When is a manuscript finished?

Does a manuscript become a novel when someone finally picks it off a store bookshelf? When is a writer through with changing the colour of a character’s eyes, or sending them off to the outback, or possibly removing them from the story line entirely?

I believe it was Joni Mitchell who once said she could never listen to her songs because she always heard things she wished she’d done differently, and at a writers’ festival, Alistair MacLeod, one of Canada’s best loved writers, said that his manuscripts had to be torn from his hands.

Recently, I read somewhere that a manuscript is complete when you’ve given it all that you possibly could, when the story is finished within you. For now, that is the point that I have reached. Over five years of writing and re-writing, fermenting, thinking, re-writing, changing the colour of a character’s eyes, sending them down new roads.

Time to see what other readers think.

Time for a walk in the mountain. Morning fog is setting in, the leaves are changing colour, and I need to breathe some forest air.

 

 

MA in Writing. Is it worth it?

I have just submitted my last assignment in my MA. That makes 12 tutorials averaging around 3700 words per tutorial-approximately 2500 words per chapter and 1200 words examining the reasons, literary, theoretical, and creative for the submission. There were also six peer conferences or workshops at 2500 words per conference and 500 words of context, six research modules of around 1000 words per to complete, a journal reviewing term progress, and a continuing bibliography. You can add up the word count.

Was it worth it? I had to borrow the money to do it. But in terms of the writing support, creative inspiration, and expansion of my own knowledge, work and goals, I would do it again with no hesitation. Of course, it has a lot to do with the fact that I chose to do my MA at Lancaster University in England.

My main tutor is the inimitable Conor O’Callaghan, and my peers are Irish and Ugandan poets, Nigerian, Greek, and British short story poets, writers, and novelists.

The outstanding teachers in the program are Michelene Wandor, Sara Maitland, Brian McCabe, Jane Draycott, and George Green. Graham Mort and Lee Horsley coordinate the program. All of these instructors are accomplished award winning writers in their own fields.

There is still the portfolio of 30,000 words and the 3,000 word thesis to tweak by September 1st. So you can see why I have been missing from this blog.

I will post more about the details of the program another time.

My few experiences on stage can be compared to the work I have done in the MA. It is all about the day to day work, or practice and rehearsal. This is where the connections are found, the nuances learned and relearned, the trials and joys are born. Of course, the difference between a collaborative stage production and writing is that 99.9 per cent of the time you are on your own. Finishing the degree is a little like opening night, exciting, but it comes with more of a whimper than a bang. It is too close to the end, and the question what next? looms.

For now I am deep in revisions of not only the thesis, but the entire novel, trying to make it worthy of submission to an editor and agent.

I did get some very nice pictures the other evening of mist over the mountain. It made it look as if the mountain were on fire.

That’s me these days. Misty. On fire.

Fellow MA ers

http://alexandraotoole.wordpress.com/

http://bnpoetryaward.blogspot.ca/

How is a forest like a novel?

Yesterday evening I took a break from the long narrative work, which will be consuming all of my days and nights for the foreseeable future, to see how spring has advanced on Mt. Doug. I have no idea when I last hiked. (I sound like I never get out and that isn’t entirely true.)

The last time I was in the mountain, though, the trees had just begun to bud–that was about three chapters ago. As I looked around at all the trees in full leaf now, it struck me that words are like leaves, revealing themselves in their own time.

I want the words, and this long narrative, to bloom easily and quickly. The forest teaches me to be patient with my writing. A novel unfolds a word at a time. There can be no rushing of words, just as there is no rushing of the forest to full bloom.

My narrative will never be as beautiful as the forest is at this my favorite time of year, but I receive equal amounts of joy in discovering every word and each new leaf.