By Claire Rudy Foster
I spent at least two minutes composing my email’s subject line before diving into the message to the program director of my MFA. I settled on a neutral “Checking In.” I assumed she’d remember me, although I graduated four years ago. After all, I’d been a bit of a problem from an administrative perspective. I was nervous as I tapped out the email, sticking to the basics.
“My first book comes out next month from indie press KLĒN + SŌBR,” I said. I included the advance praise the short story collection was getting, as well as the dates of my readings. Two hours later, I got a response.
Congratulations! We will be happy to tweet this news for you.
A tweet? The program has 339 followers. I deleted the director’s email, frowning. That’s a $60,000 tweet, I thought to myself. What did I really get out of this program, anyway?
The short answer: I got out what I put in.
When I registered for the MFA program in the winter of 2009, my life was about to go from difficult to treacherous. I was separated from my then-husband, heading for divorce. The willow-thin supports I’d woven around myself were giving way. I knew I was a writer, and even though I made time to write, I needed more than a daily prompt. After all, I was ambitious. I knew that the amount of effort I was investing in my writing would turn a better profit if I knew how to better apply myself.
In five semesters, I emerged, smarter but not essentially altered. I had a thesis collection of stories that nobody wanted to read, with a critical essay that nobody wanted to publish. I had a hefty student loan to repay. Although I knew I’d learned better writing skills--at a rate I wouldn’t have been able to replicate, working alone--I knew I’d made a mistake.
Talent can be formed, but not created.
The endless debate about whether or not writing can be taught is circuitous and dull. Although self-doubt and creativity seem to go hand-in-hand, I believe that if you’re really a writer, you know. You know in your gut that you’re a storyteller and a word nerd and that the massive fantasy trilogy you’ve been working on every weekend might not go anywhere but that doesn’t take away your enjoyment of it one iota and you would write every day if you could even if you knew nobody cared or would ever read it because it just feels right. There are millions of people who feel this way and show up to write because they like it and they’re good at it. Those people are writers.
Pursuing a fine arts degree meant, for me, that I was getting serious about the craft of writing. It also meant that I knew I was good enough to benefit from more study, but not clever enough to teach myself. In less than three years, I learned a decade’s worth of tricks. This was not because my program was excellent, but because I was talented and teachable. Through the MFA, I got to work one-on-one with smart, experienced writers who could point me in the right direction. They helped me develop the talent I showed up with: they provided resources that helped me improve the quality of my stories.
There was no magic spell that turned me into a Real Writer, no bean and beanstalk. For me, it was painstaking cultivation of a vast field, placing each seed into its furrow with a pair of tweezers and a dropper of rainwater. I knew the soil was fertile, and that with patience I’d reap something better--more sustainable--than an overnight miracle.
There are no major benefits to an MFA.
“Good writing wins out, not resumes or degrees,” says writer Dinty W. Moore at Brevity Magazine. It’s true: when I send a submission, I expect my writing to speak for itself. I’m positive that including my MFA in my bio doesn’t tip the scale in my favor. In fact, I’d say that if I submitted an absolute trash-heap of a story, the slush editor would roll their eyes. “I can’t believe this writer is an MFA student,” she might say. “Her story is an absolute trash-heap.”
It doesn’t matter if I have an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. (I don’t.) It doesn’t matter if I interned with Tom Wolfe, sharpened Zadie Smith’s pencils, or made it to the Frequent Contributor page of Cleaver Magazine. If my writing is bad, it’s bad, and only hard work and more practice is going to change that.
Since the MFA is technically a Master’s Degree, could I use it in other ways? Teaching at the college level requires an MFA, plus a “well regarded” publication record. An MFA is a prerequisite, not a guarantee. Although I like the option of teaching, I didn’t have any illusions that I’d be able to find a job straight out of my graduate program. Creative writing programs are thin on the ground, adjunct positions even thinner. In reality, I will need another decade to build my portfolio, get more hands-on teaching experience, and publish my critically acclaimed collection of short stories. I’m willing to do those things; I’m doing them as I type. However, I would be foolish to assume that there’s a clearly defined career path attached to the MFA. If anything, its benefits seem incidental, instead of guaranteed.
My program doesn't deserve credit for my work.
I mention my MFA in every bio, but I don’t say which university it came from. Why should I? The best thing my MFA did for me, aside from make me look more credible, was put me in contact with a few amazing writers who mentored me. Since my program was low-residency, I essentially had five independent study semesters, each with a different teacher. I learned better line-editing, perspective, pacing, structure, and theme. I’ve kept in touch with two of my teachers, and their input is still valuable to me. Their names, not the university’s, belong on my acknowledgments page.
Not sufficiently convincing? The stories I wrote in my MFA program were less likely to be published and have seen more rejection letters. One short piece, written the summer before I applied to the program, got a Pushcart Prize nomination as well as a nomination for the WSFA Small Press Award. If anything, studying literary technique made me slow down---not necessarily a bad thing, if you know my breakneck approach to writing---and think harder about what I was doing on the page. It also made my stories less about, well, story, and more about craft. Four years after graduation, I’m finally swinging in the other direction and writing fiction that is less about me, the writer, and more about the reader. Nobody’s teaching me to do that; I’m figuring it out for myself.
Do I have buyer's remorse? Yes. Do I think that the academic study of writing is weird? Yes. Would I recommend avoiding fine arts programs? Not necessarily.
The fact is, confidence comes with time and practice. Writer Emma Torzs, who recently won the Missouri Review’s Editors’ Prize, says, “In a solitary writer's life full of invisible striving (and visible waitressing), such trappings of legitimacy really do help me keep the faith in myself and my work.” I feel the same way. My MFA represented a serious investment in my writing, a willingness to stick my neck out and identify myself as a writer. Working with other writers gave me a more realistic idea of what I was in for, and the kind of effort I needed to put in, in order to be more than merely clever.
How do you put a price tag on that?
Claire Rudy Foster's critically recognized short fiction appears in various respected journals, including McSweeney's, Vestal Review, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She has been honored by several small presses, including a nomination for the Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She is afraid of sharks, zombies, and other imaginary monsters. She lives in Portland, Oregon.