Post-MA

I didn’t realise how intensely I’d worked on my MA until the day I handed in my dissertation. I was in the thick of a covid bout, so my health and thinking were not as they might have been, but I slipped into a post-dissertation lull that was quite uncharacteristic. I would look at a page of words and I wouldn’t want to engage with them, which is not like me. I rarely if ever suffer writer’s block and I’ve always got something I want to work on. Because my writing time is limited due to family and work, etc, I can usually get myself fired up about something or other to make the most of my time.

Anyway, this lull allowed me time to think about my writing and what I want from it now the MA is done, now I’m not writing primarily for the course.

Tutor Julia Bell talked about the concept of exit velocity, of how we would carry what we’d learned forward into our writing careers. The concept resonated with me, and I’ve been thinking about the steps I need to take if I want to become established as a writer and maybe even make a living from it.

So these are my plans for the near future.

• Representation by an Agent. It’s almost impossible to thrive as a writer without representation, so that has to be a priority. In the past, I’ve tried a scattergun approach – sending out a piece of work to ten agents at a time. That approach hasn’t worked. I’m now being more picky and sending a bespoke email to one agent at a time, favouring the agents who represent my favourite writers. (This approach was recommended by speakers at our summer term lectures).
• Dig deep into my back catalogue. I have a million projects from various phases of my writing career, so I’m working my way through it, taking stock of what I’ve written and thinking about how it might prove useful in the future. Short stories that I rushed off in a quick writing frenzy, plays I wrote as an exercise in class, half-finished poems, novels and long poems that need another draft: making sure I know what I’ve got in my back catalogue that I might wish to publish, or that might become a part of something else, or that I might put up on here.
• Create a proper website. I need a place to send people if they want to know more about my writing. I need a website that can act as a showcase for my work. It might include a blog, because I can see the value of keeping the website ticking over with new material, which many writers’ websites don’t do. I suspect the blog won’t be this one here, on WordPress, because I don’t want to share the screen with adverts: they cheapen the words around them.
• Send stuff out. I won’t get anywhere if my writing remains on my hard drive. I need to get it out there.