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This is so evocative and sweet! I totally agree re bananas in custard – ugh. But isn’t Glenn’s mum a gem! Like @squidge says – interesting to see it worked into a kind of story, it gives it almost a prose poetry feel to it.

Good luck!!

I read the gorgeousness passages out whilst in the bath. One of my dogs came and listened, but I can’t say he looked overly impressed…

I think I see what she is saying about them, in terms of them having the sounds and so on as part of the prose, but I didn’t really like two of them on a personal level. The third one was the one that struck me…[Read more]

Thank you! I have to admit I developed a bit of a soft spot for wee Jonny!

I’ve only ever used the I Remember exercise for finding a character’s voice before so it felt quite different doing it for myself. I still think doing it for a character is more useful for any actual piece of writing. But I guess this is good for simply getting yourself…[Read more]

Finally read all of Chapter 1 in the Burroway book. It made lots of sense and I can already feel the details slipping away from me… To that end, I am going to try writing myself some summaries of the readings and see if they help it go into my memory better.

I’ve always got a soft spot for Kipling’s style – it is so much fun to read aloud to small people. As for the really strong dialect sample (not got my book with me so can’t remember which one that was – about the frog!), I can admire it and enjoy its differentness … but for anything beyond flash length, I’d really have to care about the…[Read more]

I’m on a ferry tmrw, so hoping to do some eavesdropping there… Although the forecast is not marvellous so that may hamper my efforts!
I’m liking some of the exercises in the books so may play with them over the next few days.

@janeshuff try going on Youtube and looking for News items. Pick somewhere English speakinh and aim for a local news report. I’ve found there’s lots of excerpts of dialogue in local interest stories that way.

Classroom construction will begin as soon as I have more tea.

Agreed on the group becoming private now and on posting to announce new units.

Yep might be a good idea. I’ll do that tmrw unless anyone disagrees… We could post on the main wall to announce new units so anyone interested can join.

My lovely books have arrived. If anyone needs it, I’m happy to share photos of the relevant pages (Aside from CalMac ferry vagaries, I don’t want anyone excluded because of book costs). This site doesn’t let you post pictures, I believe (?) but I can do it by email or fb. Just shout…

Mine will arrive on the island when the people who bring them over on the ferry get around to it…

If everyone is okay with me doing so, I’ll set up threads on the relevant components once I have had a sleep, so they will be ready to go.

We have said 3 weeks for this class/segment, so hopefully we will all have our books in plenty of time to…[Read more]

Spot the person with lots of actual experience structuring study programmes! Thank you so much @woolleybeans this is just what we needed, and sounds like it should accommodate everyone’s needs.
I say we go with this & if we need to review how it’s working after the first few 3 week blocks, then by that point we should have a much clearer idea of…[Read more]

Ok, so. We wouldn’t need to be massively set in stone on a lot of it. I figure the following:

1) Making each ‘class’ in the craft seminars span 3 weeks actually means that with the odd week taken off as a break, the craft seminars would fit nicely into 2 years without being massively heavy time-wise. A couple of hours a week, it reckons, doing it…[Read more]

It looks to me as though a timetable including discussion and feedback would be good on all three aspects, if we are going the route of having a timetable in the first place.

For one thing, the writing practice can include the exercises for the craft seminars, or could be some of the ones Andrew suggests but which are not chosen for the craft…[Read more]