Wednesday 27 May 2020

Journey To Writer

This is one of those posts that is only really of interest to me.

Annoyingly, The Memory isn’t very clear when it comes to the changing aspirations. As far as I remember it, as a kid I planned on being a veterinary nurse when I grew up but what I really wanted to be was an actor. However, I have no recollection whatsoever of putting any plans into place regarding the vet part, whereas I did try towards acting. And ages ago I found this thing I’d written at school where I had stated that I either wanted to be an actor or a writer. So apparently writing was always an interest of mine. I mean, acting and writing were kind of indistinguishable at school, because when I ‘acted’ it was something that I had improvised in the first place. 

If you've followed the 'Before I Could Write' series you'll have seen that although I loved creative writing at school, I really wasn't any good at it. The main memory of writing in class was never finishing anything because I just couldn't comprehend the idea of a 'short' story. The only praise I can recall getting for writing actually embarrassed me, I think it was in Year 5 and the teacher thought the opening of my story was so good that she made me read the story to the class, but I knew that I totally welched on it almost immediately and the rest of the story was garbage. And hey, you can read it here.

I first started really writing as a hobby in the mid-late teens when I was trying to find scripts online, and I came across a writing site. I used this all the time despite that what I wrote wasn’t very good and the fact that even the writing community on there seemed to completely ignore me. I seem to recall exclusively writing terrible monologues.

I know that when I started looking for universities, at first I was researching drama schools, but after the AS-Level grades weren’t as good as I thought they’d be, I switched to looking at universities that offered writing courses, although even then I still considered doing joint acting and writing courses, and even when I eventually picked a full writing course, I naturally assumed I would become part of the university’s am dram club. Except when I arrived at uni and went to the societies fair, it turned out Glamorgan didn’t have an am dram club. I also discovered that all the tantalising writing modules that had been advertised had been cut and in order to get enough credits to pass the year, I would have to take other modules. I always loved the writing modules but the other ones were a lot more hit and miss.

In the first year, I ended up with two writing modules:
Starting To Write taught by Sheenagh Pugh. I didn't really know anyone in the classes yet and everyone seemed quite shy about handing things in. A couple of times I handed in something so bad (always something I had written before uni rather than the new stuff) that Sheenagh didn't even bother sharing it with the class. The worst part of this module was that we HAD to write poetry, which I neither have appreciation for nor skill to do. I came out with a 2:1. You can see some examples of what I wrote here and here.)
Writing Media taught by Maria Donovan. Maria liked to share a lot of handouts about punctuation and grammar, which I don't think anyone actually read. I also made the first proper uni friends in this class. I basically spent the year writing 'opinion pieces' which were all pretty much garbage. However I got a 1st.

one drama module:
Theatre Scriptwriting. I think the teacher was called Deborah something. This class was a lot of fun – it was taught more like a writing module than drama. I got a 1st.

one media module:
Scriptwriting For The Media. This class was bad. Illogically I got a 1st and my highest overall grade of the year, despite my individual pieces of coursework all being lower than this. The teacher must have added up wrong. I mean, he was totally useless. But in this case, it worked out in my favour so meh.

and two literature modules:
Texts And Contexts. This was the only 'lecture' style module I took, you know like the ones you see in movies, where a huge group of people sit in a lecture hall and some boring person drones at you from the front, with no real interaction. This was mostly very dull, although the stuff we did about The Tempest actually caught The Interest. I got a 2:1.
Reading Fiction: American Story. I actually enjoyed these lessons but completely messed up the essays somehow. I was supposed to discuss this with the tutor, but I couldn’t be bothered since I was only taking the module to get through the year. I actually failed on one of the essays, which was therefore my worst piece of work at university. I got a 3rd overall. This was my lowest grade not just this year, but during the whole of uni.

In the second year, I was able to drop literature like it was hot. Now the grades would actually count for something, it wasn’t just about passing. This is also when I had The Epiphany at the start of 2005, which is when I feel I finally grew into The Self and the writing style.

I took three writing modules:
Writing Fiction, taught by Chris Meredith (weird that Chris was the tutor I got on best with and yet he consistently gave me the lowest grades). All the writing modules were workshops, but Chris's teaching style was basically a lot of chatting and going off on tangents. I got a 2:1.
Writing Non-Fiction, taught by Rob Middlehurst (in which I pretty much continued to write fiction...). Rob's teaching style was basically encouraging us to really bitch about what we were reading, but he had quite polar opinions and only seemed to write down our feedback if it agreed with what he thought. Luckily for me, he liked my writing. I got a 1st.
Writing For Children, taught by Philip Gross. Philip's teaching style was more about exercises and role play. I got a 1st.

Two drama modules:
Radio & TV Scriptwriting. This was the same as the Scriptwriting For The Media class I took the year before. Same awful teacher, same lack of actually teaching us anything. Literally every lesson was the same. He just told us the '8 point structure' of a script and NOTHING else, saying that any more knowledge was for those doing a masters degree. So I have no idea how to write a script. I got a 2:1.
Theatre Scriptwriting. Maybe my most hated lesson. New teacher, did not get on. He was a very stereotypical drama type and was only interested in tragedy, so since I only like comedy in theatre, I really floundered. Got a 2:2.

One media module:
Scriptwriting Film. All I remember was having to watch The Apartment. This happens to be one of the favourite movies, but I still don’t want to study it. I have no recollection of actually writing anything in this class, just studying film. I got a 2:1.

I also got a short story published in the 2005 edition of Daps, the university’s writing anthology.

In the blessed and wonderful third year, I was able to just focus on writing. Technically there were only five modules, but I was able to take an independent study to top up, because I now hated scriptwriting as much as I had hated literature and I didn’t want to spoil the final year with that crap.

Creative Writing Dissertation (double module) taught by Chris Meredith. I wrote a novelette. I got a 1st and my (joint) highest grade throughout uni.
Writing Culture And Society (double module), taught by Rob Middlehurst. This was the same as the Creative Writing Dissertation but he had to give it a different name so that it could exist. I wrote a bunch of pretend-autobiographical short stories.  I got a 1st.
Writing For Children, taught by Philip Gross. I wrote the start of a children's novel. I got a 1st.
Independent Study. I used this exactly the same as Writing For Children, making Writing For Children into an unofficial double module, so it’s weird that I got better grades for this than I did for the actual Writing For Children module, since it was the same project spilt in two. One piece of coursework earned me my highest graded piece of work throughout university, and overall the module was my (joint) highest 1st of the three year course. (Writing For Children and my Independent Study went on to become my MS working title: Evelynland.)

I also got two short stories and a poem published in the 2006 edition of Daps but the whole thing was a bit of a shambles with allegedly the entire team quitting on it leaving one guy to rush it into print, so I don’t think it counts for much.

I earned a First Class Honours overall and also won the Michael Parnell Prize for best piece of creative writing for 2006, although I don’t know which piece that is referring to.

University was great! (Except for the boring modules.) I felt really noticed for the first time. I became a bit of a teacher’s pet. At least it felt like it to me. I know The Writing improved exponentially. Maybe about half of what I wrote has gone on to become something that could be publishable. I never understood scripts or poems at uni. I’m not really interested in short stories any more. I think I was destined to be a novelist.

I write most days, except when I feel weird. But it’s been fourteen years since I graduated and I’m still waiting for that big break, y’know… (Admittedly, I have spent a lot more of that time writing than I have sending stuff off.) It’ll happen though. I might not be a professional author, but I am a writer. I will always be a writer. I couldn’t imagine being any other way. What else do you do with all that imagination inside your head if you don’t use it to create?

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