Application for an MA

I am not sure I should even be writing this. But the fact that I am actually posting it, means I have finished the project .

Writing a personal statement applying for a course that you really want to take is such a difficult task. I was advised to write it as if I were making a business plan. Great suggestion,good starting point, but I do not write like that. That is the day job. My writing is personal, strange and peculiar, some of you reading will know exactly what I mean by this. To write an application I need to be well written, well read and above all creative and if ever something was to create a writers' block this is the perfect combination! Besides the Bank Managers in this case are keepers of words, not money, I am the one who will have to find that. So here we go, the business plan for the ones who are moved by words, who construct then deconstruct.

     So how did I write it?

I picked flowers and took photographs, whilst thinking of words.
I reclassified my enormous files of emails, searching for the submissions that had been sent by email rather than saved as rtf's,in the belief that hidden amongst them was my best piece of writing. At that point I started to wonder what will happen to all these emails when I am gone. An in box that will clog itself up with useless junk and spam, at least there will be no correspondence to burn in old age. I could just press the delete button. I store important emails under files headed family, peoples names and societies. Electronic diaries of correspondence that clutter the computer rather than the house all controlled by a password. Along with all the important emails are a large number of unsorted ones, the electronic dust collectors, slowing the internet speed down.

    Then a look through the bookshelves. Which books have shaped me, educated me, consoled me? Which authors do I return to for pleasure and relaxation? Which authors have I re-read and why? Do they have a different meaning when read at different times in my life? The piles are endless and I must be selective almost an impossible task. But then the reader needs to know something about me, not everything so I have compiled a tower of favourites than can never be given away.

   Then a break and a walk into town to do another job, have some photographs printed for an exciting development and a wander into a bookshop to fondle some titles that I have read reviews of only this morning. Knowing, with a sigh, that they will have to wait and only appear on my Amazon wish list because the tower of formative literature is waiting at home. Walk home and the words start in my head. Do I dare. well yes of course I do. I tell it like it is, what really makes me tick, what excites me, what I am working on and other projects that are in my head, in my notebook, on the pin-board and just in my life. I step over the pile of books that have been lovingly selected for a revisit and start to type.To re-organise the original manuscript into a business plan that reflects the type of person that I am. At this point Daughter, if you are reading, you can sigh, as it is a reflective piece, you know, the one that only I can do.

   When the evening comes I gaze out of the window, think what an amazing world I live in and watch the sky. In the meantime I have a story to finish that was started in Chichester where nature was at the core, it is telling me to listen again as it has more to say. I have other projects to play with. I am looking forward, with a greedy anticipation to re-reading the books that I love. I can savour every word because I know the endings. This time I can really enjoy the mastery and skill of the writing.

   If I am not successful there will be another time and place- maybe. But for now this is the only place I want to be. And so I dream and maybe the Bank Managers of words will have something in common with me, I just hope that we speak the same language.

Ps: If I am successful and anyone is interested, I will turn the tower of books around and reveal the titles.