I started a Masters in Creative Writing after finishing my BA Degree in Literature at the age of 60. It will be fun, I thought. I can commit to finally finishing my novel and getting published, I thought. Why the hell didn’t I do this in my twenties instead of thinking I was clever driving buses for a living, I thought.
Well, I do have a finished manuscript, but what the course has taught me is that this is only the beginning. There are endless rewrites, sometimes complete plot changes, and the cutting of precious words which you thought were genius. And this has to happen many, many times. This quote by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch explains the process better: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” Harsh.
The workshops, which are a big part of a Creative Writing MA, can be a little intimidating. You sit quietly while your group pick apart the work you carefully constructed during a week of being up until midnight because that’s the only free time you had. The best advice I can give in that situation is to separate yourself from your writing and listen to what is generally constructive criticism. I’m lucky, my group is amazing and very supportive of the ‘oldie’ in the class. The workshops expose you to different styles and approaches of writing which can be overwhelming at first, but you soon learn that this is where experimentation in writing style develops into something more individual and personal – your voice. You realise that within a workshop environment, you can test a style and decide what works for you.
Then there is reading. You think you enjoy reading until you have to study it. You become critical instead of passive; you notice technicalities – tension building, dialogue, scene structure, sentence length; they all become case studies rather than escapism. It can be very annoying when you are trying to pass the time on a plane and you realise you’ve done nothing but critique an airport novel which promised mindless distraction.
One of the biggest myths I had to unlearn was that you can’t wait for the inspiration to write. If you do that, chances are you will spend very little time actually writing. Stephen King, in his book On Writing, advocates sitting your bum in the chair in front of your computer for set times each day and just typing anything. That discipline, says King, is one of the most important keys to success. I also addressed this in my post SETTING GOALS AND NOT WAITING FOR THE MUSE. My life is a mixture of chaos and silent screaming at the best of times, so fitting writing into an already busy schedule of family and work is never easy, but submission deadlines are brutally and ominously immovable. Maybe that has been the most important discipline – writing is never going to happen in perfect conditions, so it has to happen in noisy, inconvenient, late night ones instead.
Beyond the lecture rooms of university, there is a frightening reality: publishing is scary. There are submissions, rejections, marketing, relentless self-promotion, and constant confidence beatings. But you learn to keep going. Perhaps this is where the most unexpected lesson is learnt – how important other writers are to your own writing journey. Having people who understand the process, who can challenge and support you, makes the journey far less solitary.
