Okay, so I got a little sidetracked there...

It's almost been a month since I last posted on here, and there's a few reasons as to why...

Firstly, NaNoWriMo began on the 1st of November. I managed to adhere to the schedule for a total of 5 days before I succumbed to the pain of writer's block. Sigh.

Next year, I'll do better.

If I'm honest, I wasn't too enthralled with my plot, such as it was.

That's a topic for another day - but I did get some good writing done on something that wasn't my previous NaNovel, which was healthy of me.

I am currently in the middle of the waiting stage of my UCAS application. I have two offers already, Conditionals for Edge Hill and Sheffield Hallam, and I have an interview at Manchester Metropolitan University's Crewe campus at the beginning of December - Bangor have received my portfolio and are currently (I assume) in the middle of reading through all of their applicants this year.

I am currently working on the portfolio I shall be taking to the MMU interview; they asked for specific things in their portfolio so I have to write a second one (the other two Uni's decided against portfolios). 

MMU asked for three paragraphs in first person which capture the voice of three different types of character: a child, a homeless person and an executive.

 Each of these people are looking into a fire: what do they see?

That was my prompt, and I shan't be divulging my paragraphs for copyright reasons - if they did an internet search and they found the work online they may reject my application, regardless that I've posted them myself. It's much simpler if they simply find nothing when/if they search.

To go along with this small task they asked for a small personal statement in which I talk about why I want to study Creative Writing at degree level - which will arguably be the hardest part, for me. I hate writing to sell myself... urgh.

However, the upside to MMUs approach to the portfolio is that they offer us candidates a chance to include a sample of original creative writing work of our own choice; a maximum of 1000 words, or 3 poems. But let's face it, my poetry is horrid (something I wouldn't mind remedying at University, mind).

I have something in mind which I think shall do the job quite nicely. It's also 200 words under their limit, which is nice. If I can prove my writing worth with 800, why not do it in 800? Those extra 200 words would probably ruin it, anyway.

Four posts and an introduction...

So, I'm having a great time over on The Meandering Story, up to the fourth post that furthers the narrative... and it's reached one of the points where I feel that I don't want to write about, because it wouldn't make for great reading, and so I just skip it and jump forward by so many years. I can always come back to it later.

Writing in first person is actually quite a new experience for me, and so is writing in my own voice. I have written in third person limited for almost every story, because I thought that first person was too limiting... but having read some great novels in first person (the latest being Wuthering Heights) I've decided that it is the way to go, especially for particular genres.

The way that in first person, you can play with the narration so easily is enticing, I must say. It's like sliding a piece of coloured paper over a spot light, tinting the resulting light in another shade; being able to represent characters, situations and places through one character's eyes is a great tool to have at your disposal. In third person this is, as far as I can make my tired mind think, impossible to do.

Okay, time to sleep.

Hasta lugeo, amigos.