Pass

I passed my Masters. As you might imagine, I’m rather pleased.

From the moment I decided to do the MA, I knew it was the right thing to do. Everything about the course – the fact that Birkbeck is a college for working people, with classes in the evenings – everything was what I needed. As it turned out, I had four superb tutors in Rachel Seiffert, Grant Watson, Stephen Willey, and Julia Bell, who were encouraging and inspiring in equal measure. I learned a huge amount from each one, and I grew as a writer as the course progressed.

I wrote the following for my application. This is what I wanted from the course, and it’s pretty much what I got.

Guidance
Primarily, I want a sustained dialogue about my writing with knowledgeable and experienced supervisors who can provide an independent assessment of my abilities and choices, and who can nudge me toward good habits and sound practice.

Planning
At work, we rely upon deadlines to meet our commitments to the business and our readers. My goal is to use this course to imbue a similar discipline in my own writing to emulate the working relationship between an author and a publisher. Honouring submission dates is good manners, demonstrating an awareness of the dependencies on an author, such as freelancers or in-house editorial staff, sales and marketing teams, and buyers within book chains, etc..

Validation
Everyone needs a champion, someone who can vouch for their abilities and sensibilities. A commissioning editor seeing MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck on my cover letter would know I was serious about my writing and that I had benefited from the coaching of a world class institution.

Community
I love collaborating with other writers and artists, finding projects that suit our mutual goals and cheerleading the work of others. In some ways, I’m trying to replicate the community and support I found at Peter Sansom’s writing workshops, where we discussed each other’s work, gathered to collate pamphlets, and attended each other’s readings. I hope to find a similar sense of community and mutual support on this course, sharing a love of the written word and helping each other achieve our individual goals.

Professional growth
Ultimately, I hope the course will help me grow from a good amateur writer into a good professional writer, to think strategically about the material I chose to work on, and to understand how best to present my work to convince a swamped book trade and a reluctant public.

It’s this switch in my own mentality I believe this course can give me, to consolidate my belief in my own abilities.

A big shout to Amy Ridler and Julie McGovern, who have been my big writing pals these last two years, along with Joe Platt, Louie Conway, Katy Severson, and a dozen other wonderful writers who have become great friends. When I talked about Community above, it’s these people I’m thinking of!