The Journal, Part 2
January 7th 2007 11:41
Category: No Category
3:21pm, 24 January, 2001
Various ideas, those above and more as well, are floating around in my head for the Major Work right now. I need time for them to settle. Although I don’t know where I’m going I feel calm and relaxed, because I’m approaching this work in the right way (for me)- going with the flow.
10:26pm, 12 February 2001
At this stage I must express my dissatisfaction with the limitations set upon the students by the Ext 2 syllabus. By demanding that students categorise their works either as one form of writing or another, the syllabus is making it very hard for students to combine elements of another genre as a central feature of their work. I accept that examiners need to demand certain boundaries and restriction, however, the inability of the course to recognise a work as not falling distinctly under one category but being an explorative merging and mixing of forms and styles is an issue I feel is very important to raise. Does this course not attempt to offer students the widest range of possibilities available? To dismiss the relevance of a piece that questions format and style, by using a variety of these would be as unfair as to dismiss a perfectly conventional piece simply because it is conventional (?)
7:45pm 17 February, 2001
I have at this stage a good idea of what I want to do! I’ll type up a draft as soon as I can transfer the material in my head onto a page!
10:42pm 20 February, 2001
The options which are open to me, in the written medium, are: a short story, a suite/collection of poems or a play. I am rather dissatisfied with the restriction on a more creative offering this brings, however I have found a way to work around this limitation. Under the category of ‘short story’ I will explore an author’s adventure in writing, or attempting to write a play. The story shall begin with the play, establishing a modern setting and distinct atmosphere, then stop suddenly at a point where hopefully the reader’s interest has been captured. Then the reader will be faced with the musings of the composer, pausing at this point in the play, before continuing. The author will be unable to decide how to continue the play, and will dwell on his/her worries about it, going into literary theory perhaps, cautious and hesitant about their work, and perhaps not quite mentally stable. The age, gender, character or background of the author will not be revealed apart from what little the reader can deduce from the play and his/her prose. This will be purposely withheld to question the nature of identity of a composer. It will also question the nature of 'creativity', how motivation works and how a piece of literature is composed. A sense of confusion over their own creation will permeate the author’s self-reflecting prose. This may also question the nature of meaning and creation itself. With these themes I am tackling the English Syllabus head on.
It is a common experience for a writer, whether or not he/she considers him/herself as such, to begin writing a story and not be sure where it will end up, or where it begins and ends. And it is also a common experience to be self-conscious of one’s own processes of creation to such an extent that one feels intimidated by the power they hold in their creation. I hope to capture and dissect these experiences in my Major Work.
6:30pm Wednesday 14th March
I’m still in the process of forming my idea- I think this is really fun for me because it allows me to play around with possibilities, one of my favourite pastimes, and something the ‘creator’ of the play in my Major Work will be doing. In fact, the author’s playing around will be the key to the text.
I haven’t yet described how my work relates to the 2u/3u English syllabus. From my understanding, the underlying intention of the English syllabuses is to allow the student to delve deep into investigating the ways meaning is constructed. (I would say postmodern theory has been a major influence on the creation of the syllabus, which is why I thought it’d be especially useful and interesting to investigate it.) And that is what my work aims to do as well.
My work aims to critically analyse and deconstruct the process of creating meaning. As I tried to find a specific area of the 2u or 3u course that I could use as an example, I realised that the whole syllabus resonated very deeply with my theories on meaning, so I am compelled to say that my Major Work arises from and is inspired by the actual ideas and theories which arise out of the syllabus, both the English Advanced and English Extension(s?).
Also, my Major Work raises questions about the Ext 2 syllabus itself. Instead of simply a play or short story, I will be combining various elements of these modes. Also, my self-conscious writer hopes to parody a Ext 2 student, made to be self-conscious of their own processes of writing, to the point where it becomes a central or dominating part of their writing itself.
I am currently reading ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler’ by Italo Calvino, which is giving me a lot of interesting ideas. I’m finding this work fascinating, immensely clever and insightful. I would like to incorporate elements of his approach to ‘If On A Winter’s Night…’ into my writing style in my Work.
More ideas for the ‘play’ part of my work:
One interpretation (the author’s, perhaps) of the play: it lacks the dynamics of an active plot, the characters are purposely vacant in essence (of character and personality), providing the play with an air of anonymity; they talk in subdued tones suitable for a quiet art gallery, not trying to engage the audience. The setting dominates the play: the impression is that they are simply a part of it. Even the extras, who appear for a few minutes into the scene each, have more movement and animation, purpose and personality than the main characters, who are withdrawn into themselves.
3:07pm Saturday, 12th May – this is the ‘pretend’ time of a diary entry
Curtains are half-drawn, to expose a narrow art gallery room. The curtains are drawn at the end of the stage slightly as well, exposing about half a metre on each side of adjoining rooms. The curtains represent walls, and the area in front of them is to be used as a passageway from one room into the next.
The room décor is a somewhat uneasy combination of Renaissance, Victorian and Modern style: The walls are coloured a light peach, making an uneasy contrast with the sombre dark mahogany table and adjoining chairs in the back centre of the room. In front of the table, which is rectangular and allowing for 3 chairs on each side, is a wide black square cushion, which looks inviting. Modern art, some of which is dubious as to subject matter and meaning, hangs on the walls, accompanied by excessively ornate framing, Baroque style. One might conclude that the designers were somewhat too ambitious in the multi-style décor.
It is daytime, as we can see from the window on the back wall of the room- only one lamp illuminates the room from one of the inner corners- the light casts an unnatural orange tinge on the peach walls. One might guess that the lighting was meant to add a glow of warmth to the room, but instead the effect is artificial. Apart from the furniture, which dominates the room, it is empty save for the paintings, and it carries with it an air of emptiness.
Silence prevails. It is only broken by visitors to the gallery moving in and out of the rooms.
To begin, and throughout the duration of the play, extras representing viewers from the community travel in and out of the main room through the adjoining rooms. They all have distinct personalities. They often pass by in front of and distract attention from the main characters. As they pass by the centre of the stage, they pause for a while to look at the audience. Some glances are fleeting, with disinterest, others are intense. Each extra oozes character and individuality.
Possible Ideas:
Possible chapter/ interlude style:
Chapter 1- the play
Interlude A- the author’s comment, notation, etc
Chapter 2- back to their creation
Interlude B- the author interjects once more
Chapter 3- an actual interlude as we have known them. The writer questions whether or not the ‘interludes’ are more appropriately seen as chapters… not a big deal, just a sentence or two pondering this, at beginning of chapter, marking the changeover.
Interlude C- the writer recognises their next foray into the imaginitive/creative world as an interlude
Chapter 4- the writer now acknowledges their reflections as the central part of his string of offerings
Interlude D- idea that their experimental writings are now the ‘interludes’
Chapter 5- the chapters are to get longer in length now, as the focus shifts to the still nameless identity-less author.
Interlude E- pieces become more personal, incorporating poems and an outlet for personal feelings
The idea of this is to show a gradual progression from the writer’s imaginative efforts as regarded as the focus of a tale to his actual ‘intrusions’ being the focus. It represents a focus away from a text as a product but as a process.
I’m rebelling against the idea that a text is a product. The irony is that this whole work is a product in itself.
There you go, I am totally happy 
The 4u course is dominated by this idea of documenting and explaining your process. Well I hope the examiners have fun with my Work!
12:26pm Monday, April 16, 2001
“If you're confused about Postmodernism, that may mean you understand it.”
So says Brad Holland, one of the millions of voices of the ‘ordinary person’, summing up, with what could be called a postmodern irony the ambiguity of the term known as postmodernism. Probably the most striking feature of postmodernism is that even the people who call themselves postmodernists disagree on what postmodernism actually is. This is indicative of the context of postmodernism- it is a theory which embraces the confusion and ambiguity of the multiple dimensions of ‘modern life’.
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English defines postmodernism as:
An international movement, affecting all the contemporary arts, which has succeeded modernism. Opinions vary as to whether it is entirely distinct from modernism or differs in it only in degree. In literature, it has its origins in the rejection of traditional mimetic function in favour of a heightened sense of artifice, a delight in games and verbal pyrotechnics, a suspicion of absolute truth and a resulting inclination to stress the fictionality of fiction.
7:29pm Tuesday, 1 May, 2001
I have developed my idea a few steps further: I want the author to be writing within diary entries, to make the work a more believable blend of short creative writing pieces and the introspection that breaks it up. This will add an atmosphere of an intimate, personal and private exploration, which complements my attempts to explore ideas, themes and issues through the personal sphere (or through an individual).
I have also decided that in order to explore the author’s experimentation further, he/she will attempt to write several other texts, including prose fiction and poetry. The prose included will be descriptive (with a lot of imagery) and the poetry will be reflective, and she will mock and criticise herself most of the way through. I may include some prose a la Italo Calvino, making the creative writing piece self-reflexive without further aid on the author’s behalf, besides: am I going too far? Do I sound too opinionated? Is this voice Me? –possible comments
Influence for the play: The Real Inspector Hound. The beginning, esp. Questioning what is real and what is fictitious.
Psychological- deep exploration of the psyche in relation to literature
Philosophical- ponders philosophy on writing and behaving
Analytical & Critical, Imaginative, Probing, Postmodern, Theoretic, Subjective, Cultural
9:55pm Saturday 5th May, 2001
page 12 of “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller” by Italo Calino:
…For a couple of pages now you have been reading on, and this would be the time to tell you clearly whether this station where I have got off is a station where I have got off is a station of the past or a station of today; instead the sentences continue to move in vagueness, grayness, in a kind of no man’s land of experience reduced to the lowest common denominator. Watch out: it is surely a method of involving you gradually, capturing you in the story before you realise it- a trap. Or perhaps the author still has not made up his mind, just as you, reader, for that matter, are not sure what you would like most to read: whether it is the arrival of at an old station, which would give you a sense of going back, a renewed concern with lost times and places, or else a flashing of lights and sounds, which would give you the sense of being alive today, in the world where people today believe it is a pleasure to be alive. …
p14:
… Where would I go out to? The city outside there has no name yet, we don’t know if it will remain outside the novel or whether the whole story will be contained within its inky blackness. I only know that this first chapter is taking a long time to break free of the station and the bar…
I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention, I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. If you, reader, couldn’t help picking me out among the people getting off the train and continued following me in my to-and-fro-ing between bar and telephone, this is simply because I am called “I” and this is the only thing you know about me, but this alone is reason enough to invest a part of yourself in the stranger “I”.
Various ideas, those above and more as well, are floating around in my head for the Major Work right now. I need time for them to settle. Although I don’t know where I’m going I feel calm and relaxed, because I’m approaching this work in the right way (for me)- going with the flow.
10:26pm, 12 February 2001
At this stage I must express my dissatisfaction with the limitations set upon the students by the Ext 2 syllabus. By demanding that students categorise their works either as one form of writing or another, the syllabus is making it very hard for students to combine elements of another genre as a central feature of their work. I accept that examiners need to demand certain boundaries and restriction, however, the inability of the course to recognise a work as not falling distinctly under one category but being an explorative merging and mixing of forms and styles is an issue I feel is very important to raise. Does this course not attempt to offer students the widest range of possibilities available? To dismiss the relevance of a piece that questions format and style, by using a variety of these would be as unfair as to dismiss a perfectly conventional piece simply because it is conventional (?)
7:45pm 17 February, 2001
I have at this stage a good idea of what I want to do! I’ll type up a draft as soon as I can transfer the material in my head onto a page!
10:42pm 20 February, 2001
The options which are open to me, in the written medium, are: a short story, a suite/collection of poems or a play. I am rather dissatisfied with the restriction on a more creative offering this brings, however I have found a way to work around this limitation. Under the category of ‘short story’ I will explore an author’s adventure in writing, or attempting to write a play. The story shall begin with the play, establishing a modern setting and distinct atmosphere, then stop suddenly at a point where hopefully the reader’s interest has been captured. Then the reader will be faced with the musings of the composer, pausing at this point in the play, before continuing. The author will be unable to decide how to continue the play, and will dwell on his/her worries about it, going into literary theory perhaps, cautious and hesitant about their work, and perhaps not quite mentally stable. The age, gender, character or background of the author will not be revealed apart from what little the reader can deduce from the play and his/her prose. This will be purposely withheld to question the nature of identity of a composer. It will also question the nature of 'creativity', how motivation works and how a piece of literature is composed. A sense of confusion over their own creation will permeate the author’s self-reflecting prose. This may also question the nature of meaning and creation itself. With these themes I am tackling the English Syllabus head on.
6:30pm Wednesday 14th March
I’m still in the process of forming my idea- I think this is really fun for me because it allows me to play around with possibilities, one of my favourite pastimes, and something the ‘creator’ of the play in my Major Work will be doing. In fact, the author’s playing around will be the key to the text.
I haven’t yet described how my work relates to the 2u/3u English syllabus. From my understanding, the underlying intention of the English syllabuses is to allow the student to delve deep into investigating the ways meaning is constructed. (I would say postmodern theory has been a major influence on the creation of the syllabus, which is why I thought it’d be especially useful and interesting to investigate it.) And that is what my work aims to do as well.
My work aims to critically analyse and deconstruct the process of creating meaning. As I tried to find a specific area of the 2u or 3u course that I could use as an example, I realised that the whole syllabus resonated very deeply with my theories on meaning, so I am compelled to say that my Major Work arises from and is inspired by the actual ideas and theories which arise out of the syllabus, both the English Advanced and English Extension(s?).
Also, my Major Work raises questions about the Ext 2 syllabus itself. Instead of simply a play or short story, I will be combining various elements of these modes. Also, my self-conscious writer hopes to parody a Ext 2 student, made to be self-conscious of their own processes of writing, to the point where it becomes a central or dominating part of their writing itself.
I am currently reading ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler’ by Italo Calvino, which is giving me a lot of interesting ideas. I’m finding this work fascinating, immensely clever and insightful. I would like to incorporate elements of his approach to ‘If On A Winter’s Night…’ into my writing style in my Work.
More ideas for the ‘play’ part of my work:
One interpretation (the author’s, perhaps) of the play: it lacks the dynamics of an active plot, the characters are purposely vacant in essence (of character and personality), providing the play with an air of anonymity; they talk in subdued tones suitable for a quiet art gallery, not trying to engage the audience. The setting dominates the play: the impression is that they are simply a part of it. Even the extras, who appear for a few minutes into the scene each, have more movement and animation, purpose and personality than the main characters, who are withdrawn into themselves.
3:07pm Saturday, 12th May – this is the ‘pretend’ time of a diary entry
Curtains are half-drawn, to expose a narrow art gallery room. The curtains are drawn at the end of the stage slightly as well, exposing about half a metre on each side of adjoining rooms. The curtains represent walls, and the area in front of them is to be used as a passageway from one room into the next.
The room décor is a somewhat uneasy combination of Renaissance, Victorian and Modern style: The walls are coloured a light peach, making an uneasy contrast with the sombre dark mahogany table and adjoining chairs in the back centre of the room. In front of the table, which is rectangular and allowing for 3 chairs on each side, is a wide black square cushion, which looks inviting. Modern art, some of which is dubious as to subject matter and meaning, hangs on the walls, accompanied by excessively ornate framing, Baroque style. One might conclude that the designers were somewhat too ambitious in the multi-style décor.
It is daytime, as we can see from the window on the back wall of the room- only one lamp illuminates the room from one of the inner corners- the light casts an unnatural orange tinge on the peach walls. One might guess that the lighting was meant to add a glow of warmth to the room, but instead the effect is artificial. Apart from the furniture, which dominates the room, it is empty save for the paintings, and it carries with it an air of emptiness.
Silence prevails. It is only broken by visitors to the gallery moving in and out of the rooms.
To begin, and throughout the duration of the play, extras representing viewers from the community travel in and out of the main room through the adjoining rooms. They all have distinct personalities. They often pass by in front of and distract attention from the main characters. As they pass by the centre of the stage, they pause for a while to look at the audience. Some glances are fleeting, with disinterest, others are intense. Each extra oozes character and individuality.
Possible Ideas:
Possible chapter/ interlude style:
Chapter 1- the play
Interlude A- the author’s comment, notation, etc
Chapter 2- back to their creation
Interlude B- the author interjects once more
Chapter 3- an actual interlude as we have known them. The writer questions whether or not the ‘interludes’ are more appropriately seen as chapters… not a big deal, just a sentence or two pondering this, at beginning of chapter, marking the changeover.
Interlude C- the writer recognises their next foray into the imaginitive/creative world as an interlude
Chapter 4- the writer now acknowledges their reflections as the central part of his string of offerings
Interlude D- idea that their experimental writings are now the ‘interludes’
Chapter 5- the chapters are to get longer in length now, as the focus shifts to the still nameless identity-less author.
Interlude E- pieces become more personal, incorporating poems and an outlet for personal feelings
The idea of this is to show a gradual progression from the writer’s imaginative efforts as regarded as the focus of a tale to his actual ‘intrusions’ being the focus. It represents a focus away from a text as a product but as a process.
I’m rebelling against the idea that a text is a product. The irony is that this whole work is a product in itself.
There you go, I am totally happy 
The 4u course is dominated by this idea of documenting and explaining your process. Well I hope the examiners have fun with my Work!
12:26pm Monday, April 16, 2001
“If you're confused about Postmodernism, that may mean you understand it.”
So says Brad Holland, one of the millions of voices of the ‘ordinary person’, summing up, with what could be called a postmodern irony the ambiguity of the term known as postmodernism. Probably the most striking feature of postmodernism is that even the people who call themselves postmodernists disagree on what postmodernism actually is. This is indicative of the context of postmodernism- it is a theory which embraces the confusion and ambiguity of the multiple dimensions of ‘modern life’.
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English defines postmodernism as:
An international movement, affecting all the contemporary arts, which has succeeded modernism. Opinions vary as to whether it is entirely distinct from modernism or differs in it only in degree. In literature, it has its origins in the rejection of traditional mimetic function in favour of a heightened sense of artifice, a delight in games and verbal pyrotechnics, a suspicion of absolute truth and a resulting inclination to stress the fictionality of fiction.
7:29pm Tuesday, 1 May, 2001
I have developed my idea a few steps further: I want the author to be writing within diary entries, to make the work a more believable blend of short creative writing pieces and the introspection that breaks it up. This will add an atmosphere of an intimate, personal and private exploration, which complements my attempts to explore ideas, themes and issues through the personal sphere (or through an individual).
I have also decided that in order to explore the author’s experimentation further, he/she will attempt to write several other texts, including prose fiction and poetry. The prose included will be descriptive (with a lot of imagery) and the poetry will be reflective, and she will mock and criticise herself most of the way through. I may include some prose a la Italo Calvino, making the creative writing piece self-reflexive without further aid on the author’s behalf, besides: am I going too far? Do I sound too opinionated? Is this voice Me? –possible comments
Influence for the play: The Real Inspector Hound. The beginning, esp. Questioning what is real and what is fictitious.
Psychological- deep exploration of the psyche in relation to literature
Philosophical- ponders philosophy on writing and behaving
Analytical & Critical, Imaginative, Probing, Postmodern, Theoretic, Subjective, Cultural
9:55pm Saturday 5th May, 2001
page 12 of “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller” by Italo Calino:
…For a couple of pages now you have been reading on, and this would be the time to tell you clearly whether this station where I have got off is a station where I have got off is a station of the past or a station of today; instead the sentences continue to move in vagueness, grayness, in a kind of no man’s land of experience reduced to the lowest common denominator. Watch out: it is surely a method of involving you gradually, capturing you in the story before you realise it- a trap. Or perhaps the author still has not made up his mind, just as you, reader, for that matter, are not sure what you would like most to read: whether it is the arrival of at an old station, which would give you a sense of going back, a renewed concern with lost times and places, or else a flashing of lights and sounds, which would give you the sense of being alive today, in the world where people today believe it is a pleasure to be alive. …
p14:
… Where would I go out to? The city outside there has no name yet, we don’t know if it will remain outside the novel or whether the whole story will be contained within its inky blackness. I only know that this first chapter is taking a long time to break free of the station and the bar…
I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention, I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. If you, reader, couldn’t help picking me out among the people getting off the train and continued following me in my to-and-fro-ing between bar and telephone, this is simply because I am called “I” and this is the only thing you know about me, but this alone is reason enough to invest a part of yourself in the stranger “I”.
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