Aged 23, Georgie Codd graduated from the Creative Writing: Prose MA in September 2010, when she was the winner of that year's Seth Donaldson Memorial Bursary. She is currently working on her first novel: a fast-paced story of broken trust and camel-swapping, set in the desert and Dorchester.

This essay won the 2010 Student Transitions Essay Competition, organised by UEA's Dean of Students Office. The essay title given for the competition was:

What advice would you give to a new Masters student about to begin the postgraduate course you are studying?

Won yourself a place on UEA's Creative Writing: Prose Fiction MA? Congratulations: you are about to embark on one of the most prestigious writing courses in Europe, if not the world. You will be following in the footsteps of some of the big literary players of the past few decades, including Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Anne Enright. Your acceptance onto the programme means that there are people – intellectual people no less – who find your scribblings not only readable, but worth investing time in. Take a second to bathe in the glory – but don't let it go to your head. It can be tempting to see the course as a major step towards publication, and for some of the graduates it will be. However, your success is by no means a sure thing. Writing is hard; publication is harder. And as for fame and fortune, you're probably better off robbing a bank.

So why bother doing the Masters? With no book deals guaranteed, the likelihood of securing shelf space in Waterstone's is relatively slim. Nevertheless, as a graduate of the course, your chances are still massively higher than that of your everyday amateur. In early summer you will submit work to the annual Creative Writing anthology – a book distributed to various agents and publishers. It's an excellent chance to have your talents spotted. And when you are ready to send a manuscript in for publication, the mere mention of your Masters qualification should save your work from the black hole of the slush-pile.

The course is a great opportunity to raise your profile, so apply yourself as much as you can. If you don't already, carry a notebook and pen with you wherever you go – you never know when the inspiration for a character or story might strike. Throughout your year at UEA you will have to provide at least six submissions of Creative Writing and it can be difficult to do this on command. With a reserve of ideas in your notebook – perhaps even some spare 2,000 word stories – you will find it much easier to keep on top of the schedule.

This might seem slightly absurd to you now. Six stories or chapters in a year doesn't sound like much. However, once the term begins there will be plenty of distractions. Ironically for a course like this, you will be surprised at how little time there is to spend writing. You will have seminars and workshops to attend. Reading to catch up on. There will be evenings at the pub with your fellow writers – and mornings spent recovering. You will be invited to literary festivals, public readings, writing salons, book launches, publishing events and masterclasses with visiting authors. You will receive emails informing you of competitions and requesting your work for literary magazines.

It is, of course, important to get involved in all this. These extra-curricular benefits are key to the degree itself: they are your chance to learn, network, have fun, and become a part of the writing community. This kind of attention is one of the things you're paying your fees for. After all, while writing is essentially a solitary pursuit, when it comes to getting published, the more noticeable you are the better. It's all good experience – albeit highly time-consuming.

You might well be one of those superhuman people who, busy all day, thinks nothing of spending their night at their desk. If you are, then you're in the minority. It is far more likely that, after a few hours on campus, you'll be feeling the urge to put your pen away and relax. As a writer, you can always avoid working under the pretence of research. Lazy as it might seem to the casual observer, thinking-time is essential. It can be useful to take a walk, to go to the cinema – even to lie in your bed. This is a blessing and a curse. Consider what will happen when you graduate. Will you have enough solid work to start sending things out, or will you only have produced the bare minimum for passing the course? If you're concerned less with quantity, remember that the quality of your writing will only get better with practice. If you want to succeed as an author, you'll have to learn to focus. Keep reminding yourself that no one can do your writing for you. If you lack motivation, then set up an informal workshop for you and your classmates. Write for it. Go there every week. Read your work aloud. You will learn how best to present your prose and get a feel for what people enjoy. In the ideal scenario, you will get into a routine of writing every day. Start now if you haven't already. You'll make your life easier in the long-term.

Many writers also spend a lot of their time reading. If you don't do this at the moment, it might be time for you to begin. For a long time, I thought that by reading too much I would pollute my own work with the styles of other people. I thought that I would be a more distinctive and exciting writer if I kept things pure, ignoring what had come before me. After a few weeks on the course, however, I realised that this attitude had put me at a disadvantage: because of my narrow reading, I wasn't as good as I could have been at creating realistic characters, or producing a well-rounded story. When learning any craft it makes sense to learn from other craftsmen: writing is no exception. Your prose can only benefit from reading widely.

This is where the workshops will also come in useful: three hours every week in which you will discuss the writing of your peers, as well as, roughly once a month, your own submissions. They are a core component of the programme; your opportunity to partake in detailed discussions of what does and doesn't work in literature. Even when it is not your own writing in the spotlight, there will still be plenty for you to learn.

Without a doubt, the lesson workshops will teach you most frequently is that you can never, ever please everyone. What one person will see as the perfect element of a story, another will pinpoint as its major downfall. This was a liberating realisation for me: even if the majority of the group dislikes what you have done, there will invariably be at least one person who appreciates it.

However, with such conflicted responses, it can be difficult to decide whose advice to take. Don't just listen to the person who gives positive feedback – some of your classmates may be incapable of saying a bad word against anything. They won't improve your work. Indeed, the most valuable critics are rarely the 'yes men,' but the people who consider their views, give credit where credit is due and, yet, are not afraid to point out the flaws in a piece. It might take a few weeks, but you will eventually learn who these people are.

The workshop is a cooperative process: an arena of exchange. If you want constructive criticism for your own work, you must be a constructive critic for your peers. Make sure you contribute to – but don't monopolise – the discussion of every piece you read. It is important that everyone gets a say and, as a reader yourself, other writers should always want to know what you think.

To be really helpful, don't just decide that something does or doesn't succeed: try to find out exactly why. This will mean reading everybody's work thoroughly. Tedious though this can sometimes be, it will be a positive influence on your own writing. You will learn the importance of consistency, how to better satisfy your reader and how to anticipate your own textual weaknesses. By reading other people's work closely and efficiently, you are also far more likely to earn your peers' respect: it's very much tit for tat. Imagine how you would feel if you discovered that one of your classmates could not be bothered to look over your work properly.

Now, those last few paragraphs might make the workshops seem pretty daunting and at first, they will be. But don't be nervous: they will also be great fun. After a few weeks you will develop a group dynamic. People will be coming out of their shells; getting chatty; making jokes; no longer so in awe of their peers or the programme. Even if you come out of a session feeling low – struck down by negative criticism – you can console yourself with the fact that you have potential. You wouldn't be on the MA if you didn't. The workshops exist to improve you. Besides, if you already write like a pro, you may have just wasted over £4,000 on a course you don't need.

That said, there is likely to be at least one person in your year who seems to be at the professional level already. Someone who you think writes better than you; who often gets the highest marks. It is inevitable: though your classmates are ostensibly equal to you, some will feel more so than others. Indeed, even before the autumn term begins, a kind of hierarchy will have been established, with the writers who have won UEA bursaries sitting firmly at the top. It might be that you are one of these lucky few and that, based solely on the strength of your application, you have been awarded a few thousand pounds. If that is the case, well done, but don't now assume you're safe from rejection or failure. Continued success in writing has a lot to do with luck: unfortunately, a bursary from UEA does not guarantee you a fruitful literary career.

Whatever position you feel you have in it, my advice would be to ignore the course hierarchy. Certainly don't allow yourself to feel like a lesser writer if your marks are low, or if you have paid full price for the programme. Remember the subjectivity of the job: that so many authors – including writers such as H.G. Wells, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling – have had their work rejected before they became successful. All you can do is be persistent and have faith in your own abilities.

Ultimately, you should aim to enjoy your writing and enjoy your year at UEA. You will become a part of an exciting mix of incredibly talented people – writers of various ages, from various backgrounds, from all around the world. Some may have agents. A few may have been published. It is only natural to feel slightly intimidated. They are your competition, after all. They are also, however, your colleagues: people who will help you, who will share your worries and aspirations. For perhaps the first time in your writing career, you will be able to discuss the progress of your novel without feeling pretentious, in a context in which your work is taken seriously. And although, in past years, students on the course have made enemies of each other, you are far more likely to make friends. You might even fall into the ever-expanding group of Creative Writers who have met their partner on the programme.

Whatever you take from the Prose MA, one thing is certain: you will never again have an experience like it. Make the most of your time while you can. There's a good chance that it'll be one of the best years of your life, and the biggest step yet in your writing career.