Benjamin Evans - Author

The Action Man I am pedaling towards a village. It is a small village with a church, a pub and a pond, and not much else. It is like a hundred other villages I have passed through in the fifty days I have been pedaling, like the thousands of villages that exist in this country, that I could pass through if I could keep pedaling. This is the last village I am going to see however, because after fifty days and fifty nights I am going to have to stop. I don’t want to. I love pedaling on my bicycle. But I am not going to have a choice. I can see them already, waiting for me. They are waiting and they are not going to let me leave. They want me to stay in the village forever. When I started fifty days ago I didn’t want to leave the village. I was a scared little boy. I didn’t think I would survive out there. As I pedaled I could see the corner shop where I used to steal sweets, the playing fields where I had mud kicked at my face, the lake where I had capsized Vanessa Angel’s boat

Okay, so Creative Writing Assignment One is back. The idea was to use your skills in err...creativity, to put together a piece from one of a few prompts: - The house opposite - Driving alone - The smells of home - A beach in winter - Things that make the heart beat faster Naturally i chose the latter, and considered the idea of a man trapped in routine and regulation, who is obsessed with time and lives by the ticking of his watch. Then he meets a woman and the pace and rhythm of his life suddenly is taken beyond his control. Here's the main piece: Running Out of Time There are fifty minutes until its nine o’clock. That means there are fifteen hours and fifty minutes left in the day. In forty-one days, fifteen hours and fifty minutes I will be thirty-five years old. After that I will probably have another forty years left to live. The clock is ticking. Tick, tick, tick, tick. The tube train is late. A platform sighs and the temperature rises. It is late on av

Whistle, cough, yawn, sniff A-hem, ahem, ahem, ahem ahem! Nice weather, At least it’s Friday I’ve got Shepherd’s Pie for dinner Whisper, whisper Love you. Love you. Would you like a bite of this? Ring ring, ring, ring, ring ring, ring ring Please hold. Please call back later. Waa! Waa! Waa! Waaeeeeaaaa! Its different when you have kids Beep. Oi oi. Yes mate, yes mate. How was you. In'it. Yeah you? Click, click. Tap tap. Pat pat. Scratch scratch. Yawwwnn. Oh dear! Oh my God. Save the children! Big Issue? Ten for a pound. Have a nice day! Humm Humm. Doo de doo. Whistle whistle whistle whistle. Is it because we don't talk That we make so much noise? Okay okay, nothing to be taken too seriously here – I’m not taking poetry writing until next year, but I think it does beg a few questions nonetheless. Why, in a world where we have such a wealth of sounds and images to distract us, do we persist in in

Hello All I am currently embarking on a course in Creative Writing with the Open University. 'About time!' you say. Well I thought I'd post my asignments up here to give you an idea of what these kind of courses involve, and what they do to the so-far innocent amateur writer. So first we have been taught a method of creating ideas called 'freewriting' where you let ideas flow out of your head on a particular prompt or theme, and write them down on paper. This apparently is a good way to get an idea for a more focused piece, and to be honest it works pretty well i think. Then you can add other important things, such as sensations and ideas from your own experience to give some quality to your writing and some character attributes. The point at the moment is to harness your creative consciousness, but also think about what you see. A lot of this is through simple exercises, such as thinking of a person you know and then placing them in a completely different scenario,

A classic science fiction novel from the best of the science fiction writers, Wyndham spins a highly intelligent, beautifully concise tale of alien invasion in pastoral England. The brilliance here is in the relentless normality of the prose. The basis of good science fiction is in its credulity. It is all very well thinking up a scenario, but if it does not strike the writer as something that could happen, something that could turn up tomorrow or could be happening right now, then there is no effect, no sense of tension or interest. Good writing makes us think about the world and about ourselves and this is what Wyndham has achieved. The fictional situation is that over the space of one day, all the village of Miswich is placed in a mysterious trance. No-one can enter, no-one can leave and all inside are paralysed. After the 24 hours are up, all the occupants return to normal and it is as if nothing has happened - aside from one thing - all the women of the village are pregnant. So fa

For the last couple of weeks I have been cycling up and down the Alps in Switzerland. It was an incredible experience as you can imagine, but in particular because of the sheer size of the climbs that you encounter. Here I try to describe what it feels like cycling a 9000 feet mountain pass. ‘Has it started? Is this it? I’m sure the last sign said 20km to go. It can’t have started already?’ Change down. 2 nd Front Cog, Gear 3. ‘I’m not changing down to the 1 st Cog yet. I have energy. I must stay in a higher gear as possible. It will make it seem easier when it gets harder later.’ A throb of fatigue hits the thighs, like they have been struck with an iron mallet. ‘I’m getting warmed up. That’s all that is, just warming up.’ I change down to cog 1, then up to gear 4 to compensate. The gasps for breath get deeper and longer. ‘There we go, that’s it. Keep the toil going. Just relax, and keep pushing. That’s all you need to do.’ I stand up on the bike