The Bottom Line
This week I turned in the last project of the final semester of my MFA program. All that remains between me and my degree is a residency and some bookkeeping. The latter has a literal side in this case – I have to have a copy of my thesis bound and delivered to the program for their archive.
I now find myself in a surreal sort of dead zone between my last official class and my final residency. I can’t even say I’m done with classes, because my graduation residency will be filled with morning classes devoted to the business of writing: queries, pitching and so forth, plus afternoon classes dedicated to the profession. Talk about surreal – I’ll be graduating on a Saturday and then attending two or three more days of classes.
When I first considered pursuing an MFA I did a lot of online research, including chatting on websites where many people tried to talk me out of it. “Save your money,” they said. “You won’t learn anything there you can’t pick up on your own.” And the immortal: “Trust me, I know.” This from people claiming to have an MFA but saying they got little out of it (I say “claim” because it seems to me sometimes that anonymous people on the internet will say anything to come across as experts).
Let’s see, what have I gotten out of this program that I couldn’t have “picked up on my own?”
- Community: I’ve met a lot of writers and made a lot of friends.
- Guidance: The professors have been fantastic, going well above and beyond the call of duty to help students.
- Contacts: I’ve met agents, editors, and other professionals and had extended conversations with most of them.
- Craft: Craft development as a writer involves a lot of reading and writing, which can be done on one’s own. But blind spots can creep in, and this program helped me catch at least some of mine.
- Live Reading Experience: Every residency has times set aside for student readings, and I signed up each session. Now in theory, I could have taken my work to open mic nights, but I can’t think of any “novel slams” in my area.
But there are other writing communities people can join, other ways of gaining what I feel I’ve gotten out of my MFA program. So, since this is ultimately all about writing, let’s look at the bottom lines: writing and publication.
Before I started my MFA program, writing was something I fit in when I could, finishing projects when I had time, and producing very little overall. I had published a couple of small press articles and role-playing game products, but nothing in the previous couple of years.
Right now I am revising one novel and drafting another. I have a nonfiction essay to finish this month at the request of a magazine, and at least a half-dozen poems waiting to find their way onto paper, and notes towards dozens of future writing projects. I’ve had nine pieces accepted or published between the time I started at NILA and today, seventeen more awaiting decisions from editors, and at least nine more on my hard drive waiting to go out. I’m more organized and productive as a writer than I’ve ever been before.
I started this blog back during my first semester, because I had found nothing like it on the internet when I was hunting up MFA information. I found some details and statistics, but no one who wrote about their experiences and what they got out of it.
So to any writer out there who wonders, like I once did, whether an MFA could help him or her develop as a writer, let me say this: if you want to be a writer, you’ll have to take some chances. I think the MFA is a chance worth taking.
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Submissions update: This week I had two pieces accepted: my nonfiction essay “Engineering Coincidence” will appear in the 2012 Summer Solstice issue of Cirque, and my story “Outnumbered on a Friday Night” will appear in the Summer 2012 issue of Six Minute Magazine. Since my last update I have submitted pieces to: Polluto, Tin House, Harvest International, Flash Fiction Online and The American Poetry Review.
