I spent three years writing a doctoral dissertation and used to love the hours I spent fussing over commas and colons. I could while away a whole afternoon formatting a single footnote and then be satisfied that this was all I had done for the day. I worked in an enormous university library somewhere in […]
Read More Notes From The Wasteland No. 48 ‘Do You Like Commas and Colons?’In class the other day we were talking about composition and framing in contemporary filmmaking. The conversation was animated and interesting and we were thinking of examples from films when the position that someone stands in front of the camera can be read as something much more than the actor simply hitting their mark. For […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 47 ‘How To Write Without Words’I haven’t written a word for five days now. Well, technically, that’s not quite accurate. I have been writing these words, and others, for the blog. I have been writing work words and even they don’t count, they do count, if you see what I mean. But I haven’t written any novel words, or words […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 46 ‘I Haven’t Written a Word for Five Days’Years ago, in a separate but still parallel life, I published an academic book on a short cycle of British films from the 1950s and 1960s. The book was a re-calibration of my doctoral thesis. The British New Wave has floated through space ever since like some kind of unmanned craft. It occasionally makes contact […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 45 ‘A Message From Outer Space’Hi Everyone We are inundated on a daily basis with lists of tips in their fives and tens and twenties about how to be better at things and how not to do things so badly. Inspired by this avalanche of tips I thought I would offer some top tips of my own. Here is my […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 44 ‘What Are YOU Working On Today?’It is the start of another new week. The first before the next and the one after the last. It is time to reset and start again. Last week is gone now. It went well or not so well, depending on your point of view. But that doesn’t matter because this week is this week […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 43 ‘Two Writing Tips for Starting the Week’Do you do something creative every day? I’m sure you do. Have you ever felt that some things you do are creative and some things you do aren’t? How can you tell? I am asking lots of questions because I’m fascinated by the answers they might generate. Is Watching Netflix Creative? Did you ever think […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 42 ‘How To Be Creative About Being Creative Part One’I spend a lot of time online at the moment, it’s what I get paid to do. And each time I enter a classroom and see all the separate frames of everyone who has also enter the classroom, the biggest fear I have is not whether we will cover the right topics, not that we […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 41 ‘How Can We Stay Connected When We Are All So Separate Now?’Super-size My Enthusiasm I have a busy day today. I have lots of teaching to do, all of it online. I reckon that for every one minute of online teaching I have to do I need about five minutes more enthusiasm and this is some calculation, not quite dog years but maybe Zoom minutes. I […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 40 ‘Here Are Four Things I Do When I’m Teaching Online’I’ve written twenty four words today. Twenty four. 24. They’re fine words and I will probably keep them but twenty four words isn’t much. At least, it doesn’t feel like much. The most words I have ever written for a single project was ninety-six thousand words. Ninety-six thousand. 96,000. That was for my doctoral dissertation. […]
Read More Notes From the Wasteland No. 39 ‘How Many Words Have You Written Today?’
