Creative Writing

November 17, 2008 at 9:56 pm (Goal, School) (, , , , )

This is by far my most weakest category when it comes to English writing tasks. I mean, sheesh, I can structure an essay well – just:

  • Introduce the points and your argument
  • Expand on your points of argument in paragraphs
  • Have paragraphs introduced, expanded, explained and related thoroughly
  • Conclude, summarising points and bringing up no new points

Well, isn’t creative writing the same? Specifically, short stories, and even some poems, have a similar structure, don’t they? You have to introduce your characters/setting, then put them through some sort of hell, resolve the story and it’s done for. In fact, why should anyone find creative writing harder than essay writing if you can manipulate it however you like (depending on the task), present it however you like and put in it whatever you like?

This is enough, I will conquer this creative writing block – this barrier preventing my advance in English, of sorts.

Goal: Conquer the hole in my English ability… CREATIVE WRITING!

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Conquering Bad Habits

November 10, 2008 at 7:13 pm (Goal, School) (, , , )

I have always followed up a bad habit of not doing any sort of homework until the night before. Today, I got an assignment for Advanced English, and I immediately wrote in my diary “Make a plan for organisint the Adv English task for this month”. If I want to achieve anything near my goal of high 90s-100 UAI, then I have to start planning out my assessment tasks now. This task is worth 30% of my HSC, and I only get 4 weeks to plan drafts and complete it!

In preperation for further imminent assessment tasks (I’m waiting for you, Extension English!), I have devised a method for planning my assessment tasks’ completion:

  • Work backwards, starting from “so-and-so” must be finished by today, until research “that thing” in my diary, for every week.
  • Divide each week’s goal into seperate tasks, and allocate a small ammount of time to devote to each task in every day.
  • Insert the plan into organiser of choice (I chose a diary, as mentioned).
  • FOLLOW THE SCHEDULE RELIGIOUSLY!

It is important to make the periods of time small so that I don’t get lazy and I feel relaxed, and if I get interested in the research/writing I do I’ll have the flexibility to stretch the time I spend on it. Also, I can be more flexible if I happen to get a whole load of important homework in one day, and couldn’t really be bothered to do an assignment for a long time. I chose periods of about 30-50 minutes.

What I’m trying to achieve is underscheduling, a concept from Zen Valedictory which I happened to find on Jess‘ blog xD (At this rate, I’ll be referring to Jess for a while, now!). I’m not taking that sort of approach full-on though, just putting it on trial for now.

My most important step would be to follow the schedule, without which nothing would be done! It seems obvious, but there has been many a time that I have made wonderful plans, then have never followed them!

New Goal: Strive to follow this method of planning assessments and getting things done on time!

Let’s see how I go by the end of the week on this one! :D

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