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| Delusional man looks at tomatoes today |
So I submitted my resignation this morning. I have no new job to go to. I'm returning to full time study at the Australian National University, hope to pick up bits and pieces of work where I can and use the comparatively meagre resources I have to support us. I think I can eke out two years. I'll either succeed with this bonkers plan or fail spectacularly. There is no Plan B but I intend to succeed.
In advance of the university year beginning next month I enrolled in a free, online course provided by the Open University. It's called Start Writing Fiction and encourages you to do what it says on the label. The course started today.
One of the early exercises goes like this:
Write a paragraph (50 to 100 words) containing one fact and three fictitious elements.
You can write about yourself, about your interests, about history – about anything you like. Then try the reverse – write a paragraph containing three facts and one fictitious element.
And this is how I responded (based on some previous attempts);
One fact, three fictitious elements
There are lies, damned lies and - of course - there are statistics. Everyone knows, statistically speaking, you’re more likely to be crushed to death by a vending machine tipping over than to be taken by a shark. Except that out here, an hour east of the Whitsunday Islands, there are no vending machines of any shape, size or form. Not one. But I’ll bet my last soggy dollar there are more than enough sharks to go round. Not far from here. And this yacht is sinking. I reckon we have an hour.
Three facts, one fictitious element
Four miles south-west of the Clachan Bridge, which some folk call the Bridge over the Atlantic, a five-minute ferry crossing takes you from the pier at Ellenabeich village to the island of Easdale. It was there, on that slate outcrop, my mother gave birth at the height of the great storm in the winter of 1881. As I entered the world, shrieking like a hungry herring gull, a monstrous wall of wild water breached the island’s sea defences, flooding the quarries. Nothing thereafter could ever be the same.
I'm started. As I hope to continue. Writing.
