Themself: Confessions of an Open University Creative Writing Student

by James Kemp

This is part inspirational life writing about how I learnt to write and apply some craft to my stories, and part vehicle for my writing. Mainly though I hope that you will see how I have crafted stories and poems from the examples that I have given.

Some of this book is taken from my blog, but I’ve presented it in a way that makes it much easier to read the interesting bits. That’s from the perspective of someone who is considering studying creative writing, whether informally or at a university or college. I completed an Open University creative writing course while working full time and being a parent. It’s hard work, and challenging to find time to get it done. However I enjoyed it immensely. That course isn’t the only one I’ve done, I’m most of the way through my second undergraduate degree, and I should finish in May 2017.

As I write, my blog Themself has almost 500 posts on it spanning a 21 year time frame, one of the most popular posts is from 1995. There’s a lot of words there, and only a small set of them are here too. I realise that this won’t be selling my book to you. There’s a lot of extra stuff in here too that I’ve not published anywhere else. I’ve also taken out a lot of ephemeral stuff and opinions on things not related to either writing or studying with the open university.

I’ve gone through the notes and exercises I did as part of the creative writing course and added them in at the appropriate points. I’ve also included some of the unpublished stories I wrote, notably my end of module assessment Hunting Nazis. That’s a sort of X-Files meets the SOE with some unfinished business in Berlin in the early 1950s.

Genres: Writing

183 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 22, 2016

About the author

I'm a Glaswegian, after decades living in Surrey, I am now back in Scotland, but in the East. I have always written stories, since I was a boy, and I've managed to carry that on even though I did a science degree and then work for the UK government. More recently I finished a degree with the Open University, which included creative writing.

Most of what I write is science fiction, and fantasy. The pandemic slowed me down, for two reasons, One is that I usually wrote on my commute. The walk to the station gave me the time and space to think about the next bit of the story and rehearse it in my head. The train journey was an opportunity to type that up. The second reason is that I've moved 500 miles north of the urban sprawl that was greater London into the green belt of Surrey. Now I'm in proper farming country that edges onto wilderness. There's a rugged landscape with traces of a rich history overlaid on a now de-populated space. I'm sure some of that is bleeding into what I write now.

Reviews

[Tim Roast · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read some short story and other writing collections before, and there is an element of stop/start as you move from one piece to the next. In this collection the author has created a flow by linking his writings to an OU creative writing course.

What we have here is a collection of short stories and poems, a military theme being evident in a lot of them, interspersed with little tips on writing that the author has found useful to himself and for his course. Therefore you can imagine that this book would be useful to OU students undertaking the same course, but also novice writers.

From page 1 you can see that there are weblinks so if you have the paperback version you may want to have an internet connected device nearby. This will certainly help with giving some context of bits where there is assumed knowledge. Through the writing you can see that the author can hold a story but one of the problems with some of the writing is that he was restricted by word count (as he mentions in his reflection pieces where he analyses his writing and where he looks at things such as character, setting, conflict, show and tell...). For example a whole story on a complicated world is built up around a "creation myth I wrote for the primary god in a theocracy" with many twists and turns but is covered in just 5-6 pages. There is definitely scope for fleshing out that story and others. Also some of his analysis may be too detailed for a book like this, e.g. the author talking about word count: "taking the mid-point of words per minute, it's within a single standard deviation of the median, mode and mean...".

With most of the content in the book coming from the author's blog there were elements that could have been changed a little to reflect that they are now in a book, e.g. "tell me in the comments ...", plus some other pieces from his blog not written specifically for the course felt shoehorned into the relevant sections just because the author was proud of them. Having said that though they were good in their own right. I enjoyed reading about self-drive cars for example.

Also you could tell this was self-published as there are little edits that the book would have benefited from. For example after chapter 1 we go onto chapter 3.

But overall I liked it.

[Terry Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviewed by me as a member of Rosie Amber's Review Team

This is a sort of diary, originally produced via James Kemp's blog, of some of his exercises from his course. It includes some pieces he submitted, and a few other random ones, and poetry. At the back there is some information on editing, self-publishing and promotion from James's own experience.

This would be of interest to the absolute beginner, as some of the initial exercises are elementary, the sort of thing one learns at school. It's nicely written and laid out, and James's manner is honest, pleasant and helpful.

This book skirts the edges of the various subjects it explores, as James's experience in such things as editing and marketing a book via Twitter is limited. The information is basic, but not unhelpful, though some is incorrect (the minimum price to charge for a book on Amazon UK is 99p, not 77p). I do think, though, that writing talent is not something that can be taught; exercises about how to describe the smells in your garden won't make your writing compelling if you have no innate gift for the written word. Then again, they might help bring out some latent creativity, or develop confidence.

To sum up, this is a book for a novice or another creative writing student.

[B.A. Spicer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a writer myself I enjoyed James Kemp’s experiences of following an OU course in creative writing. Apparently, these were published regularly on his blog and then integrated into a book, which means that there is sometimes repetition. But this doesn’t detract from the interest.

There are helpful pointers for inexperienced writers and useful reminders for those who have been writing for years. It was fascinating to follow the processes included on the course and to read how the author structured his various writing assignments, which include a number of different genres.

Instructive and entertaining.

[Amy Ingalls · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway way back in 2018. I have been feeling guilty about not getting to some of the books that I won, so I went to the bottom of my Kindle and clicked on this.

This book is difficult for me to rate and review. Some parts of it (a few of the short stories) were well-written and kept my attention throughout. The main part of the book, however, just wasn't for me. I found the talk about his class and his techniques repetitious and a bit confusing (mainly because of the differences in British/American courses and grading). I think if I was an Open University Creative Writing student I would have appreciated this book much more.

[Anja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book as a giveaway on goodreads and have to say I was pleasantly surprised as it is not just informative but entertaining as well.
The reader gets a good idea of how to start Mission Creative Writing. Mr Kemp offers a wide range of examples of his own work, but also useful websites.
I am a complete novice and still not sure whether I have a smidgen of talent, but at least I have an idea of where and how to start if I ever summon up the courage!

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was asked to review this by Librarything.com.

Essentially this is the experiences of the author on an Open University course in creative writing. This was part of his blog.
This aids would be writers in creative writing ( not easy I went on a course a few years back).

I was not sure about this at first but found this inspiring and informative all in the one bag. there are short stories and poems with handy hints on writing.

Recommended read.

[James Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Themself is about my experience of studying creative writing with the open university. Although it goes further than that and includes the things I’ve learnt from my experience of writing, studying and self publishing.

You’ll find some of the content in Themself on my blog, but only about half of it. You’ll also find that I’ve edited it since I first published it on the blog. Although I’ve tried hard to keep to the original character of the contemporary blog posts about how I was feeling. The bits I’ve updated are where I’m summarising what I’ve learnt.

There is also a lot of new material. All of the stories and poems I wrote are included, including a couple I didn’t submit and my end of module assessment. There are also some of the writing exercises that I did to help shape settings and characters. So while this isn’t a how to write book you can still learn a lot from it. This is especially true of the post study lessons from self publishing.

Reviewers Wanted for Themself

If you would like to read the book and then tell the world what you think of it please let me know. I will send you a free copy in exchange for an honest review on amazon. Either send me an email (james AT this domain), or leave a comment.

[Lavender]

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I won this book via Goodreads Giveaways.

[Clipinchick]

I received this book for free from the author/publisher in response for an honest review of the book. I have not had the opportunity to read this book at this time. I will add my
review of this book once I have read the book. Thank k you for allowing me the optometrist review your work. I look forward to reading this book.