Graduation

I graduated yesterday with my MA. It was a really lovely day and it was great to have my parents there. It was strange graduating while still studying but I have to say that the various speeches and seeing the PhD students spurred me on.
At my last tutorial, we agreed a deadline of next July for a first full length draft. I have found this very helpful as I was aiming for almost twice that length of time. This week I have drafted a further 3,500 words and now feel that I am in the world of my novel.

Tutorial Three

I had another tutorial today. I was a little nervous, to be honest. It is hard to maintain confidence in your writing when you work alone for most of the time. There were two main areas of feedback. Firstly, I am still guilty of 'telling not showing'. The main reason I seem to keep doing this is that I am trying to get a first draft down and intend to go back and then start looking at it paragraph by paragraph, adding layers of detail. This is all very well but must be very frustrating for my tutor. Secondly, my protagonist is passive. Apparently this is not unusual for a new writer, particularly a woman writing about a woman. Again, I knew that I was doing this – I mentioned it in my post Journey’s End. Why, then, did I not address it before submitting it to my tutor? I had taken that chapter away with me on holiday with the phrases ‘What is her goal, what does she want?’ written in large letters across it but something was just blocking me. Anyway, the tutorial seems to have unlocked something. I came home and wrote five hundred words in half an hour, purely about her. I feel that I really met my protagonist this afternoon.
I have now reached the 10,000 words mark which is helping me psychologically. My tutor asked if would have a first draft by the end of this year. I must have looked rather stressed and we ended up agreeing on a first draft by next July. I really have to push now that the first six month ‘bedding in’ period is over, which included the bulk of the research. The only problem is that there is the small matter of the thesis. I have to keep the work on that going as well. Thankfully I am so enthused about the subject of my novel and thesis that I can put in the hours and still love it.