Personal Blogs

Today I walked through the woodlands, near where I live. What a lovely sight I saw ' A host of golden daffodils! '

 🌨 🌬 🌫❄

A cold north wind is blowing
White flakes fall, it is snowing
Frozen land buried deep below
Nothing yet here will grow
The earth is just waiting for the Spring to show!

    🌫   🌤 🌾🌺

gill burrell

              Save the  NHS

The day started off beautifully,  with sunshine and birdsong. I didn't even need to use the heating at all, so that was great!

After having a cup of coffee, and a lovely large croissant !  (just for once- for a treat! )
I then settled down to study. I sat near the large front window, overlooking the green lawn, watching the evergreens blowing gently in the breeze.

The cats were curled up one on the setee, the other one on the armchair.

I opened my book to chapter 5 'Borderlands of fact and fiction'.
I looked first quickly at my study guide for the learning outcomes, to see what I am aiming for,  in this particular chapter.

The learning outcomes will be :
• identify the interplay between fact and fiction in creative writing, and how experience, information, hopes and fears can be synthesised into something new and original

• appreciate how, during the process of transforming experience into writing, writers’ creative techniques blur the differences between novel and memoir

• understand how verbatim theatre presents a kind of people’s history which may challenge the political status quo (compare this with the multiple truths seen in the life stories in Unit 12)

• appreciate how imagination and historical record are intertwined within historical fiction.

This sounds like a promising start to the chapter. The last chapter had been interesting too,  about life stories, complex narratives and everyday truths.

The dividing line between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ is, as Richardson points out, very blurred. In the last chapter it was also pointed out that we may sometimes 'include' or 'exclude' certain facts, to shape the narrative so that it flows better and highlights the main points and  ideas we want to get across.

This was also true in the narratives for the work place, as with the CVs, where when applying for a certain job,  you do not have to include every part time job,  or every single  hobby you ever did, but only that which is relevant to the job in hand. 

Otherwise this  could be confusing for the employer. It has to be constrained and condensed. Which makes it easier for the reader to understand, and to judge how you are presenting yourself, in terms of content, language and identity.

The same can be said of the short story,  which is compressed  to only a few pages or less. That has a beginning a middle and an end. It should have a good plot or storyline which should be quite exaggerated or dramatic,  because you want to get the ideas across in clear and interesting language .This can be done using metaphors, foregrounding with defamiliarisation and by using other literary devices.

Took a lot of notes as I went along,  using bullet points,  Spidergrams and  Mind Maps. Thinking also of the three 'P' s Purpose, Process, Product.

By the afternoon, the sun had gone in behind the clouds, so I decided to call it a day, I packed everything away until tomorrow.

Though her smile is gone forever
and her hand I cannot touch
I still have so many memories
Of the one I loved so much.
Her memory is now my keepsake
With which  I’ll never part.
God has her in his keeping
I still have her in my heart.
Sadly missed, but never forgotten.