Creative Writing Archives | Page 2 of 64 | The Open College of the Arts

Have Fun with it: Word games to shake up your process and get you out of writers’ block

So you’ve been trying to come up with some new ideas, or turning over that same piece of work for weeks now, and it just doesn’t feel like inspiration is coming your way. We’ve all felt like this, I think, and we can agree that ideas can come from the least likely places – something you overhear, something found in a pocket, a billboard on your drive to work – but what if you’re just not finding them? This post introduces a few ideas that are excellent ways of playing with words, freeing up your process and creating the circumstances in which new ideas might present themselves.

What is your tutor up to? Garry MacKenzie

I’m really interested in what nets mean to you. Do you come from a fishing background? Can you wax lyrical about the moment when a football hits the back of the net? Are you a knitter?

What I learned on a writing retreat

With all that time to do nothing but write, you have to deliver, don’t you? Nope. This mindset is guaranteed to make you freeze.

Ask the librarian

What is plagiarism? Plagiarism means deliberately or accidentally using someone else’s work or ideas as if they were your own. Work means any intellectual output, and typically includes text, data, images, sound or performance and includes material downloaded from electronic sources. Deliberately plagiarising work whilst you are at OCA can have very serious consequences, which is why it’s important to follow good academic practices and to reference your work properly.

Breaking into the boys’ club

For centuries, women have fought against adversity to pursue artistic careers in what was (and arguably still is) a man’s world. They have suffered the humiliation of having their works passed off under someone else’s name, of being barred access to training, of struggling to do what men have taken for granted (simply represent themselves on canvas or celluloid) and of having their pieces relegated to dark corners of museum and gallery storerooms.

Join the new OCA Book Group!

The Book Group is running again! Sign up to have a relaxed discussion about books and writing.

OCA & SANE: A new partnership

We are very pleased to announce that we are working in partnership with the leading mental health charity SANE to support mental health. We are working together to deliver SANE’s new Creative Awards Scheme, a new initiative to enable people suffering from mental health or caring for people with mental health issues to access the visual arts and harness their creativity.

Art in the Anthropocene

The word Anthropocene combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time. Whilst the term is widely used across many discourses it is important to recognise that the term has spread with great speed often dislodging familiar terms like nature and environment. The notion of the Anthropocene raises important questions that concern the sustainability of the planet to support human life.

Lisbon’s vibrant and optimistic art scene.

If you are heading to Portugal this summer, take some time to look around Lisbon’s vibrant art scene. This is art in the more liberal sense. Music, ceramics, architecture, visual arts, food culture, moving image, textiles- all are on show and in current conversation.

The problems of updating

These days, online books get updated, and customers will get the newest version free of charge. Publishers want their contemporary fiction to be up-to-the-minute. But is there anything you can do to make updates unnecessary? Of course, it depends which genre you choose.