Last week I posted about the first week of the Open University’s free eight week course under the Future Learn umbrella. I did also say that I was running behind on the course and I hoped to catch up. Not only have I not caught up, but with trying to do the edits for Shallow Waters to make sure it comes out in December and doing the Newsletter for the Free Sneak Peek 5 chapters on Monday, I haven’t done any more of the course. I hope to remedy that though very soon and have a bit of a splurdge. My timing for signing up has been a bit off though. I could have done with signing up early next year and not right now.
But for now, Lets get on with what week two brought us.
It started out with: Rituals and Methods
Finding what worked best for you. Were you an early morning writer. Getting up and writing before the day had even started, or waiting until the day was closing and everyone was going to bed, or did you snatch time throughout the day?
For me, writing with a disability can be frustrating. I need to be flexible and bend with the demands of my body. The fluctuations, ups and downs of the fatigue, so I have no real set patterns. I could be a morning person one day, but an evening person another. There may be a day when I can’t do anything. So this wasn’t a part of the course I could identify well with but I did understand it’s purpose for the majority of writers who do need to identify their best time to write, because what’s the point of sitting down to write in the evening if you’re absolutely exhausted and you’re going to struggle to write five words but if you’d have got out of bed forty-five minutes earlier, you’d have done a thousand words you could work with?
The course then looked at: location.
The course looked at the location where you write and during this discussion we did some writing around ideal writing place and our idea of hell.
Again, I know many people just have to use what is available to them. Though if coffee shops and noise is your thing (which was my idea of hell.) then you can do something about that and take your self out some days to that location.
From these two areas of practicalities we moved to writing again and this time focusing on:
Detail in writing.
We were told how important detail was and told to slow down our writing, to use all our senses, describe the small thing, have lots of moments, and it be all about the detail. We were shown text from authors in how to portray our characters and how to learn more about them without being so forthright about it. Pattern of internal speech was one which I really liked. But some of it was too flowery for me. Too much attention to detail. And yes, the authors being shown to us are best-selling authors, but all authors have their own styles and they are teaching us a certain style and telling us this is the way to do it rather than saying this is one way to do it.
If you read my five chapters on Monday, you will see I am far from flowery. If you haven’t but you just read my blog posts, you will see they are usually short (Usually) because I can’t seem to drag out what I want to say into any more words. I’m quite succinct. So while I will have picked up some tips from this week, and I have, I think the way it is delivered is not allowing for anything other than a certain type of writer. But saying that, I did go into this course allowing for the fact that I would only be picking up nuggets here and there.
Do you enjoy flowery, descriptive writing? Do you see the plainer text as a lazy form nowadays?
I’d love your thoughts as always on this.
MarinaSofia says
Good luck with the course – the timing is never right. I just recently completed a poetry course and it took me so much longer than 10 weeks to get through it (luckily, it was quite flexible) – things just kept cropping up. Hope you get a lot out of it, nevertheless! Interesting thoughts about ritual, location, habits. I’m a little bit fussy about these things, which means I often don’t get much written. However, I’ve noticed that when I REALLY want to write something, I can do it anywhere, any old how… So, excuses, right?
Alex J. Cavanaugh says
Timing and location are always the same for me – evenings in front of my computer. (Creature of habit.)
As for flowery – I’m not either! I’m bare bones. I’ve learned to interject all of the senses, but I still don’t load my writing with description and flowery, flowing prose. That’s the stuff I tend to skip when reading and I skip it when writing.
Margot Kinberg says
Rebecca – It sounds as though there’s a lot of good and useful information in that course. I know what you mean about not having nearly the time one would like to get into it, but still, it sounds like a good course. Thanks for sharing.
Jacqui Murray says
I don’t enjoy flowery text. Rightly or wrongly, I equate that with literary fiction. I’m less interested in their involved conclusions to important issues than who they are (as seen through their actions). That’s probably why I write thrillers and will never win a Pulitzer.
LM Milford says
Hi Rebecca,
Great post as always. I’m like you, I’m a mixture of morning and evening depending on how I’m feeling. You made a very good point about slowing down when you’re writing. I have a tendancy to race ahead and forget to set the scene. Great advice, and definitely something I’ll try and do in future!
Keep up the good work. Can’t wait to see those chapters!
Linda King says
I hate laboured description – I love a story that moves. Some writers have the right touch with description (Annie Proulx in The Shipping News for example – in my opinion) but I want to know what HAPPENS, not how beautiful the flowers over the front door were. I love Pride and Prejudice in particular for this reason! It’s all down to personal preference, I guess!
FictionFan says
Depends – does that help? 😉 Seriously, it depends on the quality of the writing – I can take a good deal of description if it’s original and perceptive, but if it’s just filler then I can live without it. I’d always expect to be able to see a place, though – as I could see that alleyway in the chapters from your book. You didn’t over-describe it, but you gave me enough to know exactly what it was like…
Shame they’re being a bit prescriptive on the course – I have to say that was one of my hates about Uni, and one of the reasons I dropped out. I’d hoped they would teach me how to think, but they seemed determined to teach me what to think…
Carol Balawyder says
I can relate to the course’s advice to slow down. I think that detail is important to give atmosphere to the story and to allow the reader to see the story unfold. I don’t think though that it need be flowery. I also think that details can be succinct – my favorite style. 🙂