Yay.

TMA5 was sent off yesterday. As usual, I left it until a week before the deadline to even start it. Then panicked and asked for an extension.

So, it’s ‘just’ the ECA left now then. Eek. Double-eek as I haven’t even started it yet but I have an idea that it’ll be either life-writing or fiction based on a day out to Brighton.

Anyway, after the disappointment of my scores for TMAs 2 and 3 (although why I was disappointed with 79% for TMA2, I don’t know, as that’s not a bad score), I was absolutely fucking delighted to get 88% for TMA4. So at least I’ll finish the course with two marks I’m pleased with.

And in the same week I got my 88%, I also won a copy of the 2010 Writer’s Market by writing this month’s Star Letter in Writing Magazine.

That is me, honest. I’m not really called Isabella Black, although I should have used that name when I wrote my letter. Cathy White doesn’t sound as good.

This makes me a published writer. Cool or what?

The results for TMA3 are in.

Oh dear.

Ok, so it was poetry.  And I’ve never really read any poetry, let alone try to write any.  But I liked my poems.  My tutor obviously didn’t, even if she did say they contained ‘energy’, ‘humour’ and a ‘unique perspective’.

My marks are going down and down.  After being delighted with the score for TMA1, ever since, I’ve been disappointed.  Is it because I’ve got worse or because I need to work harder to even maintain a consistent score?  Or is it because I had a different tutor mark the first one who rated my work too highly and has therefore given me a distorted sense of my abilities or because my new tutor marks too harshly and is now destroying my confidence?

I don’t think I write stuff the OU want to read.  I write stuff I want to read.

Even if that means submitting work in the shape of a bagel and writing stories about girls getting killed on the way to their wedding and cats being decapitated.

I don’t want to write endless descriptions and have my work crammed full of metaphors no one’s going to notice unless I mention it in the commentary.

I just want to write trash.

To avoid being disappointed, maybe I should take a clichéd leaf out of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s book and become a pessimist.  I bet she hasn’t even written a book.  And if she did, it’d just get published anyway, what with her being famous and that.

Ok, plan B.  Get famous and get published and forget about stupid tutors and their ‘blah blah blah, you’re crap’ rubbish.

At least I can’t get a worse score for the next one.  Oops,  nearly forgot.

Must. Remain. Pessimistic.

No, it’s not the sound of me busily typing away.  It’s the sound of my fingers drumming on my desk, while I wait (im)patiently for the return of my TMA.  I know it’s not even been a week since I sent it off, but others have had theirs returned and every time I log into the OU, I get this:

Bah.

Our tutor has been busy though.  She’s added a new icon in our tutor group forum.  It’s a picture of a cow.  Louisa Lemon said maybe we’ll be getting free milk?

Eek, I’ve just sent my TMA.  I worked quite hard on it.  Well, a lot harder than I did for my TMAs for A174 (Start Writing Fiction), so I’m hoping this will be reflected in the marks.  The freewrite can’t be wrong (if I understand properly what a freewrite is, although some people seem to be worried they’re not doing it right).  The main part I’ve tweaked and edited and rewritten and moved paragraphs and I don’t think I can do any more to it and I did the commentary this morning and although I’m not entirely happy with it I think I’ve got all the relevant points covered.

I think the worst bit was having to do it in Times New Roman and a ragged right margin.   Bah.

Just need to nervously wait for two weeks now and hope our tutor gives more detailed feedback than she did for the online tutorial (as you would expect some detailed feedback for £600, wouldn’t you?).

Wish me luck!