Why a Creative Writing MFA Might Not Be Worth It

Repeat after me: ‘I am a writer’

You could’ve taken a snap-shot of me and slapped it on the front of a university prospectus. I was standing outside the campus where I taught, literally jumping for joy.

I had just been accepted into the University of British Columbia’s MFA in Creative Writing. They liked my writing.

Someone liked my writing.

I calmed myself down, got into my car, and stared at the acceptance letter.

“Every year we receive many more applications than we can accept; the caliber of the writing is high, and the selection process difficult. You may assume that your writing is held in high regard by the faculty.”

Me? My writing? High regard? What? Really?

I remembered one figure from the website, too: there was a twenty percent acceptance rate! I was going to tell everyone that. In a humble, “Phew, I was lucky,” kind of way, of course.

I didn’t pay much attention to the other figures in the acceptance package when it arrived. The ones with dollar signs in front of them. I was IN, baby!! I was a writer!! I’d figure out the money, and how I was going to do my job and an MFA, later.

Five years and over $20,000 later, I wished I hadn’t bothered.

The problem with MFA’s

Opportunity cost and…actual cost!

I spent five years and more than $20,000 on that program, and way more in opportunity cost (all the other things I could’ve done with that time and money). My MFA was ‘optional-residency’ (online). An on-campus MFA can cost upwards of $100,000! After that, you’d better hope your thesis is a work of staggering genius that publishers are lining up to buy!

Otherwise, you could end up stuck in a shadow career (if you’re lucky), paying off that student debt while convincing yourself that you will finish that damn novel some day.

You’ll be learning from peers

My MFA was also workshop-based, which meant showing my work to fellow students for discussion. I paid a lot to learn from peers. Not all programs use this model, but many do. A lot of the writers on my program were more accomplished than me, but they were still learning, and that was their focus.

I was writing and sharing my work: writing and “publishing”. This was good. But, a lot of the time, it felt like feedback on my work was lip-service, and most students were just treading water until we could talk about their latest masterpiece. This was bad.

Absent professors

The professors were often lurking in the background like referees, more concerned with the rules of discussion than with teaching. One of my professors missed a class because he was moose-hunting! Hardly anyone noticed.

So What Should You Do Instead?

Write!

Write, until, one day, someone, unprompted and not contractually obliged, says, “Wow, that is really good”. And then you can write like your ass is on fire for the next week.

Maybe you write flash-fiction for Paragraph Planet, or you start a fiction newsletter. Maybe you send your short stories off to publications, using Duotrope.

You see no barriers to world domination.

This is the best time in history to be a writer. The gatekeepers are gone. The gates are smashed. Vive la revolution!

Repeat after me, “I am a writer”.

When I finished my MFA program, I was adrift and alone, with no-one left to tell me that my writing was “really interesting”.

I wanted the support that institutional education affords. But I didn’t need it.

I needed to write.

Build your own writing habit

Here’s a free MFA class I wish I’d taken. Try this program first, before you sign away five years and a boat-load of money. The classes are always open. No need to enroll in Writing and Knitting 101 because you woke up with a hangover and didn’t enroll in the class you actually wanted:

• Read authors you like, every day. And some you don’t.
• Write every day, for at least ten minutes (but set aside an hour, because you’ll often fill it). Write non fiction, write fiction, write nonsense. Write.

Congratulations! You qualify for a scholarship. Take some of the money you would’ve spent on your MFA, and do something you’ve always wanted to do. Get some life experience. Then write about it.

Cultivate patience and faith

Your writing will go nowhere in the beginning. It doesn’t matter. Write. You will feel like a fraud. It doesn’t matter. Write. Write some more. Write out sections of stories you like, to see how they work. Read books on writing. Read books. Write.

Your writing will be derivative at first. It doesn’t matter. Read Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist.

Where do you start? It doesn’t matter. Write about how hard it is to start.

The Dalai Lama practices meditation every day. It’s called a meditation practice. He wasn’t great at it from day one. He had teachers, but no one could meditate for him. He didn’t get a certificate when he reached a certain level. Or maybe he did, but you get my point.

Write.

And meditate.

Get free ‘tricks of the trade’

On my MFA program, I got writing tips, hints and guidance, from teachers and other writers. They were not free.

‘Writing tips’ are available everywhere. Heard of the internet? People will pay so much money to have that massive resource curated and taught to them. It’s insane. I did it. You don’t have to.

Read George Saunder’s book on how short stories work, if you’re into short stories. Read The Artist’s Way, whatever you’re into. You get the idea.

Take away

I still haven’t had my MFA certificate shipped to me. I have to pay for that, too. Big surprise.

If I could have that time and money back? I’d read Moby Dick. I’d read Don Quixote. I’d read Dickens. I’d read Hemingway and Henry Miller, and I’d go to Amsterdam and stare at Van Gogh’s paintings in a daze. I’d read the short stories of Steinbeck. I’d read George Saunders and Emily Dickinson. I’d listen to Little Simz. I’d take $5,000 and a holiday from work and go mountain-biking in Utah for a month, and then write about it. I’d spend a week in Paris writing in cafes and pretending I was F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I’d take the time I used up jumping through someone else’s hoops, and I’d spend it with my family.

And I would write.

Write. Write. Write.

You don’t need people to say stuff about your writing because they are required to say stuff about your writing. Your writing isn’t that interesting yet.

Don’t spend money that could buy you writing time to sit in a class about writing.

Still undecided?

Maybe you think you need an MFA. Maybe you gotta have it before you realize you didn’t need it. I get that. That was my path; part of the process of being able to call myself a writer. And I didn’t learn nothing.

An MFA isn’t worthless. I got a lot from it. In-person classes may be much better, and I’ll bet someone who doesn’t suck at networking as much as I do would get a lot more value as an alumni. I’m grateful for the opportunity, and for some of the more dedicated teachers (the non moose-killers).

Fine, go ahead. Get it out of your system.

But, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need anyone to validate your card with the writer stamp. You are a writer because you say you are.

My fondest memory of that time is the summer before the MFA acceptance, when I actually sat down and wrote the application submissions. It was the first time I’d written fiction in years. It gave me a kick up the ass. But I’m giving you a kick up the ass now. If you need more, join an accountability group.

Go tell everyone you are a writer, so you have to write.

I thought I needed the certificate, the pat on the back, the well done, the hand hold. I was hooked on validation, but my tolerance levels were through the roof: the high of positive feedback would last only a few hours. I didn’t have the sustainable inner-confidence that only comes from constant practice.

Feedback is important, but constant validation is not.

The teachings are there, in books about writing, or in cheap, or free, online content: but most of all, they exist in the thousands of books written by amazing authors who never took, or taught, an MFA class in their lives.

They were too busy writing.

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