September 2022 |
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Do You REALLY Need an MFA To Become a Writer? |
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Recovering academic Ian M. Rogers offers insight on what opportunities graduate school can offer writers, along with the stress, social pressure, and financial havoc that comes with them.
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Becoming a writer—or, for our purposes, establishing a writing career—requires three things: Writing Skill, Feedback, and Knowledge About the Writing Life.
Writing Skill is the most straightforward: you get it by reading great work and practicing your writing. “Great work” doesn’t necessarily mean Hemingway and Faulkner—it means the best of whatever writing you want to do. Poets should read poetry, fantasy writers should read fantasy, and gritty psychological thriller writers should read gritty psychological thrillers. Then, you practice drafting and revising your own writing to make it as good as the writing you’ve read.
An MFA program might provide time and focus for all this reading and writing, but it’s certainly not the only way. So, let’s put one point in the Not Necessary column.
The second component, Feedback, is also self-explanatory: all writers need readers to go through their work with an eye for what’s working and what’s not. This feedback works best when it comes from more seasoned readers who understand the written word, as opposed to someone who reads one book a year and isn’t familiar with your genre.
The professors and classmates in an MFA program can of course give you feedback, but there are other ways. Maybe you have writer friends from college you can trade work with, or there are community writing groups in your area you can join or start. Substitute “internet” for “community” in the previous sentence, and your options increase dramatically.
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Still, the quality of the feedback you can get from these places will vary compared to a good MFA program, so let’s give a point to Not Necessary, But Might Help.
Knowledge About the Writing Life is the hardest to define—and the hardest to obtain. In this broad category I’ll lump things like how publishing works, how to market your work, the legalese of author contracts, making elevator pitches, writing query letters, and the etiquette of talking about your work with others.
Most or all of this knowledge is available in a good MFA program, but it’s also available online or in books, and just has to be sought out. This, however, is easier said than done, and because aspiring writers don’t necessarily know what they don’t know, seeking out this information—even with the help of the list above—can be daunting. There’s also a lot of sub-par information out there, and it’s not always easy to tell the difference.
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So, let’s add another point to the Not Necessary, But Might Help column, giving us a grand total of two. Not Necessary, meanwhile, has only one point, but most importantly, the Necessary
column has zero.
Becoming a writer is about amassing an incredible myriad of skills and knowledge, which have to come from somewhere. Universities were established in days of yore to gather and disseminate knowledge to the people, and MFAs (along with good undergrad English programs!) offer plenty of opportunities for writers to develop the three areas I’ve talked about. The big advantage is that MFAs offer all of this skill development in one place, guided by teachers and mentors whose experience level has been vetted.
Notice I used the phrase offer opportunities in the last paragraph. No university program can guarantee success, and MFA programs are no exception. Interesting classes, smart professors, and literary readings with famous writers are all just tools for you to harness. Every MFA writer starts at a different level, and has to build up their skills at their own pace. In this sense, writers in MFA programs are simply on a path to obtaining experience, and the program is just one way for them to get it.
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You should also consider that unless you have funding in the form of an assistantship, MFA programs, like college in general, can be expensive. This is true in most developed countries, but especially in America, where in the neoliberal post-Reagan era, higher education is seen as less of a public resource available to everyone, and more of a service that people should pay for themselves, like haircuts or septic tank installations. Unfortunately, since high demand and excessive administrative budgets have drastically driven up university tuition, higher education has become an avenue for the rich, forcing the less well-off to either make a risky investment, or compete for difficult-to-get funding.
On the flip side, alternative methods for developing your skills can be extremely attractive to aspiring writers who can’t spare the cash for an MFA. All of us can learn a lot from Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting, who outsmarted the Harvard prick who paid $150,000 for an education he could have got for a dollar-fifty in late charges at the public library. In addition to libraries, there are more online resources available to help the self-educated than ever before, including YouTube videos, podcasts, how-to articles, blog posts, and cheaper online courses to help you cobble together your own knowledge.
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There are, of course, practical reasons to enter an MFA program: because you want to teach, boost your resume, or network for job opportunities (as I’ve been able to use my degree for all three). Or, if the self-educated path makes you cower in fear, an MFA will provide you with a set structure and writing deadlines to help you meet your goals—at least while you’re in the program.
Whatever path you choose, the time and effort necessary to become a writer have to come from you, and those who see an MFA program as a straightforward path to success are in for a rude awakening. I know a lot of great writers who never set foot in grad school, and many who have degrees but whose books I have zero interest in reading. Like every life decision, becoming a writer is a personal journey, and no one road will apply to everyone.
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About the Author |
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Ian M. Rogers
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Ian M. Rogers grew up in New Hampshire before studying literature at Bennington College in Vermont and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he learned to write short bios like this one. He has worked as a copy editor, a greenhouse assistant, a school secretary, a grocery clerk, an online test-grader, a housepainter, a gardener, and a teacher of English in Japan. He blogs about balancing creative work with keeping the bills paid at butialsohaveadayjob.com.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Vine Leaves Press. Any content provided by our contributors are of their opinion, and are not intended to malign any religion, ethic group, club, organization, company, or individual.
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