Okay, so I’m about neck-deep in a
draft right now, racing a deadline, and was a little worried I wouldn’t have
time for a ranty blog post this week.
Then, lucky for all of us, I got a
message from Kristi Charish.
I’ve mentioned Kristi
twice or thrice here before. She’s—and I’m
not joking—an archeologist turned genetic engineer turned fantasy author. No, seriously. She’s pretty much solely responsible for making me
like urban fantasy for the first time since college. The first book in her Kincaid Strange series,
The Voodoo Killings, is finally available in the US as a
paperback, so you should go grab a copy.
Anyway, because we live in different
countries with a sizable chunk of North America between us, it was a special treat
to get to hang out with Kristi in person at Phoenix Comic Fest last month. There were many drinks and meals, and much
talk about writing and publishing.
Including one very interesting discussion about teaching, fueled by her
much more academic viewpoint.
And then a few days ago, as I was
wondering if this’d be a skip week for the ranty blog, Kristi got in touch with
me and asked if I’d be interested in that discussion as a guest post...
So here’s Ms. Charish with her
informed thoughts on writing, higher education, and success (with a bunch of
random links from me to semi-related posts I’ve made here)
-------------------------------------------
Maybe you’ve always dreamt of being
an author, or perhaps you’ve recently begun to dabble in prose on your off
time. Maybe you’ve entertained fantasies of seeing your name on your book as
you pass by the window of your favorite bookstore? Or, better yet, coming
across the fruit of your imagination while surfing on Netflix.
Fantastic! We like dreamers. Welcome
to a profession that attracts a damnably eccentric mix of eclecticism!
But you're new to the game, and like
the studious person the western schooling system has honed you to be, you feel
compelled to expand your education, broaden that nebulous toolbox of
literary-like writing and story-telling skills the critics, pros, and amateur
spectators alike keep going on about.
You’re considering courses, a
workshop – maybe even – gasp – an outright, all in, financially crippling,
higher degree!
Do I encourage pursuit of the
full-fledged-degree-kind in the pursuit of writerly knowledge? Absolutely. By
all means, pursue a higher education. Do a degree, ANY degree.
…Whatever you do don’t make it an
MFA in creative writing, and here’s why.
The
World’s Bestest Heart Surgeon
Imagine you are the head of a
prestigious medical school and you are a great heart surgeon – one of the
world’s best. You’re so good at being a heart surgeon, you think you know the
secret to training them. So much so you decide that over the next four years,
you’re going to concentrate all your resources on proving you can.
You meet with the rest of the staff
(well, mostly the four other heart surgeons…) and all of you agree producing
the world’s best heart surgeons is a worthy pursuit. It’s your duty as patrons
of the heart surgeon caste to make more heart surgeons. You cut back on all the
nonsense and distractions – pediatrics, infectious diseases, family medicine,
dermatology - anything that doesn’t pertain to becoming an awesome, world’s
bestest heart surgeon until the courses are all about heart health and surgery.
500 students, a staff on board, a
university endowment, plus all that tuition? It’s a bet you can’t lose! Heart
Surgeon World Awards, here we come!
Time travel four years and, low and
behold, you have in your graduating class two of the world’s most up and coming
heart surgeons! Everyone is gushing over their surgery technique and
breathlessly anticipating the next research article. As an institution you have
achieved world acclaim – Success!
…At least until everyone starts
asking what happened to the 498 other students…you know, the ones who didn’t
make the World’s Best Heart Surgeon cut?
Six other students had a natural
aptitude for heart surgery. Not world’s best, but they go on to productive if
not lucrative careers. Another ten aren’t cut out for surgery – the stress,
hand eye coordination, can’t stand 7 hours without taking a pee – but they can
teach. A couple get jobs at instructors at other universities.
…that leaves 482 students. Students
who were talented, clever, and industrious enough to get into medical school
but for one reason or another didn’t make the heart surgeon cut. A lot of them
would have made fantastic dermatologists, pediatricians, family physicians,
nephrologists, epidemic specialists, etc, but, well, after four years listening
to their professors go on about how this was the best medial school because it
only trained heart surgeons, and how heart surgery was the only surgery worth
performing, any other pursuit of medicine is a waste of time and meant you were
second rate…Eventually they drink the Kool-Aid. Most never pick up a medical
tool or book ever again, and the few who might have?
Shame they can’t since they’ve had
no other medical training whatsoever.
But… you know… two World’s Best
Heart Surgeons/500 students. Sometimes you need to sacrifice a cow…or was it an
army?
Look, we’re going to need your
entire student body. Don’t ask why, just trust us it’s for the greater artistic
good…
If the Greatest Heart Surgeon
Medical School was real it would be considered a resounding failure. Any
program - history, life science, biology, forestry- run that way would be shut
down – fast – because everyone grasps that there is more to medicine and a
robust medical community than heart surgery and wasting 80% of your student
body trying to mold the best isn’t just wrong, it’s stupid, idiotic, asinine,
the work of a delusional heart surgery megalomaniac.
Yet that’s what the majority of MFA
creative writing programs do.
Writing is an important
communication and entertainment medium. It’s a way to discuss ideas, cultural
shifts, politics – you name it – in ways that can’t be done with YouTube and FB
articles. It’s storytelling. And just as in medicine where many disciplines are
necessary to get the full picture, many kinds of writers and media make for a
healthy and entertaining writing community. There’s no one right way or right
type of novel to produce.
Yet what I described above for the
World’s Best Heart Surgery School isn’t too far off from how the majority of
MFA programs are run. Damn the rest of the writing and entertainment world - we
produce literary geniuses here! There’s a history there that Peter
touched on in a previous post but it boils down to this: The inception of the
Creative Writing MFA program wasn’t catalyzed by a desire or need for more
novelists. They were invented as a Post-World War 2 tuition grab – a student
holding cell. It’s morphed a bit over the last 80 years but the essential
building blocks remain.
Creative Writing Programs claim to
be a pursuit of excellence in literature (FYI – probably
not the kinds of book I, Peter, or anyone else who’s ever guested on this blog writes). But,
funny thing, when you ask how well the writing careers are going for the
majority of alumni (not the two or three prodigy examples they trot out), they
tend to waffle on about how a degree in creative writing is about personal
growth, not vocational training (AKA: tuition/student holding cell).
Well, I
call bull...
You
Really Don’t Need an MFA to be a Serious Novelist
Back to the World’s Bestest Heart
Surgery School, the university president has stopped by to scream about the
incredibly poor vocational success of, well, most of your graduates. Like
always, you hold up your two gifts to heart surgery Godhood (full disclosure: I
don’t think the MFA success rate is anywhere near that high)…
And find out that the History,
Biology, and Marine Biology departments have all also produced three equally
gifted heart surgeons who are outcompeting yours.
It’s incredibly unlikely that a
History program would produce a heart surgeon– there are very specific things
you need to learn like heart anatomy and how to cut someone open without
killing them.
But creative writing is weird. You
can learn to write almost anywhere. Law school, journalism, real medical
school. Not only can these vocations inspire you, but unlike and MFA, which
purports to teach you how to be literary, these other disciplines are trying to
teach you something else entirely – they’re trying to teach you how to
communicate the ideas you learn to the outside world. That’s priceless. That’s
called perspective, and it’s what makes the writer and writing interesting, engaging.
A great example is Carl Hiaasen,
who was a journalist in Florida for many a year before he became a
NYTbest-selling satire novelist. What does he write about? Corrupt politicians
making scuzzy land deals in Florida, the war being waged on the beautiful
everglades, and the very few and far between honest people who are trying to
save his beloved state. It’s captivating, its relatable, he knows his material
well and he communicates in a way that makes millions of readers care too.
Much like the World’s Best Heart
Surgery School doesn’t see the point in pediatricians, I worry that most MFA
programs don’t see the merit and value of a Carl Hiaasen book.
And he’s not the only example. Would
Michael Crichton have written such a captivating novel about
a deadly extraterrestrial virus or
bringing dinosaurs back to life if he’d done an MFA over medical
school? Diana Gabaldon of
Outlander fame holds three degrees in science,
including marine biology, and it shows in all the science she trickles through
her novels.
> It’s a distinct possibility that my
alma matter’s Department of Science has produced more successful novelists in
the last ten years than MFA Writing Program…
Claiming
to teach literary artistry is all fine and well but there has to be some kind
of tangible real-world, quantifiable measurement of success, otherwise it
becomes a nebulous black box, a dark corner…. And nebulous boxes and dark
corners are where things from 80s horror movies and Peter’s books hide, so if
that’s the only reason you decide to skip the MFA so be it.
The point is you (and your bank
account) really don’t need an MFA to be a great writer.
But I really want to improve my writing, and, you
know…writing rules.
Disclaimer
aside, if you are hell bent on burning money or feel you really need the
support, these are some options I can recommend.
Cheapest/
Best Value: Writing groups/coffee house meet-ups. Free for the price of a
coffee. Google your area but I hear
The Writer’s Coffeehouse is popular.
Cheap/
Good Value: Community Centers/Library writing programs. Average 6 weeks to
2 months a couple nights a week and range Free -$100. Often run by a published
author vetted by the community center.
Medium
priced/ Still Good Value: Community College Writing Classes. Evening or
afternoon classes that run roughly six to eight weeks and cost anywhere from $120-200.
Bonus: Instructors often have teaching credentials.
Expensive/Questionable
value/not recommended: All Star/Celebrity/NYT Bestselling/Intensive Author
Workshop and/or Cruise. They range from two to six weeks, cost upwards of four
grand, and often boast a rotating roster of world class authors as instructors.
You do get one on one time with the authors as advertised and that might be
incentive enough for the odd superfan. I don’t recommend them. The instructors
might be star studded novelists but that doesn’t mean they can teach and their
alumni track records leave much to be desired. In comparison, self-driven, free
writer’s groups have a staggering publication success rate. A new laptop and a
trip to a remote cabin to write is arguably a much better return
As I was
saying, back when I was reading contest scripts for ramen money, one thing
I’d see again and again was people who’d done a clumsy, half-assed pass on
their screenplay in a feeble attempt to make it eligible for a contest. A few cuts here. A find-and-replace there.
Maybe adding in a random scene or two.
Believe me, it was very clear that’s what happened.
