JaneShuff

This is a bit of a cursory ‘reflections’ because I forgot to make notes of my thoughts as I read the chapters and did the exercises. Plus I’m away without the books so I can have a quick look to jog my memory.

The main thing I got out of Chapter One of the Burrows book was how useful a tool freewriting/freedrafting can be for all sorts of…[Read more]

When I’ve done courses in the past on other things as well as writing, we’ve often either kept a diary or shared ‘reflections’ on each section and what we thought we learned from it. I’ve found this very helpful both to clarify my own thoughts and to see what others gained. Plus it was interesting to see what different things people got from the…[Read more]

Thanks both. Very, very much appreciated.

I’m glad I don’t have your dreams Squidge. Having read a couple of your books I would say that even if you don’t ‘try’ to write gorgeous, a lot of your writing is. I’ve always loved the way you describe Tilda’s world. I wondered what it was about this that felt different and whether there was anything you learned from it that might spill over into…[Read more]

Brilliant, Bella. I hate custard too. It is the only thing I cannot eat. I remember standing over my mum while she wrote a letter to the school saying I didn’t have to eat it.

Lovely I remember, Raine. So evocative. Reading everybody’s I remembers has really hammered home how much more important little authentic details are that overarching descriptions to bring a scene to life.

That made me cry. Beautiful, Hil.

And spark off similar memories for me!

Lovely, Sea. Amazing how little details conjure up the past.

I have been away for a few days and come back to an explosion of posts. I will do my best to properly catch up but feeling rather daunted.

I’m going to have a go at ‘writing gorgeous’ but I thought I’d pick a passage I’d already written and try and ‘beautify’ it. Personally I think a little of some of the examples goes a long way. The Kipling and the Molly Gloss, I love, and I think that’s because the ‘gorgeousness’ doesn’t obstruct the sense but enhances it. The other two, I’m not…[Read more]

Thank Jules and Bella. I have now booked a trip to the UK at the end of October (to visit family rather than purely to record people) and I’ll do some recording then.

Ooooh the Hadron Collider is a good one although I did watch a TV programme about it, I think, but still am none the wiser. Funnily enough this was the first exercise I tried. There is something about it that just made me start automatically. By the way, we are all posting in the wrong thread.

Can I leap in early and say that I would really like to do the overheard dialogue exercise, but I’m in France without access to native English speakers other than my OH and he’s a man of few words. If anyone else does this exercise, might they be able to share the recordings with me? Or does anyone have any ideas where I can find real dialogue on…[Read more]

This is marvellous, WB. My books should arrive tomorrow!

Agree that posting on the main wall for each unit would be a good idea.