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Creative Writing Blog Posts - Page 62 of 72 - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Creative Writing


Small Forms, Huge Potential thumb

Small Forms, Huge Potential

There is good news and bad news surrounding the short story. Every other month the literary world seems to suggest either its death or its resurgence, and it’s hard to know whether either of these proclamations are remotely accurate. This year, Momaya Press which exists to promote and publish the short story, celebrated its tenth […]

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Paul Beaumont’s dangerous little book thumb

Paul Beaumont’s dangerous little book

‘A Brief Eternity’ is OCA student Paul Beaumont’s first novel. Shortlisted for this year’s Dundee International Book Prize, it was published in November by independent publisher Dangerous Little Books. Paul started studying with OCA in 2006 and began the novel on the level 3 Advanced Writing course. Here’s what he has learnt about writing, publishing and promoting a novel. […]

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Come up and see us… thumb

Come up and see us…

A very pleasant surprise this week was to receive a copy of Pete Davies’ latest book ‘Three Pairs of Dead Mans Pants’. The book comprises three of Pete’s recent projects, one of which is loosely based around life as observed by Pete in Plymouth. The images are coupled with overheard conversations from his local Post […]

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Roarin’ and bubblin’ – writing good dialogue thumb

Roarin’ and bubblin’ – writing good dialogue

‘Great dialogue, like great music, soars off the page’, says Laura Schellhardt in ‘Screenwriting for Dummies’. Since 1927, every writer has needed to be able to write good dialogue. Not that it didn’t matter before then. It’s just that afterwards it mattered more as talkies came to the cinema screen with ‘The Jazz Singer’. By […]

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Press on thumb

Press on

A character using public office to get something done was the initial idea for OCA creative writing student Keith Hutson’s latest play ‘The Champion’ in which a councillor makes the most of his position by setting up a boxing club for disadvantaged kids.  Earlier this year, ‘The Champion’ made it to the last 150 from […]

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Forget inspiration. Get on with the work thumb

Forget inspiration. Get on with the work

Thomas Edison famously claimed that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but do we act like it might be true? We’re sold a romantic idea that artists – I’m writing about painters, sculptors, poets and so on, but feel free to extrapolate this in any direction – are special and won’t (or can’t) work […]

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What it's not thumb

What it's not

This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.   This week, Bank Street Arts in Sheffield announces the jury and student winners of the 4th Sheffield International Artist’s Book Prize, which OCA is supporting. There were 455 entries, a ten-fold increase on the number received for the […]

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Never quite at home thumb

Never quite at home

This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date   OCA tutor Liz Cashdan’s most recent collection of poems ‘Things of Substance: New and Selected Poems’ was published in April by Five Leaves Publications, and launched at the Sheffield Poetry Festival and the Sticky Bun Club in […]

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 thumb

This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.   OCA tutor and course writer Nina Milton is launching her crime fiction novel, In the Moors at Foyles Bookshop in Cabot Circus, Bristol. at 6pm on the 12th September. Praise has been pouring in for In the Moors from reviewers. […]

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