First Day with Oscar

I had my first day of classes today and it was great. I finally felt like a real Trinity student walking the grounds. The leaves were turning colours, students were sprawled all over the neatly tended grass by the rugby field, it was like a scene out of a movie really. I had to remind myself that I was actually in Ireland, for real...living the life I'd dreamed about for years. 

We got to class and were introduced to our professors. It's amazing to be surrounded by these four people who have had very successful careers in their own right. Jonathan Williams who will be teaching our writer's marketplace class has been working in the publishing industry for decades and is very well known in England and Canada. He is our guide to the world of getting our work published and will take us by the hand to prepare  us all for the real life of a writer. Basically he'll open our eyes to all that it takes to balance our writing with the rest of our lives - family and other work we may take on. The director of the program Gerald Dawe, who also teaches one of the core workshops kept repeating that this program is a practitioners course. I loved that. We were then introduced to Paul Murray, a twice published novelist who will be our Writer's Fellow for the first term. As of yet I'm not entirely sure how that course will be set up in terms of teaching, but I have to go buy one of his novels now! So the 16 of us are split into two groups of 8 for our core workshops. Half of the students are lead by Gerald Dawe and the other half by Deirdre Maden a woman who has published 7 novels and I think 2 young adult works. I was split into the group to be lead by Gerald Dawe who is a poet by trade and who was the man who set up the Creative Writing Masters in 1997 and is now the director of the program as well as the Oscar Wilde house itself. He is so nice and seems so genuinely excited to work with us all this term. Next term our group will be lead by Deirdre Maden and everyone who is being taught by her this term will be with Gerald or Gerry as he says. 

Basically I have class on Mondays 2-5pm, then again on Tuesday for the publishing class from 5-6pm and then finally on Friday for the Writer's Fellow class from 10-12pm. That's my week. We have the option of auditing classes in the Irish Writing program which takes place in the same house on different days and I am thinking of listening in on the Ireland on Stage class. I have read most of the plays in my undergrad, but love them all and think it would be amazing to learn about them from an expert in the field. 

"Poet, Dramatist, Wit. Oscar Wilde. 16.10.1864"

I was so excited listening to Gerry talk about the program and how our workshops would be. It is a very similar concept to the critiquing workshops I had at Concordia, but the program is solely about our writing. We workshop whatever we want and Gerry said that we should workshop what we intend to use as our finally thesis project. We don't have to of course but he said this is the time to focus and really devote our time to what we see as a marketable project. 

I honestly almost cried in class listening to him talk. It's exactly the program I was hoping for. I wanted a year to devote to my writing, to see if I could come out of it with a finished project that I could aim to have published and from what I heard today that is exactly what happens. They have had many students come out of the program with a finished product and have gone on to have the work they used as their thesis published. 

They talk about writing in such a way that brings out all my happiness. They say it's a gift, that we are all so lucky to be in the program because this year they saw a huge increase in applications. Gerry told us at the end that he has read all our work (from the portfolio we handed in for assessment to get accepted) and that he knows we are all talented writers. We wouldn't be here if we weren't. That made me feel really good. I'm still intimidated, but have to keep reminding myself that I was chosen to I do belong!

We went around the table of eight and introduced ourselves and there are quite a number of people from Ireland. One woman was from County Derry. I really want to talk to her about how it is living in the north. Deirdre Maden is from Antrim too so I want to get to know her better when I am in her class next term. We had to tell Gerry what genre of writing we are most interested in, what our goal is for the year, so I said that I would like to have a finished product by the end of this course. I want to have something that I can turn in for possible publication. I said I had a novel that I had been working on steadily for years and all through university and he was excited to read it in workshops. He seemed intrigued by the fact that I had been working on a novel and had a substantial amount written already. 

All in all it was the perfect first day and I feel like everything was worth it. I'm in the right place and am finally getting to dedication I wanted, I am surrounded by like minded people who have all been through the publishing process, through the masters process, who all seem to see writing the way I do. I can finally say without feeling bad or deceitful that I am a writer. I am a writer. Not a student or a government worker. When people ask me what I do, I will reply that I write. It's all I've wanted to be able to say for years and now I feel like I can, wholeheartedly.