election campaign on the go. I've stood for a position in the student executive for a year. Since it's the most contested election this year and I've been very slack on finding a campaign team I've little chance of getting it. I've officially started applying for other jobs too, and will tell these people I can start in May or June depending on exams.
Oh boy...I'll surely find something out of all the stuff I'm looking for. Just sign up to as many job sites as I can. It's not a good time to be a nearly-graduate right now. Better than it was last year, that's for sure, but still not good.
Trouble is, of course, I have no cash behind me. If I can't get a job in Glasgow, or even Edinburgh, I'm screwed. I have to move back home to Shetland, which, to be honest, I don't really want to do any more. There would, of course, be a graduate scheme with the council back home, but that's hardly any kind of guarantee really. Really I'm still keen to work in the media, but that's a bit of a dying industry, and my course has kind of put paid to that idea in so many ways. The class of 2010 will be the first batch of graduates to leave ill-equipped for the real world of work in that sector, all because they made major changes to the course that we didn't ask for...but I can't go into that for various reasons. One of those being that the whole thing still pisses me off.
As well as this...dissertation! See, I told you I wasn't laying my current work to rest completely. This is because the dissertation contains The Good Bits. Well, my supervisor thinks they're good, and I'm more confident in them than I am with the rest of it. Just need to write a commentary that doesn't just say 'It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and a distinctive narrator', and I should be okay. Ah.
The next few months are going to be busy academically. I just hope I can cope with it all without needing sectioned by the end...
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Time on me is wasted time
And so, after some deliberation, I have decided to put my main novel on the back burner until I can think of a vastly-improved idea for it.
Basically I'd started draft one aged fifteen, back when I was a tortured high school nothing who had few friends and kept myself to myself a lot. I dug out my mam's old typewriter - an old battered teal-coloured Olivetti - and began it on an August afternoon. It was always a bit Dystopian, but I kept restarting it, convinced it was some kind of Magnum Opus I was writing.
Gradually, over the years I've been making changes to it. In some ways it made progress, but in many others I spent six years on it, just bumbling along and making the same mistakes over and over again. More often than not I got fed up with it. But I kept telling myself that it would be a waste to give up on it after all this time. The trouble was, it seemed to eat up all my thinking capacity. It eclipsed everything else I conceived during this time space, which was a shame because in this time I've had a couple of really good ideas. A lot of them have ended up consigned to notebooks, to be worked on when I get time. But I never will, will I?
Anyway - earlier today I had a discussion with a certain person I'm close to. I won't explicitly mention his name or how I'm close to him - I guess the best way to refer to him is as a form of sensei. (Yes, I'm slightly obsessed with Japan and its culture.) I'd restarted the third draft of the novel for the third time. I gave him the first chapter to read, and although he gave me some good advice on improving it he hinted beforehand that he felt I'd improved as a writer since beginning this and that there were still elements in it of who I was when I was younger. I don't know if he realised this, but he had essentially gleaned from reading it how I've been feeling about it - which is that I've lost heart with it and my refusal to give up on it was an attempt at convincing myself that I'd get there eventually. Using a part of it as my dissertation was an attempt to curb this which fell flat on its face. I guess a lot of what was going on when I began it has since been buried in the past and I've moved on. A number of writers describe their work as their 'babies'. And I guess, in many ways, this novel is my baby. The trouble is, you're supposed to raise a baby and take care of it, nurture it and make sure it develops properly. My 'baby' wasn't doing this. If anything - pardon the morbid image I'm about to use - it was on a life support machine and I was simply refusing to turn off the switch.
I want to be quite clear - I am not completely and utterly pieing this idea. That really would be a waste of seven years. For one thing, a portion of it is still being used for my dissertation, and it's actually one of the better portions. It is instead on the back burner, which is a different thing entirely. It means that I still love these characters and want to do something with them still. But for now, I will merely write down scenes I can think up for them as they go, and see if I can get a better idea out of that. Making that decision earlier was emotional, to say the least, but it needed to be done. And I'd rather have heard such a verdict from someone I trust - at least he let me down gently, certainly more so than some would have.
And don't worry, I'm still creating. I've got a couple of plans that are complete or at least not far off it. Some I even started writing and am a good bit of the way through. I'm not completely at a loss. If anything, I think I feel a bit better for what I'm doing....
Basically I'd started draft one aged fifteen, back when I was a tortured high school nothing who had few friends and kept myself to myself a lot. I dug out my mam's old typewriter - an old battered teal-coloured Olivetti - and began it on an August afternoon. It was always a bit Dystopian, but I kept restarting it, convinced it was some kind of Magnum Opus I was writing.
Gradually, over the years I've been making changes to it. In some ways it made progress, but in many others I spent six years on it, just bumbling along and making the same mistakes over and over again. More often than not I got fed up with it. But I kept telling myself that it would be a waste to give up on it after all this time. The trouble was, it seemed to eat up all my thinking capacity. It eclipsed everything else I conceived during this time space, which was a shame because in this time I've had a couple of really good ideas. A lot of them have ended up consigned to notebooks, to be worked on when I get time. But I never will, will I?
Anyway - earlier today I had a discussion with a certain person I'm close to. I won't explicitly mention his name or how I'm close to him - I guess the best way to refer to him is as a form of sensei. (Yes, I'm slightly obsessed with Japan and its culture.) I'd restarted the third draft of the novel for the third time. I gave him the first chapter to read, and although he gave me some good advice on improving it he hinted beforehand that he felt I'd improved as a writer since beginning this and that there were still elements in it of who I was when I was younger. I don't know if he realised this, but he had essentially gleaned from reading it how I've been feeling about it - which is that I've lost heart with it and my refusal to give up on it was an attempt at convincing myself that I'd get there eventually. Using a part of it as my dissertation was an attempt to curb this which fell flat on its face. I guess a lot of what was going on when I began it has since been buried in the past and I've moved on. A number of writers describe their work as their 'babies'. And I guess, in many ways, this novel is my baby. The trouble is, you're supposed to raise a baby and take care of it, nurture it and make sure it develops properly. My 'baby' wasn't doing this. If anything - pardon the morbid image I'm about to use - it was on a life support machine and I was simply refusing to turn off the switch.
I want to be quite clear - I am not completely and utterly pieing this idea. That really would be a waste of seven years. For one thing, a portion of it is still being used for my dissertation, and it's actually one of the better portions. It is instead on the back burner, which is a different thing entirely. It means that I still love these characters and want to do something with them still. But for now, I will merely write down scenes I can think up for them as they go, and see if I can get a better idea out of that. Making that decision earlier was emotional, to say the least, but it needed to be done. And I'd rather have heard such a verdict from someone I trust - at least he let me down gently, certainly more so than some would have.
And don't worry, I'm still creating. I've got a couple of plans that are complete or at least not far off it. Some I even started writing and am a good bit of the way through. I'm not completely at a loss. If anything, I think I feel a bit better for what I'm doing....
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