Words on a Page

On Tuesday, this week, I went to a seminar in London about locating funding possibilities for Creative Writing PhDs.  What I learned was not good.  At least not for me.  The already slim opportunities that exist for Arts and Humanities research are now anorexic, and I emerged from the session kicking myself for having wasted £30 on the train fare simply to confirm what I already suspected: it's very unlikely I will receive funding because - like most postgrad Creative Writing students - I have not followed the traditional (i.e. preferred ) academic route.  To be honest, rather than traipsing all the way to London for this news, it would have been less expensive and more convenient if I had just gone to  Online PhD  or one of the other online sites offering information and advice to postgraduate students.   In short, this is what I learned: f unding bodies such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council like to play safe and...

It’s been a very short, very intense summer here in Portsmouth (not to mention, a very damp and grey one) and though I feel I’ve made good progress on a number of projects, I have sorely neglected my blogging responsibilities, here. Summer, for me, began when my temporary teaching post at Portsmouth College came to an end in late May and I was finally able to get down to some serious writing. For six solid weeks, I faithfully kept my commitment to work on the novel from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., five days a week. That period of frenetic activity came to an end after the first week of July when I went on a three-week bike ride in France. My big plans for continuing to work on the novel, in the tent each evening, came to naught. All I really wanted to do at the end of a long day’s ride was to eat and crawl into my sleeping bag. On my return, at the beginning of August, my attention turned, not back to my own novel, but to a collection of short stories by the American writer, Belle Boggs....