This post is aimed at people who’re considering Creative Writing at the Open University—whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level. I’m going to talk about a tricky aspect of assignments known as the commentary.
You’ve written your story, poem or script. Now you’re expected to analyse the writing process. That doesn’t mean judging the merits of your work, but discussing the development of the piece, your influences, how the course material shaped your choices, feedback from peer reviews and the further reading you’ve done. It’s a lot to bring in to a limited word count—only 550 words were allowed for the commentaries on our first two assignments this year.
The problem with commentaries is ‘you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. Bring in too many different ideas and you’re told you should have stuck with one or two themes. Focus on one or two themes and you’ll be asked why you didn’t mention other points.
On TMA 1, I failed to ‘show a deepening analysis presented through a developing argument’. I should have chosen and developed one or two of the points raised instead of taking a more scattergun approach aiming at covering as much of the course as possible. Now I’m walking that tightrope again. I’ll open with a paragraph discussing my influences, then move on to analysing multiple points of view and the importance of creating distinctive voices. Will I run into trouble for not mentioning other aspects of the course? It’s a difficult balance.
Masters Degree Creative Writing: A Journal 