That was the year...

It's been a hectic sort of a year. We almost got to rent a castle, but didn't. While we were disappointed it galvanised us into sorting out some of the decorating and landscaping work at home. There's plenty more to throw ourselves at, crunch time for decisions on moving will be in two years when #1 daughter finishes uni.

I emerged from the Advanced Creative Writing course with a Distinction, along with the other active member of our group. I learned lots, thanks to an excellent tutor, but the online group was a source of frustration, mainly due to lack of participation. As a result I'm ambivalent about postgraduate study. Napier's new genre fiction MA looks good - it works through mentoring rather than peer workshopping - but competition for places will be strong. Back in the real world, the books have arrived for my final OU course which starts in the New Year.

The craziness that is NaNoWriMo has been and gone, lots of finishers with the OU this year, clocking up over a million words between us. Meanwhile I have an archaeology essay to write, more decorating to do and Chr*stmas shopping to commit. Perfect time to update a neglected blog...

The slugs have left the building

I never used to appreciate coming downstairs in the morning to a slug-trail-free carpet. I do now. Heck, yes.
Two more landmarks this week - we have finished wallpapering the study. It is now a pleasing patchwork of old magnolia-painted paper and new not yet magnolia-painted paper. But I didn't have to repaper round the window reveal. This is, in my opinion, a very good thing indeed. And it looks a whole lot better than the mish mash of 270 year old limewashed plaster and modern repairs. Just the rest of the house to go now.
I've also perpetrated another 50,000 words of execrable fiction in the name of NaNoWriMo, which means I'm edging closer to completing the million words of dross required as part of my writerly apprenticeship. And it's been hard work dredging up so much rubbish this year. I made a silly mistake in starting out trying to base it on my post-apocalyptic idea for the End of Course Assessment (ECA in OU-speak) and discovered it's doomed...

Not quite November

No prizes for guessing what I'll be doing next month. Not entirely sure what I've been doing this month, it seems to have passed in a blur of school runs and study. The first assignment's been handed in for my current OU course, and I've managed to work ahead to clear a bit of brain space for NaNoWriMo. All I need now is an idea. I've also been tiling the kitchen: having sworn to finish it before November that leaves, well, today. So I shouldn't really be hanging around in the virtual world right now.
Oh, nearly forgot the slug update: two more caught crossing the salt wastes in the corner of the dining room about a week ago. Ongoing eery silence...

This month's obsession

I've taken up the Scriptfrenzy challenge, to write 100 script pages during April. Scriptwriting forms part of the OU course I'll be starting in September and since I've never tried it before it seemed a good idea to familiarise myself with the formatting and so forth.
The target's to produce 3 and a bit pages a day. I'm going into Day 8 with 43 pages under my belt so far. This leads me to anticipate one or two problems with pacing in the later stages. Unless the world's ready for a four-hour screenplay.
Still, it's good to get the daily writing habit back on track. Something had to take the place of my coffee habit...

It can't be March already...

Lots of stuff's happened since my last posting, I'm sure, but I'm struggling to recall exactly what. In the aftermath of the man-flu I managed to finish my first assignment for the OU course on time. I even carried on studying the next section while I waited for it to be returned, telling myself if it was a rubbish mark I'd quit the course, since I'm less than enthralled with linguistics. It turned out to be a so-so mark so I threw myself at the course material with renewed vigour. And fell asleep. Three days in a row. The kids had recycled another virus from school. It was round about this point my resolution to write something every day faltered. Or, more accurately, keeled over and refused to take another step.*
Then, when I could once more contemplate the course book without sliding into a doze, the OU announced that, as a result of government funding cuts, one of the courses I'd planned to do later would be ending next year, instead of 2014. Which meant I would have to overlap it with the Creative Writing course due to start this autumn. I've come up with various creative solutions to get round this problem, two of which involve dropping my current course. So, while I wait for the powers that be to pronounce on my future I might just make a start on the decorating.
Oh, yeah, I also gave up coffee. 8-o

* Doing OK on the others so far