After the panic that was That Essay in previous weeks, today I have finally been able to spend a Wednesday doing just what these days away from the boring regular job are supposed to be for. Writing. Specifically, not writing essays!
It's been surprisingly relaxing as well. I think that after the stress of a) having a deadline and b) having an incredibly precise question to answer, just sitting and letting words form freely has been a pleasant treat for my brain! I've been working on Project Crunch - one that I haven't touched since before NaNoWriMo way back in November (it seems like a dim and distant memory now), and, as ever, when I look back at what I'd already done I was pretty pleased with it. Once again, time has been my most loyal supporter - no matter how rubbish I might feel something is when I'm in the middle of writing it, looking at it a day/week/month later I will almost always discover that it's actually quite good. I wonder whether that's a normal thing, or whether some people feel that way about their work while they're actually still in the process of writing it?
In my slightly-obsessed-with-statistics way I have started a 2011 Word Counts graph...yes, I know, I'm a total Excel fangirl (!). Crunch has gone from 2444 (where I left it last year) to 3196. That's 752 words today - not the 1000 I was roughly aiming for but still quite good. They're words that I like, for one thing, and that feel right. Things have taken a pivotal turn for my heroine and I've been writing about her immediate reaction to this event. Though it's not something I've ever been through, I think (hope?!) that the way I've written it is believable.
Ah, one last thing before I go. The result for the stressy essay, which I did my mind map for, came back today - 86%. 86%! So far in my OU journey I've only topped that with my final 'Arts Past & Present' assignment (also Classics-based, it's clearly My Thing) and my first 'Start Writing Fiction' assignment. It just goes to show that putting the time into research and planning definitely pays off when it comes to writing a coherent essay. Let's hope I remember that for the next one!
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86% is an amazing mark. You should be very proud of yourself! That's Pass 1 territory, isn't it? Have just sent off my own millstone essay on poetry for A210. So glad to see the back of it. Don't think it'll score highly, but as long as it's a pass, then it's good enough for me!
ReplyDeleteThanks Nicolette - I am really pleased, and pretty darned proud of the mind map too. Good luck with A210 - poetry is one thing I'm definitely glad I don't have to study any more!
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