What an experience that was!
Find your voice as a writer, was the headline. Study for personal development or a
BA Honours degree was the offer.
A small number of A5 leaflets published by the OCA were scattered across the table
at my weekly writer’s group meeting. I’d always regretted not having had the opportunity to study for a degree. I did a little research. Because this would be my first such course, I was eligible for a student loan. Game on!
In April ’24, after almost10 years of study, I made my very last Creative Writing
submission for Assessment. Mature student I may have been, but the wait – eleven weeks - to discover the marks, was no less stressful for this old guy than for the youngest of summer exam-takers.
Yes, I got the marks I hoped for, and was awarded the degree that I had set my sights
on. But alongside the elation was the realisation that I was going to miss the challenge,
excitement and feedback of the learning process.
When I started, (2014) the OCA’s Creative Writing course was entirely correspondence based. Snail mail, with big parcels of course notes to receive and big parcels of painstakingly proof-read and assembled manuscripts to send in for Assessment.
There’s a photo of me opening the brown cardboard box that contained my very first
module. Inside, red tissue paper wrapped a grey and red ring- binder, holding the course notes for Writing 1:Writing Skills, plus an A5 hard-cover notebook, and a bright red OCA ballpoint pen. I’m grinning, excited, ready to start. Much has changed in the years since then, especially the migration to web-based courses delivered via OCA Learn, but that special moment, that frisson of what’s all this about? as I scanned through the notes of a new module, for me that never changed.
The move to a fully electronic course was technically unnerving for this pen-and-ink,
1940s edition man, but the way in which it enriched the course was very rewarding. Just as video conferencing held my writers’ group together through the grim days of the pandemic, so the development of video discussion groups with Tutors and Students turned my garret in the backwoods of Hertfordshire into an integral part of college life. Technology had given us a shared lecture hall and common room; an experience much closer to the real-time, face-to-face collegiate learning experience.
To state the obvious, any course, no matter how excellent the notes, is only as
enriching as the tutors who bring it to life. I felt very privileged to study with Tutors who are published writers, and able to place personal experience alongside academic knowledge.
Access to their bodies of work made Tutor feedback even more apposite. Sometimes, in
discussion groups with Tutors and students, I felt that we were all learning from one another.
Thus, when I discovered a branch of writing entirely new to me – prose poetry – and decided to explore it, my interest and experimentation received nothing but enthusiastic encouragement and helpful pointers.
The excitements and brain-scrambling challenges of becoming sufficiently versed in
the theory and practice of creative writing to merit a bachelor’s degree are already in my past. So, what has my Open College of the Arts studies delivered that I can take forward into my creative future?
My most important take-away is confidence. The course highlighted my particular
skills and aptitudes, and alongside that showed where my weaknesses lie. It gave me a
toolbox of strategies which I can use to continue improving my craft skills.
That long-ago leaflet proposed that my studies could help me find my writing voice -
and that’s what happened. In a world drowning in a tidal surge of words, I am confident that when my ideas are shaped well and addressed to the right audience they are worth listening to.
I’m an alumnus of the Open College of the Arts. It’s time to put that bright red
ballpoint pen to work.
And having listened to your prose poetry, Peter, I can say that you are a talented writer. Well done.