Instead I get water. Falls. Rivers. Bays. Oceans.<\/p>\n
I am not where I’m meant to be.<\/em> It’s a grim thought, and not the first time I’ve had it.<\/p>\n You might say it’s a bad way to start an MFA residency, and if you did, I’d agree with you.<\/p>\n I’ve come to Washington for what amounts to a trial run with the students and faculty of a Masters in Fine Arts – Creative Writing program: basically an advanced degree in storytelling, if you want it simple. These sorts of things are handled many different ways, depending on the institution, but this particular program follows what’s known as a Limited Residency model, which means that most of each semester takes place online (via forums, email, and the odd Skype call) but always begins with an on-location, high-intensity, face-to-face gathering lasting roughly a week and a half. If you’re interested in the whole program but not completely sure you want to go all-in, taking part in such a residency — just the residency — is a good way to see if you like what’s being offered, and even if you don’t dig it, hopefully you’ll at least have a few sessions during that week and a half that gave you some value.<\/p>\n At least that’s what I’ve heard. I’m experiencing some doubts.<\/p>\n Preemptive buyer’s remorse, really, which tends to happen with me whenever I’ve laid down a fair amount of money for an unknown product. That’s not to say the residency fees are exorbitant — they’re quite fair, from the comparisons I’ve done — but I’m not local to the Pacific Northwest, which means I add on airline tickets, car rentals, and room and board for the lengthy stay, and it starts to seem impossible that I’ll recoup my investment in any satisfying way.<\/p>\n And that’s only the residency. As I drive up Interstate 5, I’m multiplying these expenses by a half dozen semesters, plus tuition for the whole program, and I start to feel kind of crazy.<\/p>\n Actually, crazy would be okay; I start to feel foolish.<\/p>\n What am I doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n I’ve had a waxing and waning interest in doing an MFA program for quite awhile, for reasons I’ll get into, but it’s never gotten very far without hitting a roadblock in the form of other commitments, my own wariness, and most of all discontent with the programs I’ve investigated.<\/p>\n Yes, you are teaching an art, but whether you like it or not you\u2019re also teaching a trade \u2014 or at the very least many of your students are coming to learn a trade, and put up with the art portion of it as part of the deal. — John Scalzi<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n John nails it. I’d asked around about particularly good MFA programs, got recommendations, checked them out, and saw a disappointing absence of what I chose to think of as Practical Application. Great: you’ve got the “literature” part down, but what about contracts<\/a>?\u00a0What about queries? What about ‘How to Act Like a Professional When Dealing With Professionals’?” What about basic self defense<\/a>?<\/p>\n M.F.A. programs are about the creation and study of literature, and it\u2019s worth reminding people that you don\u2019t need any degree to be a writer. A young writer whose central goal is commercial success should skip graduate school.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That’s a quote from Elise Blackwell, director of the MFA program at the University of South Carolina. And she’s correct: you don’t<\/em> need an MFA (or any education focused on creative writing) to get things done commercially. I certainly don’t have one, and there are more than a few professional authors who will advise<\/a> people<\/a> against them<\/a>.<\/p>\n After all, I can<\/em> write; I believe that’s established. I’m certainly not the best anyone’s ever read (I’m not even the best I’ve read this week), but I’m nowhere near the worst, and I’d like to think I’m always getting better. I do think what a writer does is art but at the same time, like Scalzi, I believe you reliably produce that art by approaching it like a trade. Work. Work you love, but work nonetheless. (I’m not the hardest worker when it comes to writing, either, but that’s a whole different topic.)<\/p>\n I didn’t pursue a B.A. in Creative Writing because everyone I met in that program seemed obsessed with how to get<\/em> inspired and how to act<\/em> inspired (read: act especially weird and artsy), and that seemed pretty pointless. And annoying. I already didn’t having enough time to write everything I had ideas for, and I minored in Theater, so as far as artsy and weird went my ticket was thoroughly punched.<\/p>\n Also, I was afraid (rightly, I think) that writing classes would have the same chilling effect on my output that Lit classes had on my input<\/em>. Want to know a really great way to keep me from reading a book? Tell me I have<\/em> to read it; over the course of five years at college, I read exactly one of novels assigned in any of my English Lit classes — I stopped buying the textbooks altogether.<\/p>\n And oh yeah, there’s that: I’m a really bad student. Good teacher. Baaaaaad student.<\/p>\n Despite all the cons, and the fact that I appear to be doing the professional writing thing at least somewhat right, I’ve always felt that somewhere out there might be some kind of… something — a writing program, a co-op, a commune — that would present a challenge that made me push myself.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re getting an MFA in writing, do it to pump the most out of the experience as you possibly can. Go to a place you feel strongly about\u2014a place with writers in the faculty you want to know and learn from. Do it only with the expectation that you hope to get a bit better, that you\u2019re going to focus, that you mean business. \u00a0— Maureen Johnson<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I was prepared to do that, but I couldn’t seem to find the right program. I’d stopped looking.<\/p>\n Then came Yi Shun<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yi Shun and her husband stopped in Denver during their cross-country move from New York to Los Angeles. We had brunch, and Kate asked how her MFA program was going. The answer was glowing and energetic (as most everything related to Yi Shun tends to be), and pulled me into the conversation, where I shared my frustration with finding a program that focused on real life more than theory.<\/p>\n Her response: “You really, really need to check this program out<\/a>.”<\/p>\n So I did. I read:<\/p>\nA What-Now?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
So… Why<\/em>\u00a0Spend Any Thoughts on an MFA, Again?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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