Category Archives: MA Creative Writing

Dissertation Update: Week 6

Some progress has been made since last week. Although I haven’t been writing much.

The dissertation supervisor now likes my villain, and the hints of a darker undertone, but is still holding out on Lucie. He said he knows I think I’m writing a stereotype but people won’t realise she’s autistic unless I do. I think we’re at stalemate on that front.

The other thing he mentioned was the landscape, it still isn’t ‘solid’ enough, and he suggested adding the texture in the passage about Lucie taking a night walk around Lincoln. I need to get back to Lincoln and walk around a bit making notes, I think.

I also need to re-write the essay for the third time. It has to be objective, I need to take the ‘I’ out of it. This could be interesting.

In other Rosie news:

I’ve submitted Hidden Fire to Inspired Quill, an independent, traditional publisher. Inspired Quill was recommended to me last September by one of their authors, at a Book Connectors meet-up.

I have book post! So much book post, because I treat myself to a stack of books once the money the county council owed me arrived. Plus, a book from Authoright, which I will be reviewing for them at some point later in the month. After I make my way through my pile of lovely books. Some of them are actually doing double duty as research for my dissertation, but still. Books! I don’t often get to buy new books, so I’m very happy.

Saturday 16th June marks the first anniversary of the publication of Hidden Fire: I will be at The Crafty Collective Open Day/Craft Fair selling copies of my books. If you’re in North East Lincolnshire, or nearby, come and support a local craft club. We have a raffle! I have donated gift packs of books and bookmarks to the raffle, and some peg bags that I made, to the club’s table. I’ll have a few of my dragons with me.

And now i have to go and collect up all the bits that have blown out of my plastics bin. It’s recycling box day; the box is rather full, and the wind is rather high.

Dissertation Update: Week 5

A couple of days late, I know, but I was busy Tuesday and spent a lot of Wednesday asleep, recovering.

Anyway. I wrote 2000 words about the representation of autistic women in crime fiction, only to be told by my supervisor that I was doing it wrong. So that essay got put to one side and I re-wrote it, covering a range of subjects in relation to my dissertation. I’ve sent that, and an updated draft of the creative piece off on Wednesday morning.

On Sunday, before all that, I got an email with feedback. As usual, the supervisor doesn’t like Lucie or the murderer. I accepted that there was something flat about the murderer, because in the first 13,000 words I’d been concentrating on setting up the situation and establishing Lucie. What I didn’t appreciate was being told Lucie wasn’t recognisably autistic.

I may have been a bit blunt in my response email:

I have written Lucie based on my own, and other women’s experiences of being autistic. If you are unfamiliar with autistic women it may not be immediately obvious that she is, but to those who know or are autistic women, it is. Current representations of autistic women in popular culture are limited to socially-inept autistic savants, an unrealistic stereotype. The vast majority of autistic women are not Sheldon Cooper with breasts and I’m not writing Lucie as such just because the rest of the world are too ignorant to look past stereotypes created by non-autistic people about autistic people. She needs to be realistic, to widen popular representations of autistic women beyond the ‘autistic savant’-type, because there are autistic police officers and to provide a role model for those autistic women who aren’t Saga Noren. That’s what I’m trying to do with this character.

 

My description of her autistic traits goes beyond the ‘likes pattern and order’ you mentioned:

  • She is described reacting to sensory stimulation in several chapters. Sensory Processing Disorder is a common co-morbid condition, as is anxiety. She mitigates her processing problems with the use of noise-cancelling headphones
  • She stims, tapping and running her fingers across patterns and materials
  • She blocks out visual stimuli in meetings and in busy rooms so that she can concentrate on her work or the meeting by looking at her computer screen and by building her file fort
  • She has hyper focused on the idea that someone at Witham View is the murderer and is ignoring the other lines of enquiry. This is based on her putting together small clues that others have missed, and looking at it from a different angle. Her autism is relevant because it helps her see the case differently.
  • She struggles with social interaction and communication, forgetting her carefully learnt ‘scripts’ when tired or stressed, and oversharing personal information with colleagues. This causes conflict with her colleagues and will be a subplot that evolves through the full length novel. This is where her autism is also relevant.
  • She has a limited sense of danger – wandering around Lincoln, a place she doesn’t know well, in the early hours of the morning to take photographs in the rain because she enjoys photography and needs to relax.
  • She’s blunt, although she’s learn to hold back when dealing with witnesses – for instance in her conversation with Vera. And it is a learnt behaviour, she doesn’t have the instinctive ability to gauge other people that neurotypical people have.

These are recognisably autistic traits. Your response was the equivalent of ‘but you don’t look autistic’, an insulting comment the majority of autistic women hear at least once in their lives that is used to dismiss their experience of autism because it doesn’t fit with the stereotypes.

I have yet to hear back, either about this complaint or my dissertation drafts; I suspect my dissertation supervisor is ignoring me now. I added extra stuff, making it obvious when Lucie was stimming and her anxiety about dealing with work colleagues. I felt like I had to exaggerate to appease the ignorant.

I don’t like humans very much, at times.

Some of you are okay, I suppose.

30 Dogs Sleeping Like Awkward Doofuses - The BarkPost
Not my dog. I found it doing an image search and thought it was cute.

In other news, I went to my first Adult Autism Forum Cafe on Tuesday evening (after going to craft club in the afternoon); the topic was supposed to be ‘confidence’ but I ended up on a table with two other women, we drew trees and talked about yarn. One of them got out her spinning so I got out my crochet. It was fun. I think I’m going to go to the sensory group on the 18th and the Forum on the 19th. Also, I have an appointment with a clinical psychologist and a support worker from the High Functioning Autism Service (I didn’t name it – I don’t like the functioning labels) on Tuesday morning to see what support they can offer. I need to write a list.

Right, it’s 5.15 a.m., and I should try to get back to sleep. The dogs are snoring at me.

Dissertation Update: Week 4

Yes, I am aware that it’s stupidly early in the morning, I had to get up to come down  to the bathroom. And check my bank account. It’s ESA day and I get twitchy if I don’t check the money is in my account as early as I possibly can (after 3 a.m. is about the right time).

Anyway, on to the dissertation.

Continue reading “Dissertation Update: Week 4”

Dissertation Update: Week 3

On Monday I reached 13,000 words. I sent it to my dissertation supervisor and this morning he replied. As expected, he doesn’t like it. Not enough sub-plot and the main character is two-dimensional and isn’t central enough. There’s too much talking and not enough pace.

I’ve got a long list of proofing errors to go through and I’m going to have to do a massive re-write.

Continue reading “Dissertation Update: Week 3”

Dissertation: Week 2

I have been typing up everything I wrote in week one. I still have not finished getting the writing transferred, and I’m on 7194 words. I’ve probably got at least another 1000 words to type up. I have added a few bits, including a whole chapter at the beginning. That’s something that usually happens between drafts 1 and 2. I’m going to spend the coming week continuing to type up my remaining chapters and then go back to hand writing the rest of the story.

Dissertation: Week 1 – I’ve finally started ‘Granny Killer’ (provisional title)

I’m writing this to keep myself on track. I had a good first few days, until Monday. I wrote about 7000 words between last Wednesday and this Monday, but now I appear to have ground to a halt.

7000 words isn’t bad, I suppose, for the first draft, and I keep thinking of things that need changing when I write the second draft on my laptop. The first draft is hand written, in my notebook. The notebook has a fairy on the cover that looks curiously like Liv Tyler, but they added wings to make her less Arwen-like; probably for copyright reasons.

Sorry, back to the topic in hand. My dissertation. The creative piece has to be 13,000 words of consecutive prose from a new piece of fiction, and the creative analysis part has to be 2000 words. For that I’ll be concentrating on three areas – the conventions of crime fiction, the use of real crimes, criminals and detectives as inspiration by crime writers, and regionalism in crime novels – especially in Britain.

At 7,000 words I’m half-way there on the creative piece. I have arranged to do my dissertation supervisions by email, so I don’t have to travel to Lincoln. I can’t afford to; the student loan has all been spent on fees, travel, food, council tax, other bills. Basically surviving while attempting to study. Once a month I have to type up what I’ve written and email it to my dissertation supervisor for detailed, substantial feedback. That should be helpful. I hope.

Just looked out the window and noticed the bin. It’s bin day tomorrow and I haven’t had the bin emptied for four weeks, so I suppose I’d better go and put it out. And tomorrow is also my Post-Diagnostic Support Session with the psychologist. I don’t actually have official confirmation of my diagnosis yet and she wouldn’t even hint at it in her emails last week.

I’m anxious. If I get the suspected diagnosis of ASC – Asperger’s Syndrome, there’s nothing they can do to help, I’ll be passed on to a charity that might possibly be able to provide some information and support. If they decide on a different diagnosis, I’m back to square one, trying to work out why my brain doesn’t work the same way as other people and feeling like the odd one out all the time, with no explanation for my anxiety and depression, or my limited social skills, my dislike of changes to routine or plans, my pacing, fidgeting and tapping, and on a really bad day, rocking back and forth in my chair (sorry! everyone at uni, can’t help myself.).

It’s not uncommon for autistic women to be misdiagnosed as OCD or BPD, or ignored completely, and I don’t know what the psychiatrist’s qualifications or experience is, so now I’m wondering if he’ll dismiss everything he’s seen, heard and read because he’s one of those that doesn’t believe autistic women exist. Maybe I’m unnecessarily torturing myself, but anxiety lies and so does depression, so I don’t know what to think and I’m probably not going to sleep much and be a horrible person tomorrow.

Anyway, time to get offline and do something else. I’ve noticed a distinct increase in my anxiety whenever I spend more than a few minutes online without purpose, and especially if I go on social media. I had to go out food shopping this afternoon so I didn’t get my nap either, so I’m frazzled and tired. Also, my spelling is atrocious right now. Considering going up to my bedroom to cuddle with the dogs and Wabby, and have an early night.

Uni: Week 13 (I think?)

So today is symposium day. I’m nervous about the standing up and talking to people about my dissertation. I have notes for the ten minute talk but I’m not comfortable with it. I’m just going to look at the back of the room and talk to the wall, I think.

Uni Update: Week 11

This week we looked at the work of Gertrude Stein, the U.S. born writer who spent most of her life in France and hung around with Picasso. Her work is weird, and not necessarily in a good way. It made not sense but sounded like it should. Much more amusing, and nonsensically sensible was the response by James Thurber to hearing the same piece of work.

We had a go at writing something in the style of Stein, but I don’t think I was very successful.

The chicken on the table, little feathery dinosaur on the table in the kitchen, wings aren’t flapping. The wings on the chicken on the table aren’t flapping. The chicken on the plate on the table, the blue and white plate, on the blue and white cloth on the table. The chicken on the blue and white plate on the blue and white cloth in the kitchen, the wings on the chicken on the blue and white plate on the blue and white cloth on the table in the kitchen aren’t flapping.

Flapping, flap, flap, chicken, fly away featherless chicken on the blue and white plate on the blue and white cloth on the table in the kitchen.

 

Uni week 9

Last Wednesday was our last day before the Easter break, and to make up for some of the weeks lost because the tutor was ill, we had a extra session in the morning. The morning session cover basic grammar questions and pamphlet production, and flash fiction. The usual afternoon workshop covered ‘found’/re-purposed fiction. Can’t say I was too fussed by either workshop, but I had had an early start and a long wait between. I left at five in the afternoon, because it was a long enough day without staying and having to wait for the 20:02 train back to Grimsby.

Uni: Week 8

Finally got back to university today. The workshop today was ‘Revisiting Verse’. The tutor played us a piece of music and we had to write down our impressions, then write a poem. Not my strongest subject, but I gave it a bash. I wrote a narrative poem. It was okay, but I didn’t read it out.

I might try the same thing in future, if I get writer’s block.