The Christmas celebrations are over (in our household the decorations are down and packed away already) and the New Year is here.
It is time to look back on 2013 and wonder and plan the next - so here I am.
It's the usual regrets and sadness, having lost a friend last year and learned more about her after her passing than I did in the last few years of her life. The joy of an addition to our family with the arrival of Ryan my nephew and much more, including good health and continued love within and outside our family. Above all I feel getting through the last course was my overriding achievement - now I just have a few months before my submission for assessment.
So ahead I face some hefty (at least to us) redecoration projects in our small house and upheavals in our working lives...but above all I begin my final and most important course - Advanced Writing 3: Project.
The folder arrived and I was shocked at seeing how little was enclosed. This is the course that you have to "stand on your feet" with a longer, more sustained piece of writing. This is all done with the help and guidance of your Tutor and I am very lucky to have convinced both the OCA and my previous Tutor, Nina Milton, to continue working with me.
After assembling the folder for submission for the Writing for Children Course and drawing a line under that course, I wanted to rest and re-charge the batteries. I decided to read and not actively write - or at least to contemplate any one direction for anything other than the project and then only to think about the latter furtively and keep it peripheral in my mind.
Trouble is that my brain and seemingly fate doesn't allow rest when there are ideas to be scooped up. I now have a small sheaf of notes, images, names and ideas gathering at the front of a notebook which has somehow become designated for the course. It seems that conversations, programmes on television (granted they are selected by me and so may be sought out unconsciously) and random webpages seem to be conspiring to push a narrative onto me.
It is one month before the contract between me and Nina Milton will be negotiated but my imagination and what is falling in my path is not waiting.
After putting into practice the discipline of plotting in the last course, I came across a webpage where Ray Bradbury advocates list making; I have always done this to plan a birthdays, decorating or project plans. This now appeals as a precursor to the actual full on detailed plotting; so I am making this my first active writing foray, pre-course, of 2014.
I am feeling the same as I have felt at the beginning of this course as I have for all the others - hesitation and a little fear. Despite all the experience and help, I still feel apprehension - but there is nothing to do but forge ahead on the final push!
