Kevan Manwaring's Blog: The Bardic Academic, page 24

The Strange Worlds of Academe

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 21

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Walking the King’s Road… Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell  (BBC TV, 2015)

It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare

Undertaking a PhD (and by default, preparing for a Viva) can feel sometimes like one of those impossible tasks set unfortunate protagonists in fairy tales – spinning straw from gold, sorting grains of wheat from a threshing floor, or guessing a secret name. One can never read every book, every article, or attend every lecture, every conference. You have to give it your best shot, of course, but it is an endless task. There is something bottomless about, like Bottom’s Dream. This can easily lead to panic or despair – especially as the Viva approaches. One simply cannot reread everything that has taken four to seven years to sift through. There are strategies – speed-reading, prioritization, etc – but concomitant to that I suggest a folkloric ‘reframing’ of the experience. The fathomless quality of academic research reminds me of the illimitable quality of Faerie – which many people have tried to ‘map’ (through novels, stories, poems, music, articles, critical works, etc) but no-one can claim, in all honesty, to have comprehensively chartered. When a character falls into it, they can fall forever. Entering into the ‘special world’ of Academe (to use the motif of the Hero’s Journey) feels like that – it is a Perilous Realm of unusual potentialities. The unwary scholar may meet allies or enemies (hard to tell one from the other in this topsy-turvy Carrollian universe), behold wonders and terrors, and find oneself returning years later, out-of-synch with one’s friends and family, alone and palely loitering after being cast out by La Belle Académie Sans Merci. In PhD research each article or book or lecture is a potential portal that can devour (a cursory browse and before you know it … hours or days have passed); and each theory a fairy distracting, seducing, leading one astray … each jealously demanding of your attention. If you don’t honour these Theory-Fairies, paying them due tribute in your work, they can become very cross and cast terrible curses upon you. They love to be talked about, appreciated, cited and placated. Leave a saucer of cream for them in your text or pay the price! All those voices clamouring for attention (‘Don’t forget me! Or me! Or me!’) – it’s enough to drive you mad. One simply has to hold one’s nerve. Trust in your thesis. In your original version. Don’t let yourself be drowned out by those giants (or dwarves-on-giants) whose shoulders you stand upon. Academe is a Narcissistic echo-chamber, in love with its own voice. It wants to feel that only it has something important to say – and that anyone outside it is impertinent to have an opinion. Those with the most ‘complete’ mastery of the sources and debates are validated the most, even if they don’t really have anything new to add. While the truly original voices are discredited by simply being ignored, unless they can be critically ‘framed’ and thus assimilated and neutralised in some way. It is very easy to get lost in this hall of mirrors – like the characters of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell walking the King’s Road. You can wander for years if you’re not careful. Lose your sense of identity (or ‘voice’) as a writer. Luckily, my long-time fascination with the Fairy Tradition and delight in paradigmatic transmigration – walking between worlds of different kinds – has equipped me with a workable compass and solid sense of my own mutable, resilient self: a restless constancy that thrives on wildly diverse worlds.

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The Place Beyond the Pain

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 20

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Set the controls for the heart of the anti-sun…

With two weeks to go, it is wise to consider ‘life after the Viva’. So much effort has been put into preparing for the Big Day, it is easy to forget an ‘afterwards’. It is such a massive point of singularity (for the respective candidate) – I certainly have found it difficult to imagine or plan anything beyond its event horizon. It is a black hole that sucks everything in (though one hopes there will be light at the end of the tunnel ;0). Certainly one has to prepare for questions about future research activity. A good response is to discuss your plans for various articles and papers. In this sense I have been able to think beyond the day of the Viva. I’ve already ring-marked chapters in my thesis for article-material. Shamelessly cannibalising one’s critical commentary does not feel so painful when one has already embraced the disaggregation that is necessary for the Viva discussion. Everything that you slaved over to create a (hopefully) coherent whole has to be broken down and defended in its constituent parts. Sending edited chapters off to fend for themselves in the cruel academic world doesn’t feel so heartless after that. I have even identified potential journals, one of which I am already preparing a submission for (a piece of side-research that didn’t make it into the thesis). And even at this late stage I’ve come up with an idea for a new article – just from reviewing some of the key criticism. There is a sense of one entering the conversation. It takes a lot of effort to get up to speed, but once you’re there (as in training for a marathon until you’re ‘race fit’) it is a little easier to sustain. Certainly I have found over the last month of two, by reading current articles I feel habituated to that rarified climate which I deliberately depressurised from over the summer. When I returned to it, there was a grinding and groaning of rusty brain-cogs, but now everything feels like it is purring along.  As well as the 4 or 5 articles I have planned I have also submitted an abstract to a major conference (Great Writing, Imperial College, London, July 2019), and await the response from a couple of pieces I submitted over the summer. Meanwhile I work on a new novel, one that elaborates upon the ethical aesthetics that I call ‘Goldendark’ (an anthology of fiction or non-fiction of which I would love to edit…). Whatever the outcome of the Viva I don’t plan to stop being actively engaged in my field. In that sense, it feels like I have achieved ‘lift-off’ as a creative-critical writer. Don’t stop me now…

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The Dog Has Its Day

The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers

A Review by Kevan Manwaring

This extraordinary novel exudes sense of place like a slab of gritstone and peat, oozing copper-coloured water. Myers, through his painstaking evocation of idiom and ecolect, brings alive his neck of the woods (Mytholmroyd) and its social history is loving detail. It is the kind of deep mapping that can only be achieved through a slow-burn relationship with a place and its people.

It is a feisty dramatisation of the Cragg Vale Coiners (AKA Turvin Clippers) – a band of desperate, disenfranchised and marginalised Yorkshiremen, who during the time of King George III, ‘clipped’ coins in the Calder Valley area, led by the charismatic and dangerous local tough, the self-styled ‘King David Hartley’, and his brothers. As a historical novel, this obscure fragment of British working class counter-history, might have had limited appeal (although the story of financial shenanigans has a topical resonance – the micro-scale of the Coiners’ fraud has ironic distance when compared to the global, institutionalised, and legitimized banking crisis that came to light in 2008 – when the crooks not only got away with it, but our governments forced us to pay for their Casino-like behaviour with the economy by propping up the morally- and financially bankrupt banking system and issuing in an Age of Austerity),  but the whole episode is not only grippingly-told, but rendered in exquisitely tough, localised prose.

The structure alternates between a vividly retold account of the rise and fall of the Coiners’ fortunes (the memento mori of the title means there are no spoilers here) and Hartley’s prison-based ‘memoir’, written in thick, phonetic dialect evoking his ‘ill-education’ but also the indeterminate nature of English, which had not yet been standardised through widely available dictionaries. Even language had been politicized and monetized, for only the ‘educated classes’ (from wealthy, privileged families) had control over it – through their legalese and use of the available media: the printed word on posters, newspapers, books and bibles. The oral tradition belonged to the poor, where a rich, alternative literacy flowed through the land.

Hartley is depicted in a visceral, unvarnished way – there is nothing civilised about him. He is no Romantic anti-hero (ironically it is one of the chief protagonists, the solicitor Robert Parker, who apparently was a possible inspiration for Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff). Hartley is a brutish Alpha Male who bullies his way into power and through his pack-like influence on his followers, controls his empire through thuggish proto-gangster violence, while at the same time bringing a reversal of fortune to the lives of the Valley folk. As the Coiners prosper they ‘look after their own’, and Hartley is, to local eyes at least, a Robin Hood figure, one who sticks it to the man (‘Clip a Coin and Fuck the Crown’). One can imagine the actor Tom Hardy doing a turn, playing him (as he once did play Heathcliff in full mumblecore mode), but before the film rights are sold (the book has been critically-acclaimed, winning prizes, and providing a breakout hit for the small press, Blue Moose) savour the prose of Myers dark tour-de-force. This is strong beer that is challenging to read at times – for it does not pull back from the ugly struggle of life – while simultaneously being a remarkable paean to the local universe of the Yorkshire moors, which are lifted to almost mythic heights, having a presence and power which bestows upon them a tangible (non-human) character and agency.

Night of the Mock-Mock

Diary of a Viva Ninja – Day 19

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Suck up the pain. It’ll be good for you in the long run…

Last night I had what I call (with academic tongue-in-cheek) a ‘Mock-Mock’ with friends. This was in essence a warm-up for the Mock-Viva next week with my supervisor at the University of Leicester, but it was an invaluable experience in its own right. Until that point I had been practising answering Viva questions by myself, but that’s not quite the same thing. I found the process hard to engage with and I must admit doing it in a half-hearted way. It was on my daily ‘to do’ Prep-list but often got pushed to the bottom or left out entirely (I have found the writing of this blog more effective as a way of reflecting upon my Viva journey and, in some cases, articulating responses to possible questions that may come up). Lacking genuine schizophrenic (or actorly) tendencies, it was hard to roleplay both examiner and candidate by myself. I can picture a scenario, leaping between two chairs, pipe and frown in one, nervously sipping a bottle of water in the other … Then, of course, there would be the differences between the internal and external – involving a bifurcation of that role, and let’s not forget the Chair (played by a chair?). Although there is a comic potential there (‘Monty PhDthon’ anyone?) it’s not really effective as a practise session.  Nothing can replace the complex social dynamic and noetic field created by an erudite discussion between peers. And so I asked my dear writer friends to help out. They agreed and I sent them a list of possible questions, inviting them to customize them as they saw fit. A couple had read an early version of the novel, and one, my critical commentary. I didn’t expect them to re/read the whole thing (which weighs in at approx.155,000 words – an 80,000 word Thesis (20K of critical commentary; 60K of the novel) then the rest of the novel in the Appendices. The main thing for me was a chance to practise answering questions in a live situation. Not knowing the order of the questions, or their exact wording, kept me thinking on my feet. To thank them for giving up their Saturday night for me, I cooked them a meal. After we had broken bread, we settled down to business. They started with a couple of icebreakers, which eased me into the process; and then we were off. I consciously made an effort to pause before answering, making some brief notes to help remind me of the question’s focus, and to buy myself some cogitating time. It was tempting just to plunge in, but it paid off to Pause, Reflect, Analyse, Narratise, and Acknowledge (my Viva acronym PRANA). I managed to do this often organically, but it was useful to have the mnemonic checklist at hand, when I phased out (it went on til 10pm). Other things I needed to bear in mind emerged in the useful feedback session afterwards. Overall, I it was very productive, positive experience. I feel a lot more confident about coping with the actual Viva now. Of course, the practise session was amongst friends, but they role-played extremely well, rarely ‘breaking character’—and the level of questioning was rigorous. They threw in a few ‘nightmare questions’ and interrogated my answers. I certainly didn’t get the soft soap. This ‘tough love’ will serve me well in the real thing. I cannot recommend the value and effectiveness of such live practise sessions highly enough. It made the whole thing far more tangible and achievable.

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From the Shire to Mount Doom (and back again): The Hero’s Journey as a creative-critical map for PhD candidates

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 18

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‘all candidates undertake a momentous journey’ (Berry/Batty, 2016)

One way of reflecting upon the ‘momentous journey’ of the PhD is to describe it as a fictocritical journey. A useful structural framework, although by no means the only one available is the well-know Campbellian ‘Hero’s Journey’ (familiar to every creative writing teacher and screenwriter, thanks to the repurposing of it for writers in search of ‘mythic structure’ by Christopher Vogler, in his book, The Writer’s Journey. Frustrated by the lack of direct application to the actual experience of the writer in that book, I created my own framework, ‘The Writer’s Quest’, which I explore in detail in Desiring Dragons, but for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to keep it simple and use Campbell’s mythic soup). Berry and Batty, in their article on ‘The stories of supervision’ (2016) offer a playful ‘creative-critical exploration of the creative practice research space’, creating fictional vignettes based upon the Campbell/Vogler template which dramatize the supervisor-student relationship over the course of a PhD. Here, I will simply list the examples that illustrate each stage as I’ve experienced them. It is interesting to note how my mirrors in some ways the journey of my protagonist, Janey McEttrick, in the novel of my research, The Knowing – a Fantasy. This is perhaps not surprising, as I used some of the Campbell/Vogler framework in its construction – although not religiously. Without trying, some of the motifs manifested in the plot – for there is something universal about them. However, I was also keen to subvert the Hero’s Journey (which I discuss at length in my thesis). Here, I will focus on the commonalities, rather than the exceptions.

Without taking the mythic underpinning too seriously – for to do so would seem hubristic (one after all is only a mere PhD candidate!), it is fun to see the echoes in one’s experience with the classic journey. It gives the whole cycle a coherent narrative structure, which feels reassuring at this stage – as I look back with hindsight and try to glean some meaning from the whole process.

Act One

Ordinary World

Associate Lecturer since 2004 – time for a change! And 10 years since MA – felt like my writing needed a push.

Call to Adventure

Advert for the Creative Writing PhD studentship at the University of Leicester. Apply.

Refusal of Call

Failure to get said studentship. Uncertainty about whether I could afford to self-fund it. Decide to go ahead anyway.

Meeting with the Mentor

Dr Harry Whitehead agrees to be my supervisor. We have our first meeting and get on well.

Crossing the First Threshold

I register as a PhD student and begin my studies. Induction in first term. Staying in Leicester with a friend.

Act Two

Tests, Allies, Enemies

I so, with Harry as my guide and mentor (testing, challenging me) I enter the ‘Special World’ of academe and research. I visit archive libraries; present at conferences; submit to peer-reviewed journals.

Approach to the Inmost Cave

Loneliness of the long-distance research student – based in Glos p/t I miss out a lot on uni life, but also experience a lack of a collegial atmosphere or peer-support network on campus. There are about a dozens CW PhD students (apparently) and I meet only 2 or 3 in 4 years. Stress of balancing different jobs/teaching load/research/social life, etc

Ordeal

Overwhelmed by sheer amount of research material; the ever-expanding novel. Lacking critical distance – can’t see the words for the trees. Harry’s critiques get harsher – justifiably – and although I cut tonnes I struggle to write the novel he wants it to be. After a particularly ‘full on’ critique – the coup de grace of the 3rd draft feedback – I feel like giving up. Can’t see much merit in my novel or the whole project.

Reward

Yet Harry encourages me to persist – and I finally pull together the novel and critical commentary with a huge effort throughout the 4th year. By the end of June I submit. Exhausted, I go on a long walking holiday.

Act Three

The Road Back

When I return I start to prepare for my Viva – the last threshold. I have endured academic Mordor and dropped the ‘One Ring’ in Mount Doom, (submission) but now must face … the Scouring of the Shire (Viva)! This is the real challenge – assimilating one’s ‘vision’ into the community. Will it be accepted by the academy? Whatever the outcome, I have changed.

 

As a poioumenon the novel is a dramatisation of the creative process, so there are encoded within it intentional echoes with my own creative journey – in essence, the effort that one undergoes to produce art; or, in particular to creative writing at PhD level, the challenge of reconciling ‘two worlds’: the creative and the critical. Janey experiences this challenge in a deeply existential way – for she has the gift of the ‘knowing’, aka second sight (literally ‘the two sights’ in the original Gaelic). The original title of the novel was going to be ‘The Two Seeings’ and I realise now that the result of this whole process has been the development of my own creative-critical vision.

Kevan Manwaring

 

Berry, M. and Batty, C.(2016) The stories of supervision: creative writing in a critical space. New Writing: Vol. 13, No. 2, 247-260

Manwaring, K. (2014) Desiring Dragons: creativity, imagination and the writer’s quest. Hants: Compass Books

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 17

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Expect the Spanish Inquisition…

One can approach a Viva as though it is an unprecedented situation, and there is some truth in the assertion that it is a ‘new form of communication’ and that it is unlikely one will have undergone a Viva Voce before or is ever likely to again (though I know someone with 2 doctorates, so presumably they did sit through it twice, unless one PhD was by publication…). However, it is also unlikely one would have gone through life without experiencing similar situations, and so it is heartening to reflect upon those – and to know one has survived, indeed perhaps thrived. And so today I just want to reflect briefly upon analogous Viva events in my life, a kind of personal skills and experience audit:

Talking in front of an audience

Well, I’ve been performing poetry at various open mikes etc, since 1991, and a professional storyteller since 2000. In solo and group shows I’ve performed to diverse audiences in Britain and abroad, sometimes in challenging circumstances (noisy venues; noisy audiences, etc).

Communicating complex ideas

I’ve been a lecturer in creative writing since 2004 for the Open University, running face-to-face tutorials, seminars and workshops, as well as giving lectures.

Being adaptable and resilient in stressful situations  

To pay for my fees (as a self-funding PhD student) I’ve been a casual tour-guide since 2014, leading private (1-6 people) and large groups (up to 50) to places like Stonehenge, often departing in the middle of the night, with complex, changeable logistics (traffic; weather conditions; crowd control; unforeseen emergencies). I’ve had to think on my feet and come up with solutions. My material has to undergo continual ‘rapid edits’ throughout the tour, adapting to each new circumstance. I’ve had to cope with interminable traffic jams; lack of sleep; groups with poor English or serious medical conditions which they have not informed me about; disengaged tourists (e.g. bored teenagers); long, tiring days; uncooperative or argumentative tourists; the know-it-alls, or wind-up merchants, etc. God bless them all!

Defending one’s ideas in a rigorous intellectual environment

I’ve presented at around a dozen conferences and defended my papers in front of some very experienced and accomplished academics. I remember once being grilled when giving a talk about the novelist Graham Joyce by one of the authorities I cited in the very paper I was giving!

Public debating

As well as the previous example, I’ve taken part in panels in ‘Publishing and the Academic Book’, and other issues (eg in a Café of Ideas).

  Talking about one’s writing and process

I’ve given numerous talks and readings about my writing in diverse venues – Literature Festivals, Libraries, Schools, WI and writers groups, my students, etc, etc. It’s as natural to me as breathing.

  Discussing difficult/emotive issues

As a creative writing teacher I have led many sessions on what is called Life Writing, which can trigger all kinds of powerful, sometimes deeply traumatic material. I’ve got used to it, and feel I can cope with pretty much anything. If a student ‘tears up’ in class, or starts ‘acting out’ (even attacking me as their imagined ‘authority figure’) it doesn’t phase me – I find I can cope with it well, having had Basic Counselling Training, and a lifetime’s experience of active listening, etc. It’s just about being aware, sensitive, and supportive.

So, going by my scratch-audit, I’ve got the right kind of experience. Perhaps I won’t make a complete ass-tit of myself after all! I think it all comes down to preparation, practise, and relaxation techniques before and during the Viva. I’ve just got to stay cool! As in a performance, it’s often just about holding your nerve. As soon as you start to overthink it, you can lose it. Trust in the Force, young Padwan!

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 16

Today I’ve been reflecting on different strategies for answering (and managing the intense ‘grilling’ of a viva). This is what I’ve come up with…

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Strategies for answering in a Viva by Kevan Manwaring, 2018

Of course #1 is the best response, or #5 if in doubt. The worst thing you can do is answer defensively, or bluster on (because you’ve misheard the question, or can’t think of an answer). And monitor the examiner’s response to your answer. If it sounds like they’ve misheard you, misrepresented your answer, or (more likely) you have made a mistake, then intervene quickly – offering to correct, clarify, or defend your answer in a calm way. Don’t slip into panic mode. If you feel yourself starting to wobble, then take a deep breath, a sip of water, or visualise your ‘place of calm’ (fix this in your mind before the viva – it can be a place you feel safe, secure, peaceful, lucid …).

The key thing here is to pause before answering – the transliminal moment is the place of power in imaginative writing, in performance, and in an interview situation. Savour it and acclimatise to it. It is the view from the aircraft before the parachute jump. Rather than ‘lose your head’, learn to be calm and lucid. Your (academic) life depends upon it!

Prana is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘breath’ or ‘life-force’, which feels like something positive to be inviting in, and encouraging to flow in the examination room. The acronym I’ve come up with is hopefully a suitably mnemonic one. If in doubt at your own recall in moments of stress, write the letters on your hand/fingers – one for each digit!

PRANA

Pause: Make a note of the question.

Reflect: What kind of question is this?

Analyse: What is the question asking?

Narratise: Start to structure an answer; give it an efficient ‘narrative’ arc, to avoid rambling.

Acknowledge: the question in your response. Return to it in conclusion with a summary of your answer.

The aim is to create porousness, reciprocity, and resilience in the noetic field of the viva. Practice using PRANA in your practice-sessions and Mock. I certainly will. If you decide to give it a go yourself, let me know.

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 15

 

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Finding a way across the hemispheres… Brodmann’s Areas (1909).

How has undertaking a Creative Writing PhD changed me as a writer? This is the $64,000 question, which I wish to reflect upon here, after reading Sophie Masson’s timely article (published in New Writing 17 May, 2018). An essential aspect of preparation has been searching for recent, relevant research in peer-reviewed journals, as things keep moving forward. Like painting the proverbial Forth Bridge, keeping abreast of current developments is a never-ending task, but one should cultivate a healthy awareness of the field. Subscribing to key blogs, newsletters, and feeds, can be a way of having the essentials on your radar. Anyway, back to the big question – one that may come up in the Viva, certainly in a Creative Writing one.

There was a risk with undertaking a Creative Writing PhD that one ends up becoming chronically aware of the canon, critical debate, and the apparent pointlessness of ever trying to emulate ‘the greats’. This hyper-critical awareness can have some positives (e.g. the raising of one’s standards) but can also lead to creative paralysis. This is the spectre that haunted me from my first degree (Fine Art BA), which in many ways was like aversion therapy: after growing up with pencil or paint-brush in hand, when making art was as natural as breathing to me, I stopped – disillusioned by the commercial cynicism and deadening hard materialism of the (late 80s/early 90s) art world and by my own inadequacies as an artist. Yet in my second degree (MA in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing, at Cardiff University) I had experienced the opposite – despite the dysfunctionality of the course it jumpstarted me as a ‘serious’ writer and teacher of creative writing (soon after I published my first novel and started teaching for the Open University). After 10 years my writing (and teaching career) had become stuck in a groove and I felt it was time to push myself again, in the hope of experiencing the quantum leap of the MA: to take things to the next level. When I saw a Studentship advertised in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, I went for it. I formulated a project, got some references, and applied. I didn’t get the studentship, but the effort did catalyse my wish to undertake a PhD, even if it meant self-funding. It felt like an exciting challenge and I  knew it was what I needed.

And so the journey began. My supervisor encouraged me to focus on the novel for the first couple of years, and only then turn to the commentary. Through our bimonthly sessions (I was part-time) I was challenged and pushed again and again, examining all of my ‘bad habits’, and trying to write fully with the lights on. With nowhere to hide, and hypercritical scrutiny it is all too easy to start second-guessing yourself, of over-thinking the whole thing. And my unwieldy 2.5 draft was the result of that. A PhD novel is a singular beast – one is not really writing it for oneself, or for the general reader, but for (initially) a very minute and highly specialised readership (your supervisor, your examiners). And, with the exhaustive research one undertakes, the whole thing can quickly become overwhelmed — a creaking pantechnicon of a novel, crammed full of everything you’ve come across. You are desperate to show your research, when most readers are desperate for you to hide it.   For a while it feels as though the whole thing will collapse in on itself – academic soufflé. That the whole endeavour has been a colossal waste of time, money and effort. But then things start to crystallise. You finally start to see the wood through the trees. With your supervisor’s help, achieve some kind of critical distance. This may result in nausea, even disgust – you can’t stand the sight of it, and struggle to see any merit in it whatsoever. After years of working on something, it is understandable in one starts to loathe a labour of love. But finally, things start to fall into place. The excess is jettisoned as, like William Blake, you ‘(strive) to seize the inmost form (‘A Crystal Cabinet, Pickering Manuscript). Most of the last year was spent hacking away at the calcified ideas and phrases, aspiring to elegance – the grace of the swan above the furious thrashing below.

During the 4 years of my research I feel I have developed not only a critical voice – in my conference papers and peer-reviewed articles; but a creative-critical voice – in award-winning essays, commissions, and on my blog. I have honed my critical faculties, which has certainly helped my creative writing pedagogy, if not my own writing. I would like to think my creative writing has improved – that I’ve lost some of the tics, the blindspots, the bad habits. Inevitably these blips will still happen – but what is different now is the lengths I go to to edit a piece of writing. The four years of critical supervision has inculcated in me a lot of good habits – an inner critic who occasionally has a voice not dissimilar to my supervisor’s, crying out something along the lines of ‘Cut the sentimentality! Dump the exposition! Drown the kittens!’ His grumpily good-natured put-downs have become internalised as my own inner critic.

Undertaking the Creative Writing PhD has made me interrogate every aspect of my writing: my process, the forms I write in, the genres I engage with, the representation of my characters, the hidden discourses of my work. It has made me more self-reflexive as a writer, but not neurotically so. I still get swept along when I’m ‘in the zone’ – hammering out thousands of words, knowing that it is only the start of the journey. If anything my subsequent fiction has become ‘looser’, lighter, less over-wrought. Compared to the writing I was doing at the end of my MA (a dense maximalist style) my current fiction has a cocky swagger to it – it is more confident, but critically more controlled too. I feel I have found my voice – one that allows stories to ‘speak for themselves’ without signposting their cleverness. Complexity often occurs beneath the surface, between the words. Now I feel more aware of those hidden codes, but as I write, I focus on telling a story as well as I can. The critical analysis is a secondary wave, which can occur side-by-side with the creative, or even sometimes within the same sentence.

Before the PhD I wrote almost entirely from a ‘right-brained’ perspective (to use a crude distinction): in a lateral, intuitive, imagistic way. The research degree lit-up the neglected ‘left-side’, stirring it into life, allowing it to speak. And now it feels like I write from both sides of the brain: I have become an inter-hemispheric writer. The PhD has helped nurture a corpus callosum of creative-critical connective tissue, allowing for synaptic communication – sparky cross-fertilisation resulting in exciting exchanges and developments, a process I have dramatized through my novel, which depicts two worlds (The Iron and the Silver) sundered by ‘the Rift’ – one that my wily Wayfarer character, Sideways Brannelly, can traverse, smuggling contraband between the worlds: lost journals filled with hidden knowledge. In this way my novel brings to life the mysterious ecosystem of the creative process — the near miraculous occurrence when neuro-chemistry irrupts into inky actuality.

 

Notes:

Masson, S., 2018. Imagination’s afterlife: influences on and transformations of literary creative process within a Creative Practice PhD. New Writing, 15(1), pp.31-37.

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 14

Over the duration of a PhD research project one digests a vast amount of information, some of which ends up in the thesis, although much is discarded or ‘parked’ for future use (everything is recyclable!). It is almost impossible to remember everything one comes across and considers over such a length of time, but one is, nevertheless, expected to show deep familiarity with one’s own research and be able to articulate and elaborate upon it during the Viva. One way of making this more achievable – an effective way of revisiting and revising key themes, etc, is to create mindmaps. The physical act of doing this will help you ‘download’ into your short-term memory all the essential info and ‘order’ it in a technique similar to a memory palace. By clearly visualising this mass of material, you ‘order’ it into a manageable ‘map’. The cartography is only a representation of the territory, not the territory itself, of course, but it is a useful overview when one is revising. It may help you avoid ‘getting lost’ in the Viva.

Here are 3 of mine – 2 done today, and 1 from mid-way through the research:

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PhD thesis in visual form. Kevan Manwaring (2018)

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PhD research in process. Kevan Manwaring (2016)

Escaping the Birdman Scenario

Diary of a Viva Ninja: Day 13

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Caught with your pants down… Michael Keaton in Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (2014)

I think a lot of anxiety around the Viva is generated by the prospect of being grilled by one’s examiners and being found ‘lacking’ in some way – like the classic anxiety nightmare of finding oneself in a public space in one’s underwear, in an excruciatingly embarrassing situation. Let’s call it the ‘Birdman scenario’ (after the scene in ’s Oscar-winning film in which the Michael Keaton character gets shut out of the theatre mid-performance, and has to do a ‘walk of shame’ through the middle of a busy New York city in his ‘whities’).  But the Viva candidate’s dread of being caught with their pants down, metaphorically, is pretty groundless – because in the majority of cases, they have done the work, they have done the prep, they are being authentic and thus have nowhere to ‘fall’. They cannot be ‘caught out’, because they are not trying to be anything they’re not. I know I have written my PhD novel, The Knowing – A Fantasy; that I have spent the last 6 years working towards it (informally since 2012, formally since 2014); that I have undertaken extensive research, both in the archives (at major research libraries) and in the field (Scotland; Appalachia). I know I have worked closely with my supervisor and, responding to his feedback, I have written draft after draft of my novel and critical commentary, pushing myself beyond my usual praxis, aiming for excellence. It has been an exhaustive process, and one that could continue indefinitely. Research never stops, only the researcher. Although one can never achieve the ideal – the perfect thesis (if such a thing can exist) – one must nevertheless aspire towards it. With that acknowledged, one offers their very best at the time of submission, defends that, and hopes to continue, if the gatekeepers of academe permit. In some ways undertaking a PhD is rather like writing one’s own job description – one you then spend 4-7 years training for. The Viva is the interview for that ‘job’ – which by that point you should have made yourself the most eligible candidate for, a knowledge specialist with an extremely specialised niche. You have tailor-made your own anorak – let’s hope it doesn’t become a straitjacket. Fortunately, there is a movement in academe now for interdisciplinarity. In my case, although I am definitely a ‘writer of imaginative fiction’ that is such a broad church it covers a multitude of sins. Since finishing The Knowing – A Fantasy I have already written two other novels, each one substantially different from the tone of my ‘big fairy novel’, as I think of it. Freed from the self-reflexive ‘performance of a novel’ that a PhD requires I was able to let rip and really enjoy myself. Whether these other two novels are ‘better’ than the one I have taken around five years of my life to craft, who knows? I don’t have the critical distance at this stage to judge (and the latter two novels haven’t been published yet – and so remain open for further editing and development). One thing I hope from the Viva is, at the very least, a sense of closure. Whether the ‘end’ is just beginning (i.e. due to minor or major revisions) or whether it really is the ‘end’, I hope that I will finally be able to draw a line under the epic project and move on – for I feel in a very different place than when I began this crazy dream 6 years ago, as does the world… Whatever the outcome of the Viva I reassure myself by thinking: I will still be me. One hopes for a dramatic status shift, of course, but pass or fail, I will keep breathing, walking, and writing! Life will go on! The world will not come to an end, though I may have a new title to my name! We tend to catastrophize, and prepare for the worst-case scenarios, rather than the best. Yes, it is wise to prepare, but not to focus entirely on ‘Viva-apocalypse’! If we do not imagine the good ending, then it is even unlikelier to happen.