Celebrating my recent 60th birthday didn’t involve a glam party with pals, or a fancy cruise sipping sun-down cocktails, instead I was frantically working to file my dissertation for an MA in Creative Writing, fuelled by coffee and encouragement on my student WhatsApp group.
It was 37 years ago when I got my BSc. I had just turned 21 and was immediately offered a graduate traineeship with a publishing house. I eventually became a Director in the company, which morphed into independent consultancy in 2015.
So how did I come to be a student again, back at the same institution, Brunel University in west London, stressing about deadlines and grappling with PDF files, Harvard referencing and plagiarism software at the age of 58?
The lockdowns during Covid were definitely a spur. Cooped up at home, I was simultaneously recovering from a complex operation on my right ‘writing’ hand after an accident. My final surgery was in March 2020, with instructions of two months minimal exertion while various bolts and wires settled. Reading to pass the time, I tried to quell my rising panic that I’d lose the use of my hand altogether, which manifested in compulsively wanting to type, or hold a pen without pain.
So much had changed
I was on the Brunel alumni mailing list, so I was aware of the university’s growing reputation for their creative writing department. A few years ago, I was invited to give a careers talk about magazines and marvelled at how the campus had grown, and its vibrant, diverse student population. The days when Brunel was solely known for engineering had changed. Now it attracted an impressive author and journalist faculty, including Booker Prize winner Bernadine Evaristo, the charismatic poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and Costa Award winning poet Hannah Lowe.
The MA in Creative Writing has several different areas of specialism including novel writing and technique. In my spare time I had started several imaginary novels. I’d jot down ideas, get as far as 3000 words but lose enthusiasm. A busy career and home meant I never had got any further with them, and the voice in my head would rubbish the idea. Surely a course would hold me to account. Plus I would learn the techniques involved in writing a full-length novel. I scanned photos of students on the website looking for people my age and found several, as well as some detailed case studies from the mature students explaining why they went back to studying. I found that hugely encouraging.
Being a mature student
I’d had a brief spell in academia in the summer of 2015, so the idea of plunging back into that world didn’t feel completely alien. I’d been a student on a summer course at the London School of Economics when I switched from full-time employment to consultancy. I loved every moment of it and discovered just how much universities had changed so much since my days as a young student, not least through developments in technology and the access to so many more sources.
So whilst my son was busy crafting his personal statements for uni applications, I secretly wrote my own and sent it off. In April, an email arrived offered me a place to start for September 2021. My initial reaction was to check it wasn’t some kind of wind up! My husband and kids were stunned, and my original uni friends, many of whom I’m still close to joked about drinking and hankering after my youth.
As a consultant, I had a level of flexibility to fit the course around my other work. Attendance was a minimum of one day a week over the two years of the course, online evening author lectures and weekly writing workshop assignments. I wasn’t entirely sure how I would knit it all together but was determined to try.
First day nerves
Walking onto campus the first morning, I was terribly nervous and doubtful. The ghost of my 20-something self was everywhere – ah the memories of building trolley bridges across the on-campus river on drunken nights! At the vast lecture block, I was asked for directions and realised I’d been mistaken for faculty staff. The voice inside told me not to worry about looking out of place. Unis these days are mini towns, teaming with people of all ages.
There were about 40 people taking the Creative Writing MA, split into several specialisms. My course required a dissertation of 20,000 words, approximately a quarter of a novel. I also had to provide a finished outline and a reflection on the process of writing a book. The ages of the students in the lecture theatre varied from mid-twenties to sixties, with approximately 60% of them women, and in the seminars everyone mixed happily. No-one seemed to regard the older students as in any way odd. I relaxed a little and looked forward to getting to know people better, although I was unsure how and what passed for socials among the diverse MA group. Coffees were suggested, and we began getting to know each other and chatting about the creative ideas people wanted to explore.
Taking on too much
The first term I took on too much. Reluctant to turn down a lucrative consultancy assignment, I juggled two large pieces of work as well as the MA. Within two weeks, all of the deadlines clashed, leaving me juggling late nights for university deadlines, and early mornings to complete clients work, and moving from drafting strategy and assessing data, to creative writing. I got up early at weekends to work on assignments, sitting at the dining room table with piles of books and a ‘do not disturb’ vibe.
The course allowed for lots of experimentation of writing styles – memoir, historical fiction, magical realism and more. Many of my fellow students had established careers in a range of professions including journalism, teaching, administration and publishing. Two already had book contracts and were doing the MA to enable them to teach writing. And a couple had already self-published and wanted to improve their expertise in order to find publishers for their next work.
We fell into a pattern of workshopping, and giving feedback, which was part-terrifying and part-exhilarating, especially if a piece landed well and encouragement was given to develop it further. Some were writing very personal memoirs, which were moving and needed delicate feedback and thought. I fantasised about setting up a small book imprint to publish them all, they had such interesting things to say and stories to tell.
Writing and learning
While the novel ticked along, I took four other courses for MA credits. A Monologues course led by Bernadine Evaristo, seemed very exciting, but my nerves and the pressure of writing and performing made me switch the day before to the only course that fitted the timetable: a Writing for Therapy module. I started half-hearted, but it was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I used the taught creative techniques to un-peel new insight into some personal situations that had blocked my thinking for years. I also took a fascinating Creative Criticism course, allowing me to develop critical work for theatre.
The development of a novel underpinned the bulk of the MA, and gradually I learnt how it should shape, submitting chapters for feedback. After many edits it was ready to file as my 60th birthday approached, and I parked any celebrations to make sure I hit the deadlines. I was encouraged by the supervised feedback and learnt how to pitch the idea, and where it fitted within a genre: road-trip thriller based in the US in the early 2000’s.
And….it was done
I spent weeks fine-tuning, editing and crafting two enormous files for submission – the novel and the reflective work explaining and reviewing my process. Hitting the send button and getting the receipt that it had successfully filed was an enormous relief. Though it didn’t stop me checking umpteen times it had actually gone in.
Then there were several agonising months of waiting for the marks to be awarded. I was thrilled when I learnt I had been given an excellent overall mark and to read the encouraging comments about my work from my tutors.
What now?
I’m currently preparing my book for publishers with the pitch and outline completed, and reworked sample chapters ready. I’m also hoping to contribute to an anthology with my fellow MA students, dedicated to Benjamin Zephaniah, who had supervised a couple of our dissertations and shockingly died a couple of weeks before graduation.
Today my consultancy work continues. Report writing now feels easier, and I’m keeping up with short-story competitions and my book reading for pleasure. I try to finish at least two books a month.
Looking back, I feel proud of myself for ignoring the voice in my head that said I was too old to do something like this, and delighted I stuck with it to the end. I didn’t miss one deadline. I went to almost all the lectures. And now I’ve created something tangible as well as having an academic qualification.
I admit I feel an MA-shaped hole in my weekly timetable and I’m hankering after studying something else. I find myself unexpectedly missing the structure and routing of learning and working towards the deadlines.
To anyone thinking of doing something similar, I would absolutely encourage you to have a go. Yes it’s a challenge to carve out the space to study in a busy life, but pushing yourself to do it is very satisfying and rewarding. It’s also great to meet and work alongside people of all ages and backgrounds and to look at things from a different point of view.
I definitely shook off my Covid lethargy, and my hand now works fine – all that typing turned out to be just the physio I needed!
By Linda Swidenbank
You can find out more about courses for mature students at Brunel University HERE
And undergraduate courses for mature students through UCAS HERE
