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hard work pays off
Yesterday I received the results of my Diploma in Film Studies: I got a 1st class honours. It would be completely dishonest, and falsely modest, to admit that I was anything short of ecstatic. Last year my results left me on an average of a 2.1 (or second class honours, 1st degree, to those of you unfamiliar with Irish/UK classifications), though I had scored a 1st in one of the modules. This year I was given the precise mark in each course and I was flabbergasted at the grade I achieved in one of this year’s modules. I don’t think I’ve ever achieved a grade that high in an Arts…
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but that every word tell
I am not a grammar goddess, as is quite obvious from my blog, but I do my best to adhere to the few rules that rattle around in my head. I have a number of books on the subject on the bookshelf within closest reach of my chair, which also contains other useful reference texts such as as my obese, but beloved, dictionary, and thesaurus. The oldest of them, the first book on grammar I voluntarily bought, is still the one I check the most frequently: The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. That slim volume contains a world of sense, and is written in such precise and clean…
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books: an expensive and cluttering vice
It’s dangerous to walk into Charlie Byrne‘s, the second-hand bookshop in Galway; though it’s quickly followed by the joy of rambling through the many floors of Kennys. Charlie Byrne’s is one of the best second-hand bookshops in Ireland–in my biased opinion–having trawled through a fair number of them in my day. Today I came away clutching fives tomes, and grinning from ear-to-ear. Three of them are academic film books that should prove useful next year, one is a book of Scandinavian folk-tales, and the final text is the perfect source material for one of the stories I’m hacking currently. The timing is so dead-on it’s suspicious. It’s a case of…
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a long piece about a horny boy and an experienced woman
It’s Bloomsday. James Joyce is a megalith on the Irish literary landscape. Yeats and him cast long shadows over Irish writers even to this day. I doubt I’ll ever be as good a prose writer as Joyce, or as good a poet as Yeats, but I hope I’ll discover my own voice and style that will be considered genuine “McHugh” by those who read my work when I’m dead and dust. Today I’ll start with a look at A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, which is a semi-autobiographical account of a young man’s life from boyhood to rebellious adult writer. Most people say it’s useful to examine…
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I accept
This morning I got a letter offering me a place on the one-year taught Masters of Screenwriting at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media. I’m chuffed, and stunned. I’m pleased that the material I put together for my application was deemed worthy enough for a place on the course. But, I did a MA before, and even though that was a long time ago, I still remember the hard graft. It was a MA by pure research, so I had to motivate myself to do the work and get it completed on time. The last five months were torturous. I’d get up at 7am (Mon-Fri), so I’d be…
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examining The Dead
In the run up to Bloomsday on Wednesday, which marks the 100th anniversary since the fictional events occurred in James Joyce’s Ulysses, I’m going to look at some examples of Joyce’s material. Of Joyce’s work, I’m particularly fond of his short story collection, Dubliners. Most people plump for Ulysses, or if they’re trying to be particularly impressive, Finnegan’s Wake. As someone interested in the short story form, Dubliners strikes me as the pinnacle of achievement. Let’s start with his most famous story from that collection: “The Dead”. I won’t analyse the entire story, though I highly recommend everyone reads it, but I’ll quote the opening paragraph: Lily, the caretaker’s daughter,…
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My drug of choice when I want a creative buzz
Coffee. Yep, it’s a drug folks, and if you have a serious coffee habit then all you have to do is go cold turkey for a couple of days to realise how powerful it is. It was my husband who introduced me to good quality coffee years ago. (Before that I was a tea-drinker; like all good Irish people. Kids are weaned on milky tea over here.) Actually, back up, that’s not true, I was introduced to coffee once as a teen, which is why I didn’t drink it again for a long time. I think I was twelve or thirteen, and I was with my mother visiting a friend.…
