why I got an MFA in creative writing

There's a new book out called The Program Era. I came across it while reading this article in The New Yorker about creative writing programs and workshops. Both the author of the article and the author of the book present the good and the bad about these unique American inventions. I'll warn you, though: the first sentence of the article may lead you to think otherwise, and further along, the article author makes it sound like these programs are downright masochistic: "The workshop is...a regime for forcing people to do two things that are fundamentally contrary to human nature: actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon), and then sit there while strangers tear it apart."

The main criticism of writing programs and workshops is that, as Allen Tate puts it, “the academically certified Creative Writer goes out to teach Creative Writing, and produces other Creative Writers who are not writers, but who produce still other Creative Writers who are not writers.” Um, you could say that about any college program. Lots of people don't work in the field in which they earned a degree or certificate. This is not unique to writing programs and workshops. And the article points out that "the university is where most serious fiction writers have been produced since the Second World War." The article also lists many well-known writers who came out of the MFA framework, as well as many well-known writers who taught in the workshop setting, and further, taught other well-known writers.

For anyone who thinks an MFA is an "easy" master's degree to get, I direct you back up to the last sentence in the first paragraph of this post and to another comment in the article: "...few activities make people more self-conscious than participating in a writing workshop. Reflecting on yourself—your experience, your 'voice,' your background, your talent or lack of it—is what writing workshops make people do." And you try writing a 300-page novel as your thesis. Trust me, not easy.

Writing workshops and programs are worthwhile for two reasons. The first is that practice takes precedence over book learning. You write a hell of a lot in these programs. There's no getting around that. In every course I took for my MFA, there was at least one substantial writing assignment every week as well as an even-more-substantial capstone writing project meant to incorporate everything you learned in the course. The biggest change I noticed in my writing as a result of the endless writing assignments was that I spent less and less time worrying about what and how I'd write my responses to the assignments and more and more time just sitting down and writing and revising. In other words, I lost my fear of the blank page (or the blank computer screen). These days, I just launch in and get words down to work with, knowing I will delete, rearrange, and fiddle with them along the way. Writing is now an active process for me rather than a thinking, mulling, second-guessing, not-getting-any-words-down-at-all unproductive chore.

The second reason these programs are useful is because they fill a gap for the writer. Unless your readers contact you in some way, or you have a lot of time to read every Google alert about something you've written, you don't know what they think of your writing, and I'm referring to readers who have never met you. Not even sky-high book sales mean everyone likes your writing. Plenty of people bought books by Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer because they wanted to see what all the fuss was about, but didn't like the books once they'd read them. The same can be said of writing that wins prizes. I wrote a post or two last year about reading a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel that was assigned in one of the grad classes and mourning the time wasted trudging through chapter after chapter and being correspondingly less and less impressed.

Writing workshops and programs are structured to give a writer a chance to find out what readers-who-are-strangers think in a face-to-face situation. However, you, as the writer, don't get to say anything while your peers are commenting on your piece. You just get to listen and take notes. After all, if someone on the other side of the world reads your book, you're not standing over their shoulder, defending your writing and saying "What I meant to convey here was..."

The readers in the programs and workshops are also writers, which is an added benefit. They're doing what other writers in the workshop or program are doing - trying to grasp an idea and turn their interpretation of it into words reflective of their personal style (referred to as "voice" these days); trying to maintain a balance between (in the case of fiction writing) plot, character development, narrative, setting, conflict, action, theme, point of view, back story. Their experience working with these elements in their own writing can make them more aware of how other writers use them to good or bad effect, so they can point this out to you.

The article mentions two of the well-known programs: the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Johns Hopkins Master of Arts in Writing program. I admit I did not apply to either of them. Mainly, I was intimidated. These are prestigious programs. I didn't think I had a chance in hell of getting in. I was also a little suspicious of the prestige. Does name recognition equal quality or guarantee success? Not always. Even Iowa University (the home of the Workshop, which has sixteen Pulitzer Prize winners and three Poet Laureates as graduates) says of their own program: "The fact that the Workshop can claim as alumni nationally and internationally prominent poets, novelists, and short story writers is, we believe, more the result of what they brought here than of what they gained from us.”

Their other statement,“writing cannot be taught, but writers can be encouraged,” is really the point of the programs and workshops. Although, I would argue that the elements of writing can be taught; what is elusive is how each writer learns, interprets, and uses them. But back to the encouragement thing. Forgive me, but I'm going to use a knitting analogy here - go make a cup of tea if you think this will irritate you or do as Tim Bisley so philosophically advises and skip to the end; I won't be offended.

Here's the analogy: I used to think knitting was a solitary activity. I knew far more non-knitters than knitters, and the non-knitters often asked me why (or derided me because they thought) I was doing something old-fashioned/spinsterly/grandmotherly despite the fact that I was knitting a bright lime-green, form-fitting, sleeveless top. So I did a lot of knitting by myself. Then I found a knitting group. More specifically, I found a loud, energetic, all-ages/ethnicities/religions/occupations/political ideologies/knitting skills knitting group with several master knitters in the ranks. I was no longer perceived as someone doing something old-fashioned. Instead, I was the one knitting things "a little 'out there'" (the group members often comment on my "brave" color choices).

Oh, what the hell, I'll use an art class analogy too, just for kicks and giggles. I started college as an art major. College art classes are usually three hours long - a quick lecture or demo, and then a large block of time for hands-on, in-class creating, and a class critique at the end. For the critique, and let's use a drawing class as an example, everyone puts their drawings up on a wall. The professor then leads a discussion about each one. How successful was the student with the assignment or technique? What do you (the other students) think of the composition, use of the page, highlight and shadow (chiaroscuro and sfumato are still two of my favorite words), use of realism or abstraction, depiction of detail? Each drawing was put in the spotlight and received critique from the group.

In both cases, a group of people, most of whom don't know each other, gather together, create, and exchange ideas and skills, and there's someone more experienced to guide the group. We're all doing the same thing, but using our own flavors and perspectives. We're all encountering problems in projects. We all have strengths and weaknesses in the discipline. And here's the best part: we help each other. We point out the good stuff we admire in each other's work. We offer suggestions for what can be improved to make each other's work better. Creative clusters, as Julia Cameron calls them, keep you creating. They can hold you accountable to keep producing creative work, but not be mean about it, which makes you all the more willing to keep at it.

I'm sure someone reading this is thinking, "Cate, why didn't you just join a writing group and save your money?" Good question. I've tried joining local writing groups. I grant you, they're free, unlike workshops and degree programs. However, I've had no luck with them. In one group, everyone was alarmingly keen on trashing everyone else's writing. In another group, everyone always loved everyone else's work and had nothing constructive to say. One group was way too large, so it would be weeks, and sometimes months, after you'd written a new piece before you could read it aloud to see what it sounded like in front of an audience, let alone get it critiqued. Yet another group had spotty attendance and kept changing the meeting location. I know some writers swear by their writing groups, and good on them for finding a useful and productive one. I am envious because I've yet to find one that fits just right.

The secret sauce as I've seen it, particularly in the writing program and the art classes, is the structure. In a program or workshop, you have a clear leader. They may not be the one speaking all the time, but they set the intent and expectations, they keep everyone on task, they make sure everyone has a chance to participate, and they offer their own suggestions as more experienced, and usually published, writers. They can also direct the group on what to focus on in a particular writing exercise, both in writing it and in evaluating it, which is how you get the useful feedback. Everyone in the group has an equal chance for evaluation. In the program I was in, critique instructions for weekly assignments in every course ran along the lines of "evaluate at least two other students' writing and choose different students to evaluate for each assignment," and for the capstone project in each class, everyone commented on everyone else's submission. I have yet to see a local writing group do all this.

So my MFA was not a waste of time or money by any means. I was among my kind, I wrote a lot, I experimented with writing (ever try a lippogram? no, it's not a singing telegram that tells you what your cholesterol numbers are), I learned to read others' writing and revise my own writing with a more critical eye. Definitely worth it.

Oh, and there's one other reason why I went for the MFA. For a number of years, I was told by higher-ups in the corporate world that if I wanted to "get ahead" in my career, I needed to get a master's degree. I had no interest in the MBA or in any of the other business-related advanced degrees. I figured if I had to get an advanced degree (and pay for it myself since the aforementioned higher-ups assumed I had a money tree concealed somewhere about my person), I may as well get one in something I was actually interested in. And since I write for my day job anyway, it was a relevant degree to get. A girl's gotta be shrewd sometimes.