Portable MFA in Creative Writing (New York Writers Workshop)

Initial Thoughts and Introduction

So far, my initial impression of this book is pretty positive. I picked it up for free, thanks to the blog, Kindle Review. Normally, it goes for $8.99 for the Kindle at Amazon.com. You can follow the hyperlink or click on the image.


The opening of this book explores the benefits of getting an MFA vs the downsides. The benefits listed were very limited unless a few exceptional schools were the issuers. The sentiment was that the act of getting an MFA provides people with the time to write. The educational aspect seemed to be downtrodden. Not in all circumstances, but in the majority of them. Apparently, a number of MFA instructors use a mixture of fear and direction that is counter-productive to the process of learning the craft of writing. There is also the very real consequence of building a debt which can be quite significant. And then, in the end, there is not a lot of professional respect for someone with an MFA. Lots of successful writers don't have them.

It would seem that the goal of this book is to provide some lessons that would be learned in a positive educational environment, but without the great cost.

I have a degree in English literature. I believe that it was superior to the BFA for a few reasons. The first is the belief that one cannot master the creation of literature without a good study of it. Critical applications also opens up a lot of interesting avenues which are worth exploring. An excellent example is the exploration of psychoanalysis. The study of Freudian theory, can give a lot of food for thought when one creates a character. Studying masters of literature will surely help one become a master, or at least get closer to becoming a true master. How can one become a master of literature when skipping those steps?

As to time: it is very easy to save enough money to buy time without having to resort to accruing tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt and heading to an Asian, like the Philippines, to work on your novel. I would hope that there is more merit than just free time to write from an MFA.

Fiction, Tim Tomlinson

Image by Carol VanHook via FlickrThis essay covers where to start when looking for a beginning. That is, where to start writing. It seems to be aimed at the student who has thought of becoming a writer, but hasn't really spent very much time with it or hasn't had much success. His suggestion is to write what you know. Use your own life as the template from which to write.

I am sure that this is a fairly good place to start. Look for specific points in life: a turning point or a conflict. He mentions a student who had said that 'writing from personal experience was an indication of a broken imagination.' Tomlinson's reply was to rattle off a dozen or so names of famous writers who make/made a living doing that very thing. However, I think he could have gone a step further to point out that real life can be used as fuel for an imaginary one. You can put yourself in a setting five hundred years ago, or five thousand, or those same years difference, but in the future. Then, the characters in your life can not only change names, but costume as well. They can even be something else other than human. They can be animal (as so often happens in fiction for children), toys (as in Toy Story), or fantasy (Harry Potter). A high school bully can be converted into a dragon. The setting of your high school becomes a kingdom ruled by a cruel king (the principal). All these fantastical places, characters, and events, can be drawn from real life.

The first useful thing I ran across that might be of some help and insight to the aspiring writer, is a checklist of functions or questions that need to be answered in the fiction that one is writing/has written: set-up, complications, climax, resolve. He also goes into specific examples of how these features work in the first few paragraphs of a sample story.

Next, he goes on to story-opening strategies. I would have to say that perhaps this particular section might have been better off being placed before the previous. In any case, he shows how to choose your moment and make sure the hook is in there somewhere.

I guess I was expecting a bit more out of this essay. Though it is titled, 'Stories,' it is not 'short stories.' I thought I would get a bit more out of it than I did. I am more interested in novels than I am in short fiction.


Magazine Writing, Charles Salzberg

This was a really great article. I am writing the review for this essay out of order. I wrote my thoughts on "Poetry" before I have done this review. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article. I think of all the essays, this one really seemed to be the best.

First of all, there is a simple and elegant presentation to the ideas of this essay. Where in the first two essays, they really meandered around like lost puppies, this one seemed to have been written by a true professional.

He is a walking cliche. He literally started his career in the mail room, and worked his way up until he became a professional writer working freelance for top shelf magazines. He takes us through a nutshell of his professional career which is entertaining and illustrates where his beginning was. However, I might say that it was a bit short. His last paragraph, he wrote, "I made almost $2,000 for what amounted to a couple of weeks' work... I quit the mailroom to make it as a freelance writer... in the next six months, I made a grand total of an additional $1,000, but what I learned during that time was priceless." I am left wanting to hear more about what he learned over this period of time, and what his challenges were. Well, maybe this was due to a lack of space for his essay. Or, perhaps it's just a designed tool that causes the reader to be left wanting more. Or, again, perhaps I'm to infer from the next sections that these are the things that he learnt over those six months.

When he dives into the topic, however, he covers it thoroughly: how to find your niche, read! read! read!, write!, write!, write!, write those all important queries! and a few pointers on how to fill out articles. It was really both entertaining and informative. I hadn't really thought of magazine writing. I hate newspapers (so dull and tasteless style while yet being propaganda). It also made me think of how to approach writing short fiction.

I am certain that of all the essays in this book, this will be the one I read and reread.

Poetry, Rita Gabis

I think of all the topics in this book, this book is the one which I came versed very well in the subject. I have written hundreds of poems and spent a good many hours reading and writing them in my youth. However, in later years, I've come to think of it as a young man's game. Youth is where we spend our thoughts on ideal planes. Age turns that juice of youth into either wine or vinegar. I suppose I'm of the vinegar variety.

That aside, of the essays thus far, this is the one that seems structured like a course. There are a few pages, then an assignment. Thus, it is very much like a course, where the others are not.

That said, I feel like, after having read about some of her methods of writing and then reading and then rewriting, that I am studying a cow of a woman. That is to say, she recommends chewing the grass, swallowing it, regurgitating it, rechewing it, then swallowing it again. It occurred to me at this point where I greatly differ from her in style.

I believe in rewriting to an extent. But, I also think that there's nothing like that raw moment where you rip the animal to shreds, and then swallow the warm bloody chunks down as quickly as possible. There are also times when the bones need to be crunched and swallowed carefully.

It just suggests to me that she and I are different animals when it comes to poetic expression: she is the cow, while I am closer to the carnivore. I like the raw while she likes the rechewed.

Another thing that I have issues with is the final section on getting published. The fact is that at least one very notable poet kept her poetry to herself until the day she died. Poetry ought not to seek a fan base, in my opinion. It's that one art form that ought not to depend on how people think. Also, the way she says one ought to pick up poetry magazines to start finding a market for the work brings out my inner cynic. This is why: these magazines really don't pay all that well for publishing the work. So, even if you pay all those bucks and you actually get published, the best you can really hope for is to break even. With the magazines, it makes a lot more sense, because the writers of those stories do get compensated fairly well and make a living at it. I don't know if there's a poet alive living the big life because of their lines. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've certainly never heard of it.

Playwriting, Charlie Schulman

 I've never liked reading plays (with an exception or two: Moliere and Sophocles being exceptions). So, the idea of actually writing a play is akin to making an album of running fingernails against chalkboards. It really seems that painful. So, the odds of me actually using anything this writer says is remote since my interest is near nil. The reason is because it's a game of very little description. How does one paint the environment, the setting, in a play? In the plays I've read, it's very spartan. In a novel, it is richly woven into the fabric of the story. However, in the event that I had a squad of actors and actresses along with all the support staff and a stage and an audience to host the play, I think my opinion would change drastically. I think it would be entirely possible for me to really fall in love with it. However, what are the odds of that happening? Maybe I ought to try to change my opinion, or at least give this form a try if I happen to find myself in possession of those things.

Schulman also questions the utility of an MFA. Though, he seems to be cautiously optimistic that the futility of the MFA trying to become a playwright is actually changing.

What's most interesting about this essay is his attention to character and dialogue. He suggests interesting exercises. ie., listen to a dialogue (eavesdropping) and try reconstructing it later. Another, take snippets of lines from different conversations and stitch them together in an entirely different conversation. There are more exercises that are worth executing.

Conclusion
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Last night I rewatched an old favourite romantic film. I don't have a lot of those, but "The Graduate" somehow changed for me. That is to say, the reversal effect of where a character is trying to do something, and then everything reverses, became a lot more distinct to me than it did before. For example, when Benjamin Braddock is trying to get rid of his soon to be love interest, Elaine Robinson, you can see Benjamin walking so fast that she can barely keep up to him. After he humiliates her in the strip club, she walks so fast back to the car that he can barely keep up. This type of scene is repeated three times throughout the film. What is interesting about that is that reading this book has caused a slight change in me in the way that I view dramatic conflict. I can honestly say that this book would have been well worth $10 for much of the stuff I have learned or that I am still evaluating. I have put it in my reread collection of books on my Kindle. I will reread it. I will try the prompts that the various essayists have suggested. This was a great steal and a good use of my time.