writing – Page 25 – Ruth Livingstone

First story up … on the Olympic Storyteller site

Yes, my first ‘story’ is up on the Olympic Storyteller site.

‘But that’s not a “story”!’ I hear you cry. No, this is not a work of fiction. And, making a wild guess here, I reckon that BT are not sponsoring us Olympic Storytellers because they wanted prize-winning fiction writers. No, they are after ‘stories’ that relate to, or comment on, the events surrounding the London 2012 Olympics.

Thinking of the stories I wanted to tell, I decided to ………

(Go on. Read what I decided to do here. And don’t forget to hit the [like] button. Thank you.)

Submitted

My final Open University assignment is submitted. Marking awaited. And no, somewhat to my own surprise, I did not leave it up to the last-minute, but submitted with 24 hours to spare.

Feel a bit lost now. What next?

I’m doing a 3 day course in ‘Short Story Writing’ at Knuston Hall in September. That’s next.

In October, I start at Birkbeck. Four years of part-time study, leading to a B.A. degree in Creative Writing. Can’t wait!

Putting it off…

Final part of the final assessment for my Open University course (A174 Start Writing Fiction) is due in at the end of this week. Friday lunchtime, to be exact.

I am trying to avoid tinkering right up to the deadline.

But I can’t bring myself to submit it. Maybe I will miss that one typo? Or maybe I have misread the instructions and there is some vital ingredient I have omitted? Or maybe it is complete rubbish and I have time to start again, if I need to?

Or maybe I just don’t want to say ‘goodbye’ to the course? It has been good fun and the 3 months have flown by.

Morning distractions

The pile of notebooks holds the delicious promise of empty pages – waiting to be filled. Pink with white spots – this is the notebook that catches my eye. ‘Open me!’ it shouts, joyfully. ‘Open me and write.’

But wait. What else must I do before I begin? I write a ‘to do’ list. Number one, top of the list, must be my latest Open University assignment. Be quiet, pink notebook with white spots. Wait your turn. I will get to you soon.

Olympic Storyteller – site live

The official BT Olympic Storytellers site is now live, along with details of all the storytellers. They look an intelligent and talented bunch of people. I have no idea what I am doing among them.

Here is my page. I look a little stern. And somewhat confused.

Twitter is beginning to wake up to the fact we have Olympic Storytellers among the Twitterati. There seems a confusion of hashtags to follow, but the official ones appear to be:
#ldn2012story
#London2012
#btstorytellers

Personally, I prefer #olympicstorytellers – because what you see is what you get. But Twitter has a life of its own and defies all attempts at logical organisation (thank goodness). We will see what trends emerge.