Dear all,

I’m posting this now, but your work won’t come back until the office releases it, probably well after results are issued.

For those of you whose work has been returned, I’ve gone to town with the purple pen/pencil. Don’t worry too much; everyone’s work has the same number of scribbles all over it; for the best work I marked finicky things, for the less good work I marked the worst mistakes. These are the things I’d cut/change/rewrite if I was editing it for publication, and there would probably be more in a rewrite.

As I expected, the marking curve made things difficult, particularly at the lower end; some of you received passes when I would really have liked to give you H3s...in some cases where one piece of work was clearly better than the other, I’ve had to default to the lower grade; the individual comments generally reflect that.

Small things: Almost all of you need to watch out for apostrophe placement and homophones (new/knew, too/to): spellcheck doesn’t pick these up. Passive and active voice generally need work too; look out for the “which was”, “that was”, “whiles” – they generally indicate where a bit of punctuation and punchiness could be used. I found a lot of “that” where “who” should be used: it should not be “The fireman that broke the window”, but “The fireman who broke the window.” “That” is for objects: “The car that crashed.”

Often the things I’ve marked are cases of your having an image in mind, but not expressing it well. If you come up with a metaphor, it’s important to be sure it works. Sometimes the clarity of an idea in your mind can fool you into thinking that what you’ve written will communicate it well to your reader’s mind. Don’t assume that. You can waste good images/metaphors if you don’t rigorously test their expression.

Most of you have responded really well to the themes. This tells you that, given a framework and deadlines, you can come up with good piece of writing. The next step is to start coming up with themes, topics (and deadlines) for yourself, to develop what you’re interested in.

As you do that, you’ll also develop more of your own style; the difficulty I’ve found with teaching this subject is coming up with a “one size fits all” approach; everyone has a different way of getting it right, which has inevitably led to much of the focus being on what not to do. Read through your pieces again and focus on what did work, and try to do more of that.

Finally, I’ve realised that of all the creative writing subjects, this seems to be the most personal; almost all of you have workshopped and/or submitted folio pieces that talk about your own lives, sometimes intimately. This is great for developing your writing voice; it’s also been a privilege for me and the other students to be trusted with your thoughts. Thanks for that, and your participation this semester.

Jenny

hi all,

I'm hoping the lack of emails from you all the last couple of days means you're doing well with all your work.

if not: requests for extensions should be with me by 4pm Monday, with reasons, and preferably by Sunday night. I'm around on email on and off over the weekend, but possibly not during the day Monday.

work late without an extension loses 2% per day; ie, you can hand in late and still pass, but you may end up going down a grade because of that. work handed in after 4pm on Wednesday 15/6 without discussion won't be marked; I have to get the marks to the uni by Friday 17th.

If you hand in work after 4pm on Tuesday 7th, can you PLEASE email me when you've done so, preferably with the work attached? I'm not based at the uni and I will have to make special trips in to pick up late work; if I receive it by email that will help me enormously. (will still get the hard copy at some point).

and a final reminder: attach a stamped addressed envelope if you want your work back/comments. keep a BACKUP.

If possible, email me a copy of your work, but the hard copy is what matters.

Jenny