FiRST MONTH: Manchester met mfa

I’m starting to get the hang of things, and it’s really interesting. My first module is about reading as a writer, and I’ve got a short, six-book reading list, plus secondary reading to do. We meet once a week and have a one-hour discussion about the text we’re focused on that week, and spend the second hour talking to the author about the book. It’s really a great way to do it and a real treat to talk to authors.

I have loved all the books on the list so far except for one, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about why that is. That’s the idea, of course. The point of this part of the course is that over the first module, which runs January-May for us part timers, we start to understand what our taste is and why. 

I’ve been puzzling more over the book that I don’t like than the ones that I did, trying to take it apart and say: why did the tutors put this on the list? What are they trying to say? Is there a way that if I was the editor of this book, I could help the author make it stronger? Ultimately, the answer came in the session with the author: he talked about how he constructed the book and what he was trying to create. I felt that it didn’t align with what I look for in a book – and that’s not a critique of the book, it’s a reflection of my taste. I like a book that has a deeper meaning than transporting the reader (me) to a new place. I want this intangible feeling of a statement running through it, an idea around how this is what it is to be a human in the world, meaning our world, this world we live in right now. It’s a revelation to put it in these terms. He was doing something entirely different.

I also got the chance to talk to another student on the course - it is so good to be able to do that, because if you remember, part of my drive to do this course was around community - and she loved the book. She was really interested in world building and fantasy and found the author’s approach to it brilliant. It is. I felt this great relief to hear that she loved it, and for those reasons – it wasn’t that I had missed something, it was really down to taste and preference. And that’s 100% OK. 

Towards the end of the module we have to write a 3,000 word paper on craft, taking into account two of the reading list books and our own writing practise. I would say that it’s been hard to keep up a daily writing practise while also reading, thinking and carrying on with my day job. I’ve locked into something Manchester Met offers called The Scriptorium where on a Wednesday afternoon, we get together online and in person and write for a few hours following some prompts. It at least has me committed to writing once a week. I would like to do more, but my day job is threatening to swallow me alive, so I’m trying to keep a balance. 

I’m getting deeper into this thought that taste is everything: it’s what makes you feel satisfied at the end of a piece of writing, if you ever finish one. It’s the goal, to write something that fits with your taste. I like that approach. I also like the thought that spending time on craft, style, method etc is super important as a way to make the unconscious conscious. I think it will help me to realise what I can do to fix the issues in my own work in progress, and to think clearly about editorial decisions I’m making, rather than relying on luck and instinct. Monique Roffey said that her award-winning book, The Mermaid of Black Conch, came out in six months and was instinctive, so I would love that to happen to me; she also said that the other nine novels she wrote were hard graft and research all the time...so it’s proof that it’s not a bad thing that my own work is feeling quite hard to put together. It’s just life.