REALLY A WRITER AT LAST

My tail end leaving the stage at Chichester University Graduation Ceremony on 11.11.11

So a handshake is all it takes to become a flully-fledged Master of Arts of the University of Chichester.  A hand shake, a smile, a ‘thank you’ (no bow necessary) and a few steps across the stage to a lady who gives me a handshake and a smile and hands me a piece of paper.  I thought I had the certificate at home.  It is in my study, somewhere, as my study is a muddle right now on account of me having done nothing in the past few weeks but write the final part of my novel as I really, really wanted to type those words THE END before Friday 11th November.

Not that it was anything to do with Remembrance Day, although I did appreciate the 2 minutes silence as we have a member of the family leaving for the ‘theatre of war’ very soon.

I wanted to do that walk across that stage knowing that I had completed the task I set out to do when I began my MA course 3 years ago.  I wanted to know that I had finished my novel before formally accepting my MA.  I didn’t want to be a fraud.  I wanted to be a real writer.  I had not, of course, actually finished the novel in the sense that it was ready to be sent to an agent.  There were, and still are, jobs of checking for mistakes in names and places, checking that time works within the novel, ie did it really, in 1953, take that long to get from A-B?  Redrafting of certain scenes particularly in that final part which I wrote in such haste.  But as I travelled to Chichester, I relaxed during the train journey, as much as I could relax with the train being re-routed around half of West Sussex including West Worthing.  West Worthing?  Where did North, South and East get to?  Never mind, I had finished my novel.  Hoorah!

However that was before I had a session with my mentor.   My mentor, being most dedicated, had requested a print out of the existing draft of Parts I-III, so that she could read my latest offering with a full picture of the plot, characters and storyline.  All well and good.  After all, I had finished my novel.  Until she said her bit.  Which was quite a long bit.  And a revolutionary bit.  Because my mentor might have liked my draft – she did – she might have thought it was progressing well – she did -but she wanted more.  Not more as in what happens in Part IV but more as in more information, detail of characters, involvement of characters in Parts I and III.  (Part II is a ‘stand alone’ group of chapters about certain events in World War II, just as in Atonement, with one character in the novel as the only view point.)

‘More,’ I gasped.  ‘It is 120K words long already.’   Bit of an exaggeration that, but it threatens to be at least that long with the ‘more’.

‘Never mind,’ said my mentor, ‘You can always cut back later.’

Later!  And I thought I had finished.

I am now planning a break from my novel – apart from workshop sessions already set up.  I am leaving the ‘more’ until I have the energy to face going right back to Chapter One and beginning over again.  It won’t be quite that, of course, but right now, after becoming an MA in Creative Writing and thinking I had mastered the art, I am not sure I can face the reality of being a real writer, which, as we all know, is re-writing, re-writing and re-writing.

Suddenly a short story has much appeal.

But we had a great day on Friday and it was with more than a tinge of sadness that I walked along North Street and South Street in Chichester.   It was the end of an era.

 

PS I found my MA certificate – in a brown envelope under my desk.  So that’s all right then.

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