Mastering Writing & Time
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 12:58PM The first six-month period of my master’s degree program is drawing to a close. Tomorrow my final packet of writing and book annotations is due to my professor. I have more last-minute writing to do today (each month I have had to produce twenty pages of my memoir - about 5,000 words), and I still have to finish the second of the books and write both annotations. But I’ll make it.
I’ve discovered a number of things during this first six months of the program; primarily, there is so much I don’t know. Remember when Donald Rumsfeld, talking about the Iraqi War, said something to the effect of, there are things we know, things we know we don’t know, and things we don’t know we don’t know? I am awash in unknown unknowns.
It’s like a floodgate of knowledge has opened and suddenly all these new concepts and ideas are flowing over me.
I’ve been a writer, editor and journalist for more than 30 years, and I’ve picked up a fair amount of knowledge in that time. But the books I’ve read and the ideas I’m discussing with my professor are deeper, more satisfying and more personally challenging than anything I remember from my earlier college days. (Okay, yes, I spent a fair bit of time partying in college – it was the ’70s, after all.)
But this master’s degree experience has created a new unfolding of my intellectual life. And it has slowed me down. I wrote several weeks ago about taking time to think and ponder. That, if nothing else, has been the great gift of this program.
After tomorrow, I have a month to relax before I go to Los Angeles for a 10-day residency at Antioch University. (There are two residencies every year. You can find out more about Antioch’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program here.) I am looking forward to the opportunity to reconnect with faculty and students I met last December, and to the vibrant and varied offerings of lectures, workshops, readings and seminars that are the essence of the residency. In fact, I would go so far as to say I look forward to it with relish and even giddy anticipation.
My memoir, which is the reason I am doing the program, is finally taking shape, slowly and in fits and starts. But it’s coming along. During the next six months I will continue to work on that project, but will shift focus during the project period to poetry, a passion I have indulged over the past five years. I want to know if anything I’ve written is good, and I want to know and understand more about the great poets, both historically and in the contemporary canon. Then, in the final year of the program, I will complete and, I hope, polish the memoir.
When I’m done (target graduation date is December 2012, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise), I’ll have a completed manuscript and my MFA, which will qualify me to teach creative writing in any university setting. Whether I decide to do that, time will tell. For now, this time, this pause in my life, has been a blessing. It has stretched me emotionally and intellectually – a gift for the ages.
Reader Comments (4)
Hi Marcia. This caught my eye because of my return to school. I'm hoping that it is not mid-life though as I don't want to live that long! I just wanted to say congratulations on your accomplishments so far and wish you the best of experiences as you head for the "finish line". I hope I can become as beautiful writer as you.
Dear Suzanne,
You will! I know it. I remember when you were born - our littlest cousin of 29! Wow. So glad to be in touch again. Please say hello and send my love to your dad and siblings. Got to see Chris recently. What a treat.
Good for you, Mushie...I mean Ms. Meier.
It's nice to be able to still get giddy when your forty-two-years-old.
Very happy for you. You will be an awesome teacher as you are with Query letter advice. Sonia.