I want to talk a little about writers’ conferences and non-graduate school writing programs this week. One thing that I kept thinking about as I was at the Writing Works Conference a few weeks ago was how a lot of the ideas that you’re made to explicitly think about at a writing conference are pretty much the same ideas that you study and discuss in formal graduate workshops. Many conferences also offer manuscript critiques with agents, editors, and successful writers.
And if these conference critiques aren’t quite enough for you, there are also a number of intensive workshop programs, which can span anywhere between a single weekend to a couple of months, during which time you participate in workshops and are also given ample time to write. You also are likely to become a part of a community of writers, as enrollment in these programs is usually kept quite small and you have nobody to interact with during the duration of the conference but the other writers.
In other words, these conferences and workshop programs offer many of the same benefits that MFA programs do, but for less of a time commitment (and for some people, less of a financial commitment, although most MFA programs offer teaching assistantships so that students do not have to pay tuition).
There are, however, a few key differences between MFA programs and these other routes. One is that, while an MFA program might be quite a time commitment, spending a lot of time in a program might be precisely what you need to bring you from aspiring to full fledged writer. I know I’m glad for having had three full years to devote to writing, and I don’t think it would be the same to devote a month, say, or a couple of weeks.
On the other hand, while most MFA students do not have to pay tuition, the three (or sometimes two) years that you spend in an MFA program are usually spent well below the poverty line. You get a stipend as a teaching assistant, but it really isn’t much. It’s enough to live by, if you can learn to live frugally, but for many aspiring writers it might be unreasonable to even consider living in poverty for two or three years. What if you have children to take care of, or perhaps massive credit card debt that you will need enough income to pay down, school or no school?
Another consideration is whether the degree itself will open any doors for you, personally. One of the big things you get from an MFA program is experience teaching, and teaching is really the only thing that I can think of that an MFA degree definitively qualifies you to do. If you want to be a college English teacher, then you should go to a formal program. Writers’ conferences and workshops can be useful in a lot of ways, but they will not prepare you for a career in academia. If you’re not interested in teaching, however, then it’s possible that an MFA program isn’t the right path for you. Teaching can be stressful and it can distract you from writing, but if you want to go to school for free, most programs expect you to teach. You may end up finding (as so many creative writing grads do) that your writing ends up taking a backburner to the time and energy you must spend learning to become a decent teacher.
There’s also, of course, the question of life experience. If you devote yourself to writing for three years and are mostly surrounded by other writers, you may not come out of the program with as much interesting stuff to write about as you would have had you been working a regular job and hanging out with regular people during that time.
I guess what it all comes down to is that I think MFA programs can be great, and I also think these intensive workshops seem great, and I also think writers’ conferences are great. Simply put, there are many ways to study and hone your craft. The real question is what will be right for you?
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Up-Side of Teaching
To be fair (and to make myself feel better about my current situation in life) I want to talk a little bit about some of the reasons why teaching could be considered the perfect career for creative writers. Last week I went over some of the reasons why this might not be true after all, so let me give the other side of the issue a chance to defend itself.
First of all, and as I mentioned last week, once you work your way up into a full time position as a creative writing professor, you generally have a month or so off in the winter and about three months off in the summer. You still get paid a decent annual salary, but you have around four months completely off every year. You can (and should) spend that time writing. As was brought up by Justus in the comments from last week, you also get a sabbatical every seven years, during which time it’s just assumed that you will be writing. Keeping up with your creative writing is, actually, one of your job requirements as a creative writing professor.
In addition to that, as Justus pointed out last week, teaching is good practice as a writer. You are forced to look at writing problems; you are forced to think about what makes good writing and what makes bad writing; you are forced to think about how to improve. All of the things that you teach to your students, you think about again and again for yourself, and every semester you become a slightly better writer than you were the semester before.
But perhaps most appealing of all (to me) is the thought of being part of a literary/creative writing community. Forever. This is one of the main benefits, I think, of going to grad school: to immerse yourself in a community of writers. If you become a creative writing professor, you will always be part of such a community. While there are no guarantees that you’re going to get along with everybody in the department, I feel that there’s a much better chance of developing strong and productive relationships with your coworkers if you work in an English department versus, say, if you work at an office. This is important both for writing purposes, because you gain a lot from interacting with and sharing your work with other writers and literary types, and for general peace of mind, because, after all, you have to spend a lot of time around your coworkers, and how much you like them has a huge effect on how much you like your job. Sometimes, I believe, getting along with your coworkers is even more important than whether or not you enjoy the work itself.
There are other benefits, too, such as having access to a university library and being affiliated with a university who will promote your work, because it benefits them, too, if your books sell well. And perhaps I shouldn’t forget the importance of things like job security and benefits (the employment benefits of being a professor are pretty awesome, often including things like your children getting to go to that college for free).
The trouble, of course, is that most of us have to put up with teaching adjunct – year round and for a weak salary – before we can even hope to land a full time teaching position. And teaching adjunct is a bitch. You’re considered part time, even though you sometimes teach as many or more classes than the full timers, you get paid hardly anything compared to the full timers, and you have to teach the worst classes, the classes that the full timers don’t want. But as my husband Damien keeps reminding me, no matter what job you want and no matter what field, you have to start at the bottom and work your way to the top. Teaching is no different, and if we can put up with the bottom for a few years, and keep our writing wits about us so we actually have a good chance of competing for a full time position, then someday, in the not-too-distant future, it might all feel very, very worth it.
First of all, and as I mentioned last week, once you work your way up into a full time position as a creative writing professor, you generally have a month or so off in the winter and about three months off in the summer. You still get paid a decent annual salary, but you have around four months completely off every year. You can (and should) spend that time writing. As was brought up by Justus in the comments from last week, you also get a sabbatical every seven years, during which time it’s just assumed that you will be writing. Keeping up with your creative writing is, actually, one of your job requirements as a creative writing professor.
In addition to that, as Justus pointed out last week, teaching is good practice as a writer. You are forced to look at writing problems; you are forced to think about what makes good writing and what makes bad writing; you are forced to think about how to improve. All of the things that you teach to your students, you think about again and again for yourself, and every semester you become a slightly better writer than you were the semester before.
But perhaps most appealing of all (to me) is the thought of being part of a literary/creative writing community. Forever. This is one of the main benefits, I think, of going to grad school: to immerse yourself in a community of writers. If you become a creative writing professor, you will always be part of such a community. While there are no guarantees that you’re going to get along with everybody in the department, I feel that there’s a much better chance of developing strong and productive relationships with your coworkers if you work in an English department versus, say, if you work at an office. This is important both for writing purposes, because you gain a lot from interacting with and sharing your work with other writers and literary types, and for general peace of mind, because, after all, you have to spend a lot of time around your coworkers, and how much you like them has a huge effect on how much you like your job. Sometimes, I believe, getting along with your coworkers is even more important than whether or not you enjoy the work itself.
There are other benefits, too, such as having access to a university library and being affiliated with a university who will promote your work, because it benefits them, too, if your books sell well. And perhaps I shouldn’t forget the importance of things like job security and benefits (the employment benefits of being a professor are pretty awesome, often including things like your children getting to go to that college for free).
The trouble, of course, is that most of us have to put up with teaching adjunct – year round and for a weak salary – before we can even hope to land a full time teaching position. And teaching adjunct is a bitch. You’re considered part time, even though you sometimes teach as many or more classes than the full timers, you get paid hardly anything compared to the full timers, and you have to teach the worst classes, the classes that the full timers don’t want. But as my husband Damien keeps reminding me, no matter what job you want and no matter what field, you have to start at the bottom and work your way to the top. Teaching is no different, and if we can put up with the bottom for a few years, and keep our writing wits about us so we actually have a good chance of competing for a full time position, then someday, in the not-too-distant future, it might all feel very, very worth it.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
A Time to Write and a Time to Teach
With school back in full swing out here, I’ve been getting to that stage of hectic busyness that always leads me to wonder whether or not teaching is really the best job for creative writers. We often talk about teaching like it is, and I think there are a lot of pretty great benefits to being a teacher that work well with writing, not the least of which is that you usually get winters and summers off. If you really focus, you can get a lot done in that time. Summer break, for example, is sufficiently long for a person to buckle down and write a first draft of a complete book-length work. Then that person could spend the more limited time during the school year revising.
But setting that oh-so-appealing three to four months off aside: is teaching really conducive to a successful writing career? Well, I think there are a lot of strikes against it, and I can never quite seem to make up my mind on the issue. Let’s look at it a bit more closely, shall we?
I feel that there are really two main components to a job as a teacher: planning lessons and grading papers. Both involve a fair amount of mental focus, and both are comparable to the mental powers you use as a writer. Planning lessons uses the same brain functions that you use when you’re drafting, and grading papers uses the same mental muscles you exercise when you’re revising and editing. So if you spend all day doing the things you have to do to teach, you don’t always have the energy to keep using your brain in that same way for another hour or two to write.
In addition to that, I find that teaching takes up way more time than a regular nine to five job. Sure, a good deal of those extra hours can be spent at home in your jammies, or at the coffee shop or wherever you like to hang out, but regardless, you spend well over forty hours a week if you carry a typical full time college teaching load – at least I do, and I’m not even technically full time, although I do teach the same number of classes as the full timers at my school. See, besides planning lessons, grading papers, and the actual contact hours of regular class time, I spend a fair amount of time each week responding to student emails and reading and giving feedback on the additional drafts my students pass my way (because I figure if they’re willing to put the work in to revising more thoroughly, I better be willing to put the work into giving them feedback).
So once classes really get going, I inevitably start to wonder if this is really the right career. I like teaching, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun (most of the time, anyway) and rewarding. But it’s extremely difficult for me to spend fifty or sixty hours a week using these exact brain functions and then try to write as much as I want to at the end of each day. And if I don’t get to write as much as I want, I start to feel like I’ve lost my way because writing has always been the thing that keeps me going, it has always been the force that pushes me through life. If I don’t have the energy to write anymore, well, pushing ahead in a career, even a great career like teaching, doesn’t really feel worth the price.
This is not to say that I absolutely believe that teaching isn’t a good job for writers. It’s just something I’m thinking about, something I think about often. During the winter and summer you can write your ever-loving brains out, and maybe that really is enough to keep it in balance. Eight months out of the year you work work work, four months out of the year you get to be a full time writer. Those eight months, though. Those eight months can be pretty hard, let me tell you.
But setting that oh-so-appealing three to four months off aside: is teaching really conducive to a successful writing career? Well, I think there are a lot of strikes against it, and I can never quite seem to make up my mind on the issue. Let’s look at it a bit more closely, shall we?
I feel that there are really two main components to a job as a teacher: planning lessons and grading papers. Both involve a fair amount of mental focus, and both are comparable to the mental powers you use as a writer. Planning lessons uses the same brain functions that you use when you’re drafting, and grading papers uses the same mental muscles you exercise when you’re revising and editing. So if you spend all day doing the things you have to do to teach, you don’t always have the energy to keep using your brain in that same way for another hour or two to write.
In addition to that, I find that teaching takes up way more time than a regular nine to five job. Sure, a good deal of those extra hours can be spent at home in your jammies, or at the coffee shop or wherever you like to hang out, but regardless, you spend well over forty hours a week if you carry a typical full time college teaching load – at least I do, and I’m not even technically full time, although I do teach the same number of classes as the full timers at my school. See, besides planning lessons, grading papers, and the actual contact hours of regular class time, I spend a fair amount of time each week responding to student emails and reading and giving feedback on the additional drafts my students pass my way (because I figure if they’re willing to put the work in to revising more thoroughly, I better be willing to put the work into giving them feedback).
So once classes really get going, I inevitably start to wonder if this is really the right career. I like teaching, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun (most of the time, anyway) and rewarding. But it’s extremely difficult for me to spend fifty or sixty hours a week using these exact brain functions and then try to write as much as I want to at the end of each day. And if I don’t get to write as much as I want, I start to feel like I’ve lost my way because writing has always been the thing that keeps me going, it has always been the force that pushes me through life. If I don’t have the energy to write anymore, well, pushing ahead in a career, even a great career like teaching, doesn’t really feel worth the price.
This is not to say that I absolutely believe that teaching isn’t a good job for writers. It’s just something I’m thinking about, something I think about often. During the winter and summer you can write your ever-loving brains out, and maybe that really is enough to keep it in balance. Eight months out of the year you work work work, four months out of the year you get to be a full time writer. Those eight months, though. Those eight months can be pretty hard, let me tell you.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Real World and Other Nightmares
Perhaps it’s because I had a nightmare last night about work – one of those dreams where everything goes wrong and you lack the wisdom to deal with it the way you would in real life – but I’m feeling sort of cynical about life in the real world today.
This past week has been sort of a downer for me as a writer. I’ve had a phenomenally busy week – planning lessons, grading papers, getting things squared away with a new part time retail job I’ve taken to supplement my teaching income, and as always: errands, errands, errands. I haven’t written much this week, and what frustrates me is that it’s not because I’ve been sitting around watching TV or playing DS (my video game drug of choice). I haven’t written much this week because every second that I’m awake I have something else, something more pressing that I have to do.
I’ve talked before about how saying you don’t have time to write is something of a cop out. I do think this is true – after all, you could sleep for an hour less each night and spend that hour writing, if nothing else – but I also think there is something to be said for the lifestyle of a graduate creative writing student.
When I first started grad school I felt that my life suddenly revolved around teaching – and I wasn’t even sure at the time whether I wanted to be a teacher. I hated my new life, and I spent a lot of time ranting about how I had had a lot more time to write when I was working in an office than I did now that I was a creative writing MFA student. (This time I spent ranting, of course, could have been more wisely spent writing.)
After I got used to it, though, and especially after I got the hang of teaching, I found that I had waaaaaaaaay more time to write than I ever did out in the work world. When you work eight hours a day, yes, it’s possible to come home and write for an hour or two, but don’t forget you also have to make dinner, spend time with your spouse, run errands, and sleep. If you get home from work at five, and you should really try to be in bed by, say, ten so you can get a good eight hours before having to get up at six and get ready for work, you really don’t have a lot of time in which to carve an hour or two to write. And you can absolutely forget about the possibility of writing for three hours a day – which is always my ultimate goal.
As a graduate creative writing student your schedule is much more open. It’s stress, more than any real barriers, that keep you from writing. You teach one class (in most cases) and take two or three. Most of your homework is enjoyable – it is, after all, your field of interest – and even after doing all your homework and all the stuff you have to do to teach, after running all your errands and doing everything else you have to do to survive, you still have plenty of time leftover to write and write and write and write.
Not so, I’m learning, as a part time adjunct instructor and a part time retail sales girl. I haven’t even gotten into the thick of the retail job and I already can tell that finding an hour or two to write everyday is going to be a constant battle. Every single day I will have to search for time, figure out how I’ll do it this time, figure out what I need to sacrifice to squeeze it in.
But I know even as I write this that I will work it out. I’ll find some routine that works and I’ll get my writing time in. Maybe not as much as I would like – that three hour a day goal feels more unattainable than ever right now – but I’ll find some time. I’ll find enough to keep myself sane. And in the meantime, I’m thinking again about PhD programs. I’m scheming how I can get myself back into that cushy life where even though you don’t make a living off of writing, it’s just assumed that writing is important and that you simply must have time to do it. That writing is as essential as breathing, that it’s one of those basic functions that keeps us going, keeps us alive.
This past week has been sort of a downer for me as a writer. I’ve had a phenomenally busy week – planning lessons, grading papers, getting things squared away with a new part time retail job I’ve taken to supplement my teaching income, and as always: errands, errands, errands. I haven’t written much this week, and what frustrates me is that it’s not because I’ve been sitting around watching TV or playing DS (my video game drug of choice). I haven’t written much this week because every second that I’m awake I have something else, something more pressing that I have to do.
I’ve talked before about how saying you don’t have time to write is something of a cop out. I do think this is true – after all, you could sleep for an hour less each night and spend that hour writing, if nothing else – but I also think there is something to be said for the lifestyle of a graduate creative writing student.
When I first started grad school I felt that my life suddenly revolved around teaching – and I wasn’t even sure at the time whether I wanted to be a teacher. I hated my new life, and I spent a lot of time ranting about how I had had a lot more time to write when I was working in an office than I did now that I was a creative writing MFA student. (This time I spent ranting, of course, could have been more wisely spent writing.)
After I got used to it, though, and especially after I got the hang of teaching, I found that I had waaaaaaaaay more time to write than I ever did out in the work world. When you work eight hours a day, yes, it’s possible to come home and write for an hour or two, but don’t forget you also have to make dinner, spend time with your spouse, run errands, and sleep. If you get home from work at five, and you should really try to be in bed by, say, ten so you can get a good eight hours before having to get up at six and get ready for work, you really don’t have a lot of time in which to carve an hour or two to write. And you can absolutely forget about the possibility of writing for three hours a day – which is always my ultimate goal.
As a graduate creative writing student your schedule is much more open. It’s stress, more than any real barriers, that keep you from writing. You teach one class (in most cases) and take two or three. Most of your homework is enjoyable – it is, after all, your field of interest – and even after doing all your homework and all the stuff you have to do to teach, after running all your errands and doing everything else you have to do to survive, you still have plenty of time leftover to write and write and write and write.
Not so, I’m learning, as a part time adjunct instructor and a part time retail sales girl. I haven’t even gotten into the thick of the retail job and I already can tell that finding an hour or two to write everyday is going to be a constant battle. Every single day I will have to search for time, figure out how I’ll do it this time, figure out what I need to sacrifice to squeeze it in.
But I know even as I write this that I will work it out. I’ll find some routine that works and I’ll get my writing time in. Maybe not as much as I would like – that three hour a day goal feels more unattainable than ever right now – but I’ll find some time. I’ll find enough to keep myself sane. And in the meantime, I’m thinking again about PhD programs. I’m scheming how I can get myself back into that cushy life where even though you don’t make a living off of writing, it’s just assumed that writing is important and that you simply must have time to do it. That writing is as essential as breathing, that it’s one of those basic functions that keeps us going, keeps us alive.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
To MA or to MFA, That Is the Question
Something I’m sure we’ll be talking a lot about for the next while is the difference between an MA program in creative writing and an MFA program. What’s the difference between these degrees? Why is one a terminal degree and the other more of a gateway to a PhD? And how does a person choose between the two?
Let’s compare the requirements of Damien’s MA program to my MFA program. They’re pretty similar. While my program lasted three years, all the course requirements could be filled in less than that. Really, the extra year is to give you time to work on your thesis. Both programs require lit courses, workshops, and theory, and both require a creative thesis. And it’s the thesis, I think, that’s the key.
In my MFA program the thesis had to be a book length, publishable work. In Damien’s program, the thesis is much shorter – it does not have to be long enough to be a real book – but it must include a critical introduction. So maybe that pinpoints the difference between the two programs. The MFA is more of an artistic degree – the thesis is an actual book that you can then polish up and try to get published. It’s preparing you first and foremost for a career as a writer. The MA is more of an academic degree with a bit more of a focus on criticism, and it prepares you primarily for a career as a professor.
But the interesting thing is that both degrees prepare you for both fields. They would have to, wouldn’t they? Because you can’t really make a living off of writing, but at the same time if you’re getting a degree in creative writing it’s because you want to write. In my MFA program I always felt like they didn’t prepare us enough for careers in the academic field – giving information about conferences, for example, and how to get scholarly essays published, what a career as a teacher entails (besides teaching) and how to get your foot in the door, all of which it looks like will be covered in Damien’s MA program.
But I suspect if I had gone through an MA program I would have felt there wasn’t enough preparation for a career as a writer (having to write a book length work for your thesis seems to me a huge difference from being allowed to turn in a few short stories, essays, or poems. If you’re doing a complete book the process in many ways mirrors the process of working with an editor to get a book published. The MA thesis to me is more reminiscent of a portfolio you might hand in at the end of a single creative writing class).
So I suppose there is a difference, but it’s slight enough that maybe the real question shouldn’t be do you want an MA or an MFA but which individual programs are going to be the best fit for you? Which programs have the instructors whose work you respect and who you would like to work under? Which programs allow you to teach creative writing and which only allow you to teach composition? Which programs have the better track records of people finishing and getting good jobs, and finishing and getting books published? Which programs have you heard good things about? Which programs did your favorite writers graduate from?
Let’s compare the requirements of Damien’s MA program to my MFA program. They’re pretty similar. While my program lasted three years, all the course requirements could be filled in less than that. Really, the extra year is to give you time to work on your thesis. Both programs require lit courses, workshops, and theory, and both require a creative thesis. And it’s the thesis, I think, that’s the key.
In my MFA program the thesis had to be a book length, publishable work. In Damien’s program, the thesis is much shorter – it does not have to be long enough to be a real book – but it must include a critical introduction. So maybe that pinpoints the difference between the two programs. The MFA is more of an artistic degree – the thesis is an actual book that you can then polish up and try to get published. It’s preparing you first and foremost for a career as a writer. The MA is more of an academic degree with a bit more of a focus on criticism, and it prepares you primarily for a career as a professor.
But the interesting thing is that both degrees prepare you for both fields. They would have to, wouldn’t they? Because you can’t really make a living off of writing, but at the same time if you’re getting a degree in creative writing it’s because you want to write. In my MFA program I always felt like they didn’t prepare us enough for careers in the academic field – giving information about conferences, for example, and how to get scholarly essays published, what a career as a teacher entails (besides teaching) and how to get your foot in the door, all of which it looks like will be covered in Damien’s MA program.
But I suspect if I had gone through an MA program I would have felt there wasn’t enough preparation for a career as a writer (having to write a book length work for your thesis seems to me a huge difference from being allowed to turn in a few short stories, essays, or poems. If you’re doing a complete book the process in many ways mirrors the process of working with an editor to get a book published. The MA thesis to me is more reminiscent of a portfolio you might hand in at the end of a single creative writing class).
So I suppose there is a difference, but it’s slight enough that maybe the real question shouldn’t be do you want an MA or an MFA but which individual programs are going to be the best fit for you? Which programs have the instructors whose work you respect and who you would like to work under? Which programs allow you to teach creative writing and which only allow you to teach composition? Which programs have the better track records of people finishing and getting good jobs, and finishing and getting books published? Which programs have you heard good things about? Which programs did your favorite writers graduate from?
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The Value of the Degree
After a month and a half long break, MFA/MFYou has set up shop in beautiful Athens, Ohio. For those of you who have been waiting for what may feel like centuries for a response on a submission, we have every intention of getting through the backlog and sending out some responses soon. In the meantime, our newsletter is back on schedule.
I wanted to talk this week about the value of the MFA degree itself. It’s something I’ve often derided, feeling that the experience is valuable in that it helps you become a better creative writer, but the degree itself is essentially worthless in any real world applications because the only thing it qualifies you to do is teach, which not all creative writers are interested in doing. And even if you do want to teach, like I do, you may need to publish at least one book before you’re a real contender for a tenure-track full time position.
But all of that was speculation based on my understanding of the degree’s value and the experiences of other people that I know who graduated and then had a difficult time finding any kind of full time employment. Now that I’m no longer an MFA candidate but actually a holder of an MFA degree, and I am, for the first time, looking for a job as an MFA, I’m revising my opinion regarding the worth of this degree.
Before I moved to Ohio I sent out my CV and cover letter to four different community colleges in the area. I had low hopes for finding anything because I didn’t know whether they would consider my experience as a TA sufficient, but I figured it was worth a shot. I requested to be considered for adjunct work, if any was available at any of these schools. Three of the four schools responded to me while I was on the road. Two of those schools offered me two courses each as adjunct, and one of the schools is actually considering me for a full time position. Before I got into town, I already had a job interview scheduled for the full time position and was in touch with the department chairs from two other schools about possibly teaching adjunct if I don’t get the full time position.
I’m comparing this with other people’s experiences right now, trying to find work in these hard times. Even though I read on the MLA website that the average adjunct English instructor salary comes to about $11/hour (shamefully low!), it’s actually not a bad position to be in – being qualified for a specific career. One of the department chairs I was speaking with told me that it’s very difficult to find qualified English instructors and I’ve heard that with the economy in the slumps more and more colleges are turning to adjunct faculty to level out their budgets. Not a very well paying job, no, but a job that’s in high demand.
In addition to that, my fear that finding full time work would be impossible at this stage is proving unfounded. I made it all the way to the final interview stage for this full time position, and while I may not get the job (I probably won’t know for another week), it’s important to remember that I wouldn’t have even been considered for it without my master’s degree.
I think part of the MFA-is-worthless attitude comes from wrong expectations that graduate students sometimes have regarding their career path. I think a lot of people in grad school want to move directly into cushy, full time positions as creative writing faculty after they earn their degree but, like in any field, you have to start at entry level and work your way up.
I enjoy teaching composition and I enjoy teaching early level lit courses. Creative writing is fun to teach, too, but in my experience, composition is the most rewarding because of its more diverse range of students and the more vital nature of the material being taught. An MFA degree does qualify you to teach comp at a community college – it qualifies you to teach full time if you can find an open position. It’s true that if you want to teach in a graduate program or if you want to teach in a creative writing program specifically, you’ll probably have to get a book published first, but if you really like teaching there are plenty of other options out there that an MFA will open the doors to.
I wanted to talk this week about the value of the MFA degree itself. It’s something I’ve often derided, feeling that the experience is valuable in that it helps you become a better creative writer, but the degree itself is essentially worthless in any real world applications because the only thing it qualifies you to do is teach, which not all creative writers are interested in doing. And even if you do want to teach, like I do, you may need to publish at least one book before you’re a real contender for a tenure-track full time position.
But all of that was speculation based on my understanding of the degree’s value and the experiences of other people that I know who graduated and then had a difficult time finding any kind of full time employment. Now that I’m no longer an MFA candidate but actually a holder of an MFA degree, and I am, for the first time, looking for a job as an MFA, I’m revising my opinion regarding the worth of this degree.
Before I moved to Ohio I sent out my CV and cover letter to four different community colleges in the area. I had low hopes for finding anything because I didn’t know whether they would consider my experience as a TA sufficient, but I figured it was worth a shot. I requested to be considered for adjunct work, if any was available at any of these schools. Three of the four schools responded to me while I was on the road. Two of those schools offered me two courses each as adjunct, and one of the schools is actually considering me for a full time position. Before I got into town, I already had a job interview scheduled for the full time position and was in touch with the department chairs from two other schools about possibly teaching adjunct if I don’t get the full time position.
I’m comparing this with other people’s experiences right now, trying to find work in these hard times. Even though I read on the MLA website that the average adjunct English instructor salary comes to about $11/hour (shamefully low!), it’s actually not a bad position to be in – being qualified for a specific career. One of the department chairs I was speaking with told me that it’s very difficult to find qualified English instructors and I’ve heard that with the economy in the slumps more and more colleges are turning to adjunct faculty to level out their budgets. Not a very well paying job, no, but a job that’s in high demand.
In addition to that, my fear that finding full time work would be impossible at this stage is proving unfounded. I made it all the way to the final interview stage for this full time position, and while I may not get the job (I probably won’t know for another week), it’s important to remember that I wouldn’t have even been considered for it without my master’s degree.
I think part of the MFA-is-worthless attitude comes from wrong expectations that graduate students sometimes have regarding their career path. I think a lot of people in grad school want to move directly into cushy, full time positions as creative writing faculty after they earn their degree but, like in any field, you have to start at entry level and work your way up.
I enjoy teaching composition and I enjoy teaching early level lit courses. Creative writing is fun to teach, too, but in my experience, composition is the most rewarding because of its more diverse range of students and the more vital nature of the material being taught. An MFA degree does qualify you to teach comp at a community college – it qualifies you to teach full time if you can find an open position. It’s true that if you want to teach in a graduate program or if you want to teach in a creative writing program specifically, you’ll probably have to get a book published first, but if you really like teaching there are plenty of other options out there that an MFA will open the doors to.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Question of the PhD
This will be the last entry of the MFA/MFYou Newletter until August. We’re making the quite epic move from Fairbanks, Alaska to Athens, Ohio, with a lot of extended pit stops along the way, and surely won’t have the time (or the desire) to keep up with weekly entries during the month of July.
This week I want to talk about something that for some reason has been coming up a lot in conversations I’ve had with various professors in the program lately: the creative writing PhD. I haven’t completely decided how I feel about this at the moment so I’m going to give a bit of what I’ve heard other people say to start us off.
I heard a literature professor recently talking about her frustration that the creative writing PhD undermines the value of a literature PhD. She feels that since a literature PhD is a highly advanced degree involving extensive amounts of research and effort, a creative dissertation doesn’t come close to comparing with the work you do for a lit PhD and so the two degrees are uneven, though they have the same title. As a result, the mere existence of the creative writing PhD devalues the lit PhD, which so many people spend years and years slaving to earn.
The topic came up again at dinner last night when a creative writing professor mentioned that she feels the creative writing PhD devalues the MFA. An MFA in creative writing is a terminal degree; it’s meant to be as high as you need to go to be able to enter the field. If it’s possible to go “further,” that is, if you can also get a PhD, it would seem that an MFA may get to a point where it’s no longer terminal. She said that some MFA programs will not hire faculty members with PhDs in creative writing to avoid undermining the degree that they confer in their program.
Having just earned an MFA I can say that, after studying for and taking an extensive comprehensive exam, after taking three years of coursework, and after writing and defending a complete novel for my thesis, I do feel that a PhD in creative writing would be redundant. Especially now that I’m aware there’s such a controversy over it, I don’t know that it’s a good idea to pursue a further creative writing degree. It would especially be frustrating to get a PhD in creative writing and, as a result, find yourself barred from teaching at a number of MFA programs and holding a degree that offends people.
But what if you want to become a better literary scholar and researcher, and are interested in expanding your credentials as a teacher? And if a PhD in creative writing is slowly devaluing the MFA, what will you do if, in ten years, say, the MFA is no longer considered a terminal degree? Will explaining that you chose not to get a PhD in creative writing for ideological reasons help you get a job? And while there may be MFA programs who don’t want to hire people with PhDs, isn’t it possible that some PhD programs feel that hiring a professor with an MFA would be like hiring someone with a BA to teach in a Masters program?
It’s a complicated issue and right now I just don’t know where to stand on it. For me, I think I might try to get a PhD in literature down the road so that I have the more advanced degree, but not the one that can be seen as devaluing my MFA. I’m also curious to talk to the faculty at Ohio University, where my husband Damien will be starting as a creative writing MA student in the fall, because OU confers PhDs in creative writing and so they likely come at the issue from another perspective. It will also be interesting to compare Damien’s experiences as an MA student – an MA being a non-terminal degree – with mine earning a terminal MFA degree. We will definitely be revisiting this issue in the future.
This week I want to talk about something that for some reason has been coming up a lot in conversations I’ve had with various professors in the program lately: the creative writing PhD. I haven’t completely decided how I feel about this at the moment so I’m going to give a bit of what I’ve heard other people say to start us off.
I heard a literature professor recently talking about her frustration that the creative writing PhD undermines the value of a literature PhD. She feels that since a literature PhD is a highly advanced degree involving extensive amounts of research and effort, a creative dissertation doesn’t come close to comparing with the work you do for a lit PhD and so the two degrees are uneven, though they have the same title. As a result, the mere existence of the creative writing PhD devalues the lit PhD, which so many people spend years and years slaving to earn.
The topic came up again at dinner last night when a creative writing professor mentioned that she feels the creative writing PhD devalues the MFA. An MFA in creative writing is a terminal degree; it’s meant to be as high as you need to go to be able to enter the field. If it’s possible to go “further,” that is, if you can also get a PhD, it would seem that an MFA may get to a point where it’s no longer terminal. She said that some MFA programs will not hire faculty members with PhDs in creative writing to avoid undermining the degree that they confer in their program.
Having just earned an MFA I can say that, after studying for and taking an extensive comprehensive exam, after taking three years of coursework, and after writing and defending a complete novel for my thesis, I do feel that a PhD in creative writing would be redundant. Especially now that I’m aware there’s such a controversy over it, I don’t know that it’s a good idea to pursue a further creative writing degree. It would especially be frustrating to get a PhD in creative writing and, as a result, find yourself barred from teaching at a number of MFA programs and holding a degree that offends people.
But what if you want to become a better literary scholar and researcher, and are interested in expanding your credentials as a teacher? And if a PhD in creative writing is slowly devaluing the MFA, what will you do if, in ten years, say, the MFA is no longer considered a terminal degree? Will explaining that you chose not to get a PhD in creative writing for ideological reasons help you get a job? And while there may be MFA programs who don’t want to hire people with PhDs, isn’t it possible that some PhD programs feel that hiring a professor with an MFA would be like hiring someone with a BA to teach in a Masters program?
It’s a complicated issue and right now I just don’t know where to stand on it. For me, I think I might try to get a PhD in literature down the road so that I have the more advanced degree, but not the one that can be seen as devaluing my MFA. I’m also curious to talk to the faculty at Ohio University, where my husband Damien will be starting as a creative writing MA student in the fall, because OU confers PhDs in creative writing and so they likely come at the issue from another perspective. It will also be interesting to compare Damien’s experiences as an MA student – an MA being a non-terminal degree – with mine earning a terminal MFA degree. We will definitely be revisiting this issue in the future.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Oh that’s SO Cliché!
One thing I noticed a fair amount of when I was teaching Creative Writing last semester was the tendency students had to refer to each others work as “cliché” or “stereotypical” or “unoriginal.” It’s something I remember experiencing for the first time when I took my first graduate level workshop – being cliché wasn’t something I had ever been accused of as an undergrad, for some reason, but my first semester in grad school I grew to loath the word cliché. Oh they tried to say it nicely, mind you. Things like, “This is funny in a totally clichéd way – I assume that’s what you’re going for, right?” or, “Your narrator seems like sort of an idiot because he speaks and behaves in a totally clichéd manner – is that intentional?”
I’m not going to bitch and moan about how much it hurts to be told that your writing is clichéd (a lot) or how it hurts even more to realize that (GASP!) the things your peers are telling you are true. I look back on my first graduate level workshop as one of the most painful but also most useful experiences I have ever had in my life, and while some of those comments still sting a little bit (they remind me, you know, how little actual talent I have because any ability that I do have has come from a whole lot of hard work) I feel I have improved drastically because of them.
But what I want to talk about here is my experience looking at it from the other side this past semester, as a teacher. I did have one incident during the semester where one student’s feedback was so over-the-top cruel (saying that the entire story was just one giant cliché and that it could not possibly be revised and should be thrown away altogether) but overall most of the students were trying to be constructive when they repeatedly accused each other of being cliché, and in fact, most of them were essentially right (of course, I still encouraged students to come up with more constructive feedback than “this is so cliché”).
Though a majority of the writing coming from that class showed promise (and some of it I believe will be publishable if the student keeps working on it), I would also say, if looking at it from an objective manner, most of the stories that were written for that class contained elements that were not particularly original. While some of the stories were certainly less original than others, it did seem to be true that most of the students were inadvertently falling back on ideas that most of us (who are perhaps more well read than a class full of undergraduate Intro to Creative Writing students) would say we’ve seen a thousand times before.
But here’s the trick. In general, the reason why things become cliché is because they’re effective. This is true on the sentence level (how many cliché metaphors and similes can you think of that would just shock you with their beauty and truth if it wasn’t for the fact that it was a cliché?) and it’s true on the larger scale, too. Characters often have this or that personality trait because it successfully tells you something important about them. We’ve seen this or that plot twist so many times because it works. See? Most clichés becomes cliché because, in truth, they’re excellent examples of writing.
What’s that you say? But a good writer comes up with his or her own good writing? Here’s the thing: I’ve come to realize that, at the early stage of writing, many excellent writers use clichés not because they’re not good enough to come up with something for themselves, but because they haven’t read widely enough yet to know that this is a cliché. It may well be (and I think often is) an idea that the writer came up with on his or her own, it just happens to also be an idea that tons of other people came up with too.
This is part of the reason why I think reading A LOT is essential to success as a writer. You have got to develop a broad knowledge base of what’s been done already and what hasn’t. Of course, there are a number of other good reasons why you should read a lot, but this is one that I think gets forgotten sometimes. And the other important thing I’ve taken away from this is the belief that writing really clichéd stuff early on – when you’re still learning how to write – does not necessarily preclude you from developing into a very good writer. It may well even be a sign of developing ability – you’ve figured out this thing that works, you just don’t have enough knowledge in your field yet to know that somebody else figured it out before you.
So write your clichés if you must. Eventually you’ll have to move past them if you want to be considered good by anyone but your mom, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that all writers who write in clichés are inherently bad. Maybe all it really means is that they still have a lot left to learn, and really, don’t we all?
I’m not going to bitch and moan about how much it hurts to be told that your writing is clichéd (a lot) or how it hurts even more to realize that (GASP!) the things your peers are telling you are true. I look back on my first graduate level workshop as one of the most painful but also most useful experiences I have ever had in my life, and while some of those comments still sting a little bit (they remind me, you know, how little actual talent I have because any ability that I do have has come from a whole lot of hard work) I feel I have improved drastically because of them.
But what I want to talk about here is my experience looking at it from the other side this past semester, as a teacher. I did have one incident during the semester where one student’s feedback was so over-the-top cruel (saying that the entire story was just one giant cliché and that it could not possibly be revised and should be thrown away altogether) but overall most of the students were trying to be constructive when they repeatedly accused each other of being cliché, and in fact, most of them were essentially right (of course, I still encouraged students to come up with more constructive feedback than “this is so cliché”).
Though a majority of the writing coming from that class showed promise (and some of it I believe will be publishable if the student keeps working on it), I would also say, if looking at it from an objective manner, most of the stories that were written for that class contained elements that were not particularly original. While some of the stories were certainly less original than others, it did seem to be true that most of the students were inadvertently falling back on ideas that most of us (who are perhaps more well read than a class full of undergraduate Intro to Creative Writing students) would say we’ve seen a thousand times before.
But here’s the trick. In general, the reason why things become cliché is because they’re effective. This is true on the sentence level (how many cliché metaphors and similes can you think of that would just shock you with their beauty and truth if it wasn’t for the fact that it was a cliché?) and it’s true on the larger scale, too. Characters often have this or that personality trait because it successfully tells you something important about them. We’ve seen this or that plot twist so many times because it works. See? Most clichés becomes cliché because, in truth, they’re excellent examples of writing.
What’s that you say? But a good writer comes up with his or her own good writing? Here’s the thing: I’ve come to realize that, at the early stage of writing, many excellent writers use clichés not because they’re not good enough to come up with something for themselves, but because they haven’t read widely enough yet to know that this is a cliché. It may well be (and I think often is) an idea that the writer came up with on his or her own, it just happens to also be an idea that tons of other people came up with too.
This is part of the reason why I think reading A LOT is essential to success as a writer. You have got to develop a broad knowledge base of what’s been done already and what hasn’t. Of course, there are a number of other good reasons why you should read a lot, but this is one that I think gets forgotten sometimes. And the other important thing I’ve taken away from this is the belief that writing really clichéd stuff early on – when you’re still learning how to write – does not necessarily preclude you from developing into a very good writer. It may well even be a sign of developing ability – you’ve figured out this thing that works, you just don’t have enough knowledge in your field yet to know that somebody else figured it out before you.
So write your clichés if you must. Eventually you’ll have to move past them if you want to be considered good by anyone but your mom, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that all writers who write in clichés are inherently bad. Maybe all it really means is that they still have a lot left to learn, and really, don’t we all?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Making Use of the Faculty
This past Friday a couple of UAF professors put on a CV and Cover Letter Workshop for interested graduate students. The timing for this workshop couldn’t have been better for me, since I’m currently trying to put together a CV and cover letter to apply for adjunct jobs in Ohio. I have to admit, I felt like a fool because the CV I had previously put together (with which, by the way, I applied to graduate programs this past time around) was not at all what a CV should be. It didn’t even look like a proper CV – too fancy. To put together that CV I had looked up information on the internet, looked at some samples, and downloaded a template. Boy did these things lead me wrong!
At the workshop the faculty members answered questions, and one of them passed around copies of his current CV (with which he recently applied for and received tenure). These professors also recently went through a hiring process at our university, sifting through the applicant pool to try to find the best applicants for a few open positions. They gave us concrete, specific, and immensely useful information about what they were looking for on the hiring committee, what they do as applicants, and how we could put our experience in graduate school to the best possible use on our CVs and cover letters.
In addition to the fact that this was extremely helpful for me as I get ready to apply for my first non-TA teaching positions, this workshop really got me thinking about how much you can gain from just tapping into the professors’ wealth of knowledge about both writing and academia. This is one HUGE plus about MFA programs; you can learn all kinds of things about how to become a professor and you also get some good references to use when applying for future jobs.
I’ve said before that one of the major things you get from MFA programs is preparation and experience for a career in academia, and while this might not seem directly relevant to creative writing, consider how good a job teaching is for writers. How many writers work as teachers to support their writing addiction? Quite a lot, actually. Teaching is a great job for writers because it encourages you to keep working on your writing and affords you ample time to do it (can you say summers and winters off?) – in fact, if you don’t keep getting quality publications you won’t even stand a chance at ever getting tenure. Learning how to get your foot in the academic door is important, then, and I don’t know that there is any better way of preparing yourself for this sort of career than asking people questions who have been through it themselves. People like the professors in an MFA program.
At the workshop the faculty members answered questions, and one of them passed around copies of his current CV (with which he recently applied for and received tenure). These professors also recently went through a hiring process at our university, sifting through the applicant pool to try to find the best applicants for a few open positions. They gave us concrete, specific, and immensely useful information about what they were looking for on the hiring committee, what they do as applicants, and how we could put our experience in graduate school to the best possible use on our CVs and cover letters.
In addition to the fact that this was extremely helpful for me as I get ready to apply for my first non-TA teaching positions, this workshop really got me thinking about how much you can gain from just tapping into the professors’ wealth of knowledge about both writing and academia. This is one HUGE plus about MFA programs; you can learn all kinds of things about how to become a professor and you also get some good references to use when applying for future jobs.
I’ve said before that one of the major things you get from MFA programs is preparation and experience for a career in academia, and while this might not seem directly relevant to creative writing, consider how good a job teaching is for writers. How many writers work as teachers to support their writing addiction? Quite a lot, actually. Teaching is a great job for writers because it encourages you to keep working on your writing and affords you ample time to do it (can you say summers and winters off?) – in fact, if you don’t keep getting quality publications you won’t even stand a chance at ever getting tenure. Learning how to get your foot in the academic door is important, then, and I don’t know that there is any better way of preparing yourself for this sort of career than asking people questions who have been through it themselves. People like the professors in an MFA program.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
There Is No Good and There Is No Bad
Recently in workshop a student asked the professor: as a teacher how does he deal with stories and writers that simply aren’t any good? The professor responded that as a teacher he sets aside notions of good and bad completely and just looks at stories based on how they can be revised. This is something I’ve been doing as a teacher this past semester in my Creative Writing class. One of the professors at UAF always says that the purpose of workshop is to tease out the possibilities of the work submitted and now that I’m teaching Creative Writing I really agree that this is the best way of looking at it.
I find that every single story that gets submitted has the potential to become better and without even realizing it, I’ve been checking my personal tastes at the door. I don’t read my students’ stories with any thought of whether or not this would ever become a story that I, personally, would consider good. I don’t even think about whether this would be publishable – there is a wide range of publishable fiction and a lot of it is well outside of what I would consider worth reading (one of my students recently did a presentation on a mystery genre literary journal and pointed out that almost all of these stories were terrible if you look at them from a craft perspective, a useful thing to have brought up in class since it spotlights that very question of whether or not there is such a thing as “good”).
So instead of assessing the stories based on whether or not they are “good,” which would be impossible in my opinion, they need to be looked at with the assumption that any of them can become better than what they are now – and we’re going to try to help the writer get them there. An idea that goes hand in hand with this assumption is that any writer has the ability to make their stories good – the purpose of the creative writing class is to help writers learn the elements and technique of craft so they can make their stories become whatever they want them to be.
Possibilities, as that UAF professor puts it. It all comes down to possibilities. Where could this story go from here? What could be changed to bring out this idea more, or to get rid of that one? What about this story is creating this effect? What might be added to create that effect? Good or bad doesn’t even enter in to the equation.
It’s true that some drafts may seem further along the scale than others – one student may turn in a draft that already has all kinds of tantalizing things going on and it has less far to go to reach some of its potential than, say, another student’s story that reads, in that early draft, bland and clichéd. But that doesn’t mean that Student A is a “good” writer and Student B isn’t. Student A may spend very little or no time on revision and Student B may work exhaustively improving that story, working toward a final product that is much better than Student A’s. Does that mean that Student B is indeed a “good” writer and Student A isn’t? No. It means that Student B is doing what a real writer does and Student A isn’t. It means, in my opinion, that there is no “good” – there is only hard work.
I find that every single story that gets submitted has the potential to become better and without even realizing it, I’ve been checking my personal tastes at the door. I don’t read my students’ stories with any thought of whether or not this would ever become a story that I, personally, would consider good. I don’t even think about whether this would be publishable – there is a wide range of publishable fiction and a lot of it is well outside of what I would consider worth reading (one of my students recently did a presentation on a mystery genre literary journal and pointed out that almost all of these stories were terrible if you look at them from a craft perspective, a useful thing to have brought up in class since it spotlights that very question of whether or not there is such a thing as “good”).
So instead of assessing the stories based on whether or not they are “good,” which would be impossible in my opinion, they need to be looked at with the assumption that any of them can become better than what they are now – and we’re going to try to help the writer get them there. An idea that goes hand in hand with this assumption is that any writer has the ability to make their stories good – the purpose of the creative writing class is to help writers learn the elements and technique of craft so they can make their stories become whatever they want them to be.
Possibilities, as that UAF professor puts it. It all comes down to possibilities. Where could this story go from here? What could be changed to bring out this idea more, or to get rid of that one? What about this story is creating this effect? What might be added to create that effect? Good or bad doesn’t even enter in to the equation.
It’s true that some drafts may seem further along the scale than others – one student may turn in a draft that already has all kinds of tantalizing things going on and it has less far to go to reach some of its potential than, say, another student’s story that reads, in that early draft, bland and clichéd. But that doesn’t mean that Student A is a “good” writer and Student B isn’t. Student A may spend very little or no time on revision and Student B may work exhaustively improving that story, working toward a final product that is much better than Student A’s. Does that mean that Student B is indeed a “good” writer and Student A isn’t? No. It means that Student B is doing what a real writer does and Student A isn’t. It means, in my opinion, that there is no “good” – there is only hard work.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Back to the Basics
This semester, I’ve been given the honor of teaching Introduction to Creative Writing – Fiction, a class that grad students in my program aren’t usually allowed to teach. I should add that my being offered to teach this class was largely based on luck, a right time right place sort of thing.
Already in the first half of the semester I’ve gained so much from teaching this class that I now firmly believe that teaching creative writing should be a requirement of all MFA programs. Not only is it much easier to teach than academic writing (and I actually believe that the regulations on who is allowed to teach academic writing should be much tighter, at least at my university – come on, these classes are essential for these students’ future success in college and a lot of TAs don’t take it seriously at all, but I digress) but you also learn A LOT as a writer from being on the other side of the desk. After all, the best way to learn is to teach.
I’m sure my teaching experiences will be a frequent subject in my blogs for the next few months because there are numerous interesting and useful things that I have learned (and probably will continue to learn) by teaching creative writing. Perhaps the best place to start – and probably the most useful thing I’ve gained so far – is how useful it’s been to go back and revisit the basics.
That’s right. The basics. Working from an introductory level textbook that focuses on the fundamentals – plot and conflict, tension and resolution, revising and re-imagining – I’ve been reading about things that I haven’t thought about in years – since I was an introductory student, myself, and it’s funny how much some of this stuff has sort of slipped into the back of my mind as I’ve been taking more advanced workshops and forms classes.
I had an epiphanic moment (that’s right, epiphanies do happen in real life) when I was doing the reading and planning my lesson a few classes ago. There’s a story that I’ve been working on recently where I was focusing all my attention on exploring certain themes and working out the main character’s voice. Since all my attention was going into some more advanced techniques I was working with, I inadvertently allowed a sort of basic, beginner level mistake to seep into the writing. The reading that I had assigned for my class addressed the very same mistake, laid out in concrete terms why this doesn’t work, and talked about some alternative techniques that can be used instead to greater effect.
At first I felt like an idiot. Here I was teaching creative writing and here was this stupid mistake that I myself made in a recent story. I finished planning my lesson and then went back and revised my story. Even though when I wove the problematic technique into the story I had very specific reasons for doing it, the story is better off without it. As with most experimental writing (in my opinion), it was a cheap and easy way to try to get at the character’s voice when it’s actually much better – much more difficult to write and therefore more rewarding to read – if I get at the character’s voice through more traditional methods.
Going back to the basics is something that I think many MFA writers could benefit from. The textbook includes what has probably become my new favorite writer-on-writing quote. Flannery O’Connor said that as a writer, “you can do anything that you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.” While many of us like to believe that it’s only by breaking the rules that you can achieve genius, I think the rules are there for a reason and while now and then breaking or bending one or two of them doesn’t hurt, totally abandoning the basics by the wayside is really just sort of arrogant and pretentious, and it isn’t likely to impress more than a handful of arrogant and pretentious readers.
So I’m excited to be taking a refresher course at the introductory level – by teaching it. Already my writing has dramatically improved by going back and restudying some of these things that I learned so long ago.
Already in the first half of the semester I’ve gained so much from teaching this class that I now firmly believe that teaching creative writing should be a requirement of all MFA programs. Not only is it much easier to teach than academic writing (and I actually believe that the regulations on who is allowed to teach academic writing should be much tighter, at least at my university – come on, these classes are essential for these students’ future success in college and a lot of TAs don’t take it seriously at all, but I digress) but you also learn A LOT as a writer from being on the other side of the desk. After all, the best way to learn is to teach.
I’m sure my teaching experiences will be a frequent subject in my blogs for the next few months because there are numerous interesting and useful things that I have learned (and probably will continue to learn) by teaching creative writing. Perhaps the best place to start – and probably the most useful thing I’ve gained so far – is how useful it’s been to go back and revisit the basics.
That’s right. The basics. Working from an introductory level textbook that focuses on the fundamentals – plot and conflict, tension and resolution, revising and re-imagining – I’ve been reading about things that I haven’t thought about in years – since I was an introductory student, myself, and it’s funny how much some of this stuff has sort of slipped into the back of my mind as I’ve been taking more advanced workshops and forms classes.
I had an epiphanic moment (that’s right, epiphanies do happen in real life) when I was doing the reading and planning my lesson a few classes ago. There’s a story that I’ve been working on recently where I was focusing all my attention on exploring certain themes and working out the main character’s voice. Since all my attention was going into some more advanced techniques I was working with, I inadvertently allowed a sort of basic, beginner level mistake to seep into the writing. The reading that I had assigned for my class addressed the very same mistake, laid out in concrete terms why this doesn’t work, and talked about some alternative techniques that can be used instead to greater effect.
At first I felt like an idiot. Here I was teaching creative writing and here was this stupid mistake that I myself made in a recent story. I finished planning my lesson and then went back and revised my story. Even though when I wove the problematic technique into the story I had very specific reasons for doing it, the story is better off without it. As with most experimental writing (in my opinion), it was a cheap and easy way to try to get at the character’s voice when it’s actually much better – much more difficult to write and therefore more rewarding to read – if I get at the character’s voice through more traditional methods.
Going back to the basics is something that I think many MFA writers could benefit from. The textbook includes what has probably become my new favorite writer-on-writing quote. Flannery O’Connor said that as a writer, “you can do anything that you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.” While many of us like to believe that it’s only by breaking the rules that you can achieve genius, I think the rules are there for a reason and while now and then breaking or bending one or two of them doesn’t hurt, totally abandoning the basics by the wayside is really just sort of arrogant and pretentious, and it isn’t likely to impress more than a handful of arrogant and pretentious readers.
So I’m excited to be taking a refresher course at the introductory level – by teaching it. Already my writing has dramatically improved by going back and restudying some of these things that I learned so long ago.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Planning Ahead
With my time in my MFA program quickly running out, I’ve been thinking more and more lately about what, exactly, you do with an MFA degree. It seems to me there are two major things you learn in an MFA program: how to be a better writer and how to be a good teacher.
The first is probably the reason why most of us join an MFA program to begin with and while I believe you do gain a lot as a writer from an MFA program, it seems to me that it’s rare for someone to finish their MFA degree with a ready to publish book. Many people finish with a book that needs more work and many people finish with a practice book, something that they learned a lot through writing but something they will never publish. For most people, an MFA program is only an early step in the VERY slow progression toward a successful book publishing career. How far along you are as a writer by the end of the program also greatly varies from person to person and is completely dependent on how much effort you put in. (How many hours a day did you actually spend writing and how many days a month did you convince yourself you simply did not have time to write? How much did you actually pay attention to the feedback you got and how much did you write it off as “that person just isn’t my audience”?)
The second thing you learn is a bit more concrete. I think every single person who has a teaching assistantship learns loads about teaching while they’re in an MFA program and by the time they finish, they should be ready to go out and teach. Sure, there’s still plenty more to learn – teaching (like writing) is one of those things that you learn by doing. You get better and better each semester and, essentially, to become a four star college professor, you just have to keep teaching semester after semester and just keep developing and growing with each class.
Now here’s the rub: An MFA degree, on its own, isn’t worth much as far as getting a solid teaching position is concerned. First, you have to get a book published. Combine a book deal with your MFA, you’ll probably be able to find a decent job. But what do you do for the several years after finishing the program but before making that first book sale?
There are several options. You may decide you don’t really like teaching and just go out and get a job doing something else. This seems to me a pretty solid option, especially since as a teacher you may find it more difficult to write every day when your job essentially uses the same brain faculties as writing requires. But what if you find that you really love teaching?
Well, you can try and find a full time college or university job, but it’s unlikely.
You can scrape by teaching adjunct until you sell that first book – but you better hope you don’t have any student loans or credit card bills to pay in the meantime, because things will be tight and you don’t have any idea how many years you’ll be doing this before you’re in a position to move up.
You can teach at the high school level. This is one I always thought (until just last night as I was talking with some friends who plan to teach high school when they finish the program) would be undesirable, since at the high school level you’re teaching 5 days a week, several classes a day, and on top of that, you’re teaching bratty teenagers. But this might not actually be a bad way to keep teaching, get a decent full time job, and still keep that ultimate goal of teaching at the University level in sight.
The option I’m hoping to take is to go on to get a PhD. With a PhD, you’re more likely to find a good teaching job and it gives you a few more years to work on getting that first book published. My plan is to first get an MA to prepare me more for the research and literature focus in a PhD program, and then stay on at the same school to get a PhD. I love school and so I’d be very happy to extend my time as a student, and on top of that it would give me about 7 more years to get a book published before I have to find a full time teaching job (but I would be able to keep teaching the entire time as a TA).
It’s something I think everybody should start thinking about from day one – maybe even before day one – of an MFA program: What are you going to do with this degree? Be REALISTIC and don’t assume that going through an MFA program will leave you with a publishing career or that an MFA degree will help you get a good job. And hey, being aware that the degree itself is fairly worthless without a published book may help you push yourself that extra bit to actually write every day, to actually get what you planned to get out of the program – to become a better and more serious writer.
The first is probably the reason why most of us join an MFA program to begin with and while I believe you do gain a lot as a writer from an MFA program, it seems to me that it’s rare for someone to finish their MFA degree with a ready to publish book. Many people finish with a book that needs more work and many people finish with a practice book, something that they learned a lot through writing but something they will never publish. For most people, an MFA program is only an early step in the VERY slow progression toward a successful book publishing career. How far along you are as a writer by the end of the program also greatly varies from person to person and is completely dependent on how much effort you put in. (How many hours a day did you actually spend writing and how many days a month did you convince yourself you simply did not have time to write? How much did you actually pay attention to the feedback you got and how much did you write it off as “that person just isn’t my audience”?)
The second thing you learn is a bit more concrete. I think every single person who has a teaching assistantship learns loads about teaching while they’re in an MFA program and by the time they finish, they should be ready to go out and teach. Sure, there’s still plenty more to learn – teaching (like writing) is one of those things that you learn by doing. You get better and better each semester and, essentially, to become a four star college professor, you just have to keep teaching semester after semester and just keep developing and growing with each class.
Now here’s the rub: An MFA degree, on its own, isn’t worth much as far as getting a solid teaching position is concerned. First, you have to get a book published. Combine a book deal with your MFA, you’ll probably be able to find a decent job. But what do you do for the several years after finishing the program but before making that first book sale?
There are several options. You may decide you don’t really like teaching and just go out and get a job doing something else. This seems to me a pretty solid option, especially since as a teacher you may find it more difficult to write every day when your job essentially uses the same brain faculties as writing requires. But what if you find that you really love teaching?
Well, you can try and find a full time college or university job, but it’s unlikely.
You can scrape by teaching adjunct until you sell that first book – but you better hope you don’t have any student loans or credit card bills to pay in the meantime, because things will be tight and you don’t have any idea how many years you’ll be doing this before you’re in a position to move up.
You can teach at the high school level. This is one I always thought (until just last night as I was talking with some friends who plan to teach high school when they finish the program) would be undesirable, since at the high school level you’re teaching 5 days a week, several classes a day, and on top of that, you’re teaching bratty teenagers. But this might not actually be a bad way to keep teaching, get a decent full time job, and still keep that ultimate goal of teaching at the University level in sight.
The option I’m hoping to take is to go on to get a PhD. With a PhD, you’re more likely to find a good teaching job and it gives you a few more years to work on getting that first book published. My plan is to first get an MA to prepare me more for the research and literature focus in a PhD program, and then stay on at the same school to get a PhD. I love school and so I’d be very happy to extend my time as a student, and on top of that it would give me about 7 more years to get a book published before I have to find a full time teaching job (but I would be able to keep teaching the entire time as a TA).
It’s something I think everybody should start thinking about from day one – maybe even before day one – of an MFA program: What are you going to do with this degree? Be REALISTIC and don’t assume that going through an MFA program will leave you with a publishing career or that an MFA degree will help you get a good job. And hey, being aware that the degree itself is fairly worthless without a published book may help you push yourself that extra bit to actually write every day, to actually get what you planned to get out of the program – to become a better and more serious writer.
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