What it Means to Choose Wisely OR The MFA Debate
Sweating for Sven has not gone so well these past few days, and I'm not really sure why. I've had the time to write and I've had the ideas, but every time I sat down, I just stared at the screen.
I discovered that many MFA programs look down on genre writing: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, horror, noir, metafiction, etc. (read: everything I adore about writing). Most encourage writing in the literary vein. My blood settled down like sludge and I thought maybe my heart was sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor.
But that was when I started thinking.
I realized I shouldn't see the MFA as something that could possibly crush me or my desire to write. Rather I should see it as something that could be a step toward the life I want. I saw it as something that could help me were I need help and reinforce my strengths.
WHAT SOME WILL SAYI call it practicality. I call it reality. I also call it branching out.
So it doesn't really matter what "some" say. What matters most is that I'm no longer hounded by a sense of feral panic. I chose for me. And I think I chose wisely.
So say we all.
Bri
10 comments:
Atta girl. Practical decisions over emotional FTW.
Ah, grad school. I would go if, yanno, they paid me instead of vice versa. :D
Have you heard of Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania? They have a creative writing master's program specifically geared to genre writing. If you do want to go that route.
You can do it Bri! Sven has been upset with me for my poor performance last week, but I promised him I'd do better.
Picking a grad school is hard. I know when I had to choose for my M.Ed., I had a lot of factors to weigh. In the end a school close to home won out.
Well one thing we all have to remember, for those of us who are not many times over best-sellers, is that we gotta have a day job...something that pays the bills! If getting an MFA will enable you to get a job that will allow you enough time to write what you love on the side, then that's what you should do. I made the decision to stop with Master's instead of completing my PhD in psychology because I realized that getting my PhD wouldn't help me do what I wanted to do with my life, and would, in fact, hinder it by taking up ludicrous amounts of time without enough return. Good luck with the application process. It's always a pain in the patootie.
I think that NOT writing for a genre is GOOD. In fact, I encourage it.
You can learn to be a better writer and explore and then you can write what you want for money or satisfaction or both.
Only comment, don't get into any debate over literary versus genre. It's there, but it really doesn't make much sense to debate. You can write literary and write genre, write anything you want.
But all schooling helps. You grow. You learn new things. You explore and YOU STAY CREATIVE.
I don't have it posted on my blog, but I am writing a novel about Mississippi. It's sort my John Kennedy Toole *Confederacy of Dunces* about my family in the 1960s.
I presume you're planning on teaching creative writing yourself?
No matter where you end up, just write what you want to write -- no reason why lessons of "literary" fiction can't be applied to fantasy and other genres. Just tell them it's interstitial.
I ended up doing my MA in Critical & Creative Thinking at UMass Boston instead...it would benefit my creative side as well as my marketing career. Best thing ever for my writing overall. Plus, even though I don't have my MFA it has opened the doors into teaching, which is also what I'm hopeful for in my future.
I'm working closely with an independent writing community and there is a lot of bias against genre writing, which I find frustrating because genre is really the bread and butter of the publishing world. And as you may well know, there is so much more imagination, creativity and effort in writing scifi/fantasy because you are creating the world, often from scratch, which is no small feat. Then on top of that, you have to create the same sorts of believable characters that you would in literary fiction. Stupid bias IMHO. Writing well is writing well. I write both and I hate that I often feel like I shouldn't talk about my fantasy writing...like it isn't serious or professional.
I say pick a school because it would give you the best tools to be a better writer regardless of what you end up writing when you are done. Maggie also has great advice--you have to be able to support yourself along the way, so keep that in mind too.
Grad school?
To much time and to much money.....
I don't have enough of either!
Stop by my blog, I nominated you for the rockin' blogger award. :D
Sorry I've been out of the picture lately. Busy schedule and what not. The Friday Snippits sounds amazing, but as of now I am still working on the structure of my story...to tell you the truth...I have several large chunks still missing. So the writing will have to come much later. When I have something though...I'll be sure to let you know. I like your critiques, you always bring up angles that I never seemed to think of.
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