doc martin

Did it! Up to Lancaster yesterday for my Viva in defence of my PhD thesis. A thoroughgoing grilling for two hours by my examiners Graeme Harper and Jo Baker, on the novel first and my critical thesis afterwards. Then out of the room and a wait to be called back for the decision.
I passed ... just some corrections of typoes to do now. Phew. For all it was squeezed into Lancaster University's somewhat dystopian warren of corridors, rooms and building projects, the occasion very much had the sense of a deep ritual.
I had never thought of novels as icebergs till now but maybe they are akin, just one eighth showing above the surface. That was the comment afterwards ... that the viva process showed so much existing under the surface of the novel, all that life experience and research and crafting amd decision-making and reading and redrafting and thinking and emotional heft, maybe like the gallons of fuel and the petroleum industry that powers a journey in a mini.
At some point I shall summon the energy to push the novel, Ectopia, out into the commercial world. And urge my biography to a rapid conclusion. But first a sip of morning tea and a bite of a celebration pain aux raisins.