Ask A Seasoned Semi-Pro: Are MFA Programs Worth It?

New weekly feature! Like most people, I have more opinions than experience. Nonetheless, I have made every mistake possible, and a few previously thought to be impossible. I’m available to share my knowledge, my failings, and my deductions. Here’s Ask A Seasoned Semi-Pro!

Recently, I had an email exchange with a writing student named Lara. She’d seen that I’d taught a course for UCLA Extension called Preparing For the Fiction MFA, and Lara had some questions about MFA programs. They are as follows:

Do you think the whole MFA program thing is worth it? Do you really learn to be a better writer? Are doors opened in terms of selling stories/novels? Or can you do the same thing just taking classes through the Writer’s Extension Program at UCLA?

Dear Lara,

I’ve thought a lot about these exact questions over the years, and I’ll try and squeeze those thoughts into some coherent-ish notions for you.

Any structured writing program (MFA, UCLAE, private workshops) can be a good thing, if you’re willing to make it more than it is. In other words, a car isn’t really a vehicle until someone puts a key in it and picks a direction. Until then, it’s a 2-ton couch. A writing program is the same way. I know people who went through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and haven’t written since. I know others who are on their fifth published novel. I know people who came through various MFA programs and didn’t try to publish anywhere while they were there; I know ones who tried and didn’t get anything published; I know ones who had book contracts before they’d finished their theses. It is, like so many things, a combination of what you are willing to put into it AND whatever luck/happenstance comes your way. But of course, the latter never seem to come along until you’re underway with the former. The Lost Weekend is a 1945 movie that most people believe is about a man  struggling with alcoholism. I see it as a movie about a man who complains about wanting to be a writer, yet never writes. His luck as a writer doesn’t change when he stops drinking, it changes when he stops drinking and starts actually writing already.

I always tell people not to go into an MFA program expecting to have an agent or publisher by the end. That is exactly the wrong way to approach an experience that is first and foremost about accelerating your growth as a writer. That is all it is for. What you will find, if you go to a place and be yourself and do your best work and form real bonds and friendships with people, is that this is how you come to hear about opportunities. I saw, time and time again, at both Bennington and at a Big Annual Writers’ Conference, the people who tried to push this, who tried to force connections and let everyone know that they had Interesting Ideas About Writing. They were Definitely Going To Get Published, these people, and they were the ones everyone steered clear of for the entire 10 or 12 days we were at these places.

Also, times have changed — they’d begun changing before I started at Bennington in 2003 — and now your instructors and visiting authors are competing with every other person in the world for book contracts and even unpaid story publication in literary magazines. Publishers are not giving out multi-book contracts anymore (there are exceptions) and very few are willing to publish a first story collection, to the point where most agents are loath to take on anyone who does not have a novel. (How do I know this? By the number of agents who, upon learning I had a manuscript of collected stories, replied, “Do you have a novel?” As though I MIGHT have a novel, and it had merely SLIPPED MY MIND. Oh, my novel! How silly of me! It’s in the glove compartment.)

All of which is not to sound the trumpet/sad trombone of doom and gloom, but to keep you oriented. The number one thing that keeps people from writing, and/or from growing as writers, is thinking about publication. I am telling you this from my own experience. It’s all I cared about my first two semesters, and I was therefore resistant to change and growth. Which sound like crappy, hippy-ish concepts until you realize that’s what it’s all about. You are attempting to enter an art and a discipline (vs. a hobby) that has become vastly more populated over the years (think about the explosion in MFA programs since 2000) yet has fewer traditional means of public exhibition. A person doing this had really, really, really better be doing it because they love the work.

So: Is an MFA program worth it? What will it get you versus those other avenues? It is worth it, provided you’ve read the above and are still excited and not suddenly nauseous about writing fiction. What it will get you is manyfold. It will force discipline on your writing. If you choose a low-res program, it will force discipline AND teach you to have this discipline while leading an actual, regular life. (I also believe the boom in low-res programs has attracted a more diverse population of writers, in terms of social status, race, and life experience. This can only be good for literature.) If you choose a full-residency program, you will gain the unique experience of being immersed in a program with other writers for an extended period of time, which is wonderful and invaluable.

Whichever route you choose, it will teach you (if you’re open) other viewpoints, both about writing in general and about your own writing. It will make you a better reader, which will then make you a better writer. It will force you to make choices in your writing. It will give you new friends who are writers. It will allow you access to the minds of people who’ve done this for a while, and who’ve made every terrible mistake and smart choice there is. In short, it will do all the things those other avenues will do, but it will do it FASTER. In two years, and as long as you’re open to change, the quality of your writing will change at an accelerated rate.

I hope I’ve answered your questions.

Sincerely,

Matt

Note: My former student Pete emailed me the picture for this post yesterday. He’d just arrived for his very first day at Bennington for the MFA program (aka the Writing Seminars). Pete, as you can see, is in a very good place.

Have a question about writing, publication, failure, bitterness, work, or snack foods? Ask a seasoned semi-pro!