What's your opinion of Creative Writing as a degree field?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not 40 yet but I can see its skyline and for that and many other reasons I’ve decided on some “mid life crisis” style changes. I’ve been considering going back to school to get a second masters for a long time, though the subject changes constantly (history? nah… speech communication? nah… theater? hell nah…).

At long last I’ve thought of creative writing. The deadline for most of the programs I’m interested in is the first week of January. I’ve got or can get the letters of reference and the portfolio, my most recent GRE grades are still usable, but I’m debating whether it’s worth the time and the money to pursue what in some ways seems like a frivolous degree.

On the one hand, I really want to spend as much of the rest of my life as possible (whether that’s 14 years if I inherited my father’s longevity genes or 60 years if I inherited other relatives’ genes) doing something that 1) I think I’m good at and 2) I would enjoy more than what I do now (which is not to say that I hate what I do now, it’s just I feel I could/should be doing something I enjoy a lot more). I’ve gotten compliments on my writing (both fiction and non) and if you’ll pardon the immodesty I know that I’m a really good classroom teacher (in the courses I’ve taught I’ve gotten incredible reviews and even in the 1 hour library user courses I’ve taught I’ve gotten rave reviews and fan mail). I think I would like to write for a living and, if necessary for peas and cornbread, teach creative writing (and I have the very employable librarian credentials to fall back on).

Anyway, long mid-life-mini-crisis short, I’m seriously debating biting the bullet and returning to grad school next year for an MFA in Creative Writing. Has anybody here done that or does anybody have any serious opinions on MFA/Creative Writing in general? (I’ll be twice the age of most of the students in the program probably but that really doesn’t bother me as much as it should, and currently other than my dog I really don’t have any major attachments or commitments or mortgages or ties so it’s a good time to be considering return to school.)

Thanks for any input,
J

2

I think that if you intend to teach and you think you can get something valuable out of it, then you should go for it. I do kind of snicker at it as an undergraduate major, though. But that wouldn’t be what you’d be looking at.

3

It’s a fun degree in the right program. I’ve got three graduate degrees in CW myself, one was fun, one was not, one was was hard work (the doctorate). But if you want to write anyway, and enjoy feedback from smart people (and some dumb ones) and if you need deadlines to do your best work (I did), you’ll do well. Are you thinking of any program in particular?

4

I have a Masters in what’s essentially creative writing. As far as age is concerned, I was 34 when I first went for the degree, and I was hardly the oldest going for it.

I am ambivalent about the importance of the course. When I started, I had already sold a novel. I got some good out of it, and also some bad habits. In addition, if you’re interesting in publishing, it doesn’t mean squat (I once told a fellow writer I was going for it, and the first word out of her mouth was “Why?”).

As far as teaching is concerned, it will train you to hold creative writing courses that will teach other students the skills needed to teach creative writing courses to students who want to teach other students how to teach creative writing courses . . . well, you get the idea.

It’s all very incestuous, a point hit home when I realized that one of the people I knew from the program 1). was never going to have anything published except maybe in a few small press markets and 2) was going to be a very successful creative writing teacher.

So if your goal is to be a successful writer (“successful” = recognized either by getting payment for your work, or by appearing in prestige markets until you can find someone willing to pay you*), a degree is irrelevant. No one cares.

If your goal is to teach creative writing, the degree is very useful, especially at a college level.

Mine was useful – it got me a job teaching computer science at the college where I work (they required a Master’s, but didn’t care what it was in as long as you knew computers).

Ultimately, though, if you want to teach, that’s fine, but you probably should also be marketing your work – even to small press non-paying markets – to build up your resume.

*As Mark Twain wrote, “Write without pay until somebody offers you pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.”

5

Mrs jjimm recently got an M.Phil. in creative writing from a very prestigious university. She was 33 when she graduated.

From the sounds of it, it was nothing more than a loved-up writers’ group, albeit chaired by famous people.

What good has it done her? Not much, as far as I can tell. She has hardly written any fiction since, and that which she has written is no different from what she wrote before. She’s maybe a bit better at pace and plotting, but it really seems to have had a negligible effect on the quality of her writing.

But it looks good on her résumé.

6

Let me ask a question:

Are you interested in a new direction for career fulfillment or for personal fulfillment.

If it’s personal I can highly recco CW. It’ll be fun and creative. You may never get published but that doesn’t matter to everyone.

If it’s career let me recco journalism. There’s an element of CW in reporting (trust me) and there’s always room for reporters. You might have to start at the bottom but you’ll be out and about, you’ll meet a lot of interesting (and some scary) people, and you’ll ALWAYS be in the know.

7

One reason at least for having and participating in creative writing programs is that, for crying out loud, you can get an MFA in Woodworking. Is writing any less of an art or craft? Or, to take kind of an opposite tack, many of us have somehow picked up a notion that writing is not subject to study of craft the way that plastic arts are, but doesn’t that seem like special pleading?

It used to be that editors made rambling, masturbatory writers into geniuses. Now we depend on universitites to do it. Furthermore, what the universities are churning out a hell of a lot more of are lit-crit types whose interests are often not toward advancing the arts but using the arts to flog their own political and philosophical agendas. That is, there are more vampires out there than villiagers, and if your goal is to advance the literary arts, then creative writing is a worthy pursuit.

Of course, a degree in creative writing is worth squat, if all you’re bringing to the table is pragmatism. But I have said that it’s a worthwhile pursuit, and let me add that it’s also a great joy.

The school I attend doesn’t offer an MFA, it offers an M.A. and Ph.D. in “aesthetic studies.” Id est, it’s not a terminal degree and nobody could accuse us of not having to jump through the same hoops as any other liberal arts graduate student. This is just one example of how people are trying to carve out a space for creative writing to be taken seriously. They’ve also added a major called Arts and Technology, which in one sense is a major in writing Doom clones, but is also an attempt to support a burgeoning major medium of expression.

Anyhow, what the hell else were you planning to do with the rest of your life?

8

I consider a degree in creative writing to be self-indulgent…and it tops the list of “things I’ll do if I ever become rich.” A lot of degrees are self-indulgent rather than potentially lucrative, though, and it’s no worse than the others. If you can afford to study something primarily to make yourself happy, go for it. Hey, who knows, maybe you’ll be one of those rare people to make a living from that degree.

9

Hey if you do become a teacher, let us know so I can sign up for your class and learn how to write gripping tales of a family in the deep south.

I want to learn to be more like you :slight_smile:

10

I was in an M.F.A. program for poetry, ran out of money and left a few credits and a thesis shy of my degree. I knew from the start I wasn’t going to graduate with the world at my feet. It was poetry, after all. So, I got two years to write, which I still appreciate having had, but I don’t regret not completing the program.

I still write poetry but, until last year when it went out of business, I worked for 17 years at a small software company writing manuals and doing all the tech support. Do I sound bitter?* Feh.

If I were you, Sampiro, I’d take the same money and time and just go write your stuff.

  • I kid. It wasn’t wasn’t what I imagined I’d do, but it wasn’t bad, either.
11

Hamish intends to make his living as an author. To hear him tell it, the creative writing courses were worse than useless: they taught wrong things about how to write a book. I’ll leave him to vituperate them further.