From Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement”, Sistine Chapel
OK, so hardly of the biblical proportions of the above, but nevertheless significant (at least to me), I finally received my examiners’ reports back on my Masters Creative Writing thesis (some 7 weeks after having submitted it).
Despite the somewhat gushing nature of my lecturer’s covering email, headed “Congratulations”, they were, to put it briefly, equivocal. Some good. Some not so good. Perhaps the fact (the major fact indeed) that I passed, was the basis for congratulations, as there doesn’t appear to be any grading system. This however may be normal for the procedure, I’m not sure.
I have yet to go through the reports with a fine tooth comb to glean the information I need to pursue this project, if I decide to pursue it. The form of the reports is of course, and as you’d expect, highly academic and they’ve subjected my poor quivering manuscript to an exhaustive third degree. Lest I should get carried away by the smattering of laudatory remarks, they were rigorously interspersed with the highly critical, so reading the things was a kind of bipolar experience. Nevertheless I am relieved to have withstood judgement day and am now only 4 unit points away from gaining my Masters degree.
The premise for my creative project was a series of linked short stories on the theme of family, of which four formed the submission. However given that the consensus appears to be that two are strong and two are weak, I am faced with ditching the weaklings and working on the ones with a better chance of survival. Plenty of scope for reinforcing the good stories and indeed keeping to one family alone through a series of generational studies may well be the better way to go. So some taking stock to do before the magnum opus can forge ahead.
