A post at Jane Friedman’s blog: What the MFA Does and Does Not Do for Aspiring Novelists
In the first edition of The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman states that “it’s not an exaggeration to say that an MFA could even be detrimental to a successful freelance career, because it trains you to be aware of how writing succeeds not on a commercial level, but only on an artistic one—which you may then need to be trained out of.” As the director of an MFA program, and as a working novelist, I find myself agreeing with this statement. One of the things I wrestle with as an instructor is how to make the MFA a more useful degree for aspiring commercial novelists. At the same time, I’m thinking about how to recreate the most useful parts of the MFA experience for novelists who can’t devote years to graduate school.
This post is by MFA director Nancy Wayson Dinan, who is evidently well-placed to think about this topic.
Now in my classes, we explore the differences between art’s success on a commercial level versus on an artistic level, and what those terms mean. We also look at what the MFA doesn’t usually do, which is the in-depth and explicit craft work that most aspiring novelists crave. We also talk about what the MFA does do—providing professionalization, feedback, and the opportunity to see and submit work in progress—and we discuss ways in which a novelist can learn those things without a graduate degree. I would argue, by the way, that all aspiring novelists should be doing these things, with or without the MFA.
I honestly would have thought that an MFA did focus on in-depth writing craft, at least inasmuch as looking at broad story structure. I guess not. The author says that nothing in her MFA prepared her to think about the structure of novels. ???, I said, because one would think that would matter to success at the artistic level as well as the commercial level?
Anyway, evidently an MFA teaches students
About the publishing profession. This means, things like the chance to meet agents and editors and learn about that side of the industry, which … fine, but there are lots of online resources about the query process and things like that.]
Providing feedback, seeing work in progress.
Submitting work in progress, AAH! NO! I generally feel, personally, repelled by the idea of showing a partial novel to anybody. I just don’t like the idea at all. I’ve done it only once (I think), which was when I was so stuck with Invictus.
However, obviously you don’t need an MFA program to get feedback on a WIP. That’s what critique partners, critique groups, and beta readers are for …
… have I said lately how much I love and cherish everyone who reads early drafts for me? You are totally indispensable. I go through Kim’s comments, for example, and think, How did I not realize I’m handling this scene kind of backward? How did I not see that I’m describing this other scene in the wrong order? It’s a real mystery how I can miss obvious scene-level things that become instantly obvious when Kim points to them.
Or Alison’s comments, and I’m like FINE WHATEVER LET ME SPEND TWO HOURS DELETING “MAYBE,” for example. Mike catches errors of fact and continuity and points out that I’ve given a character the same name as an obscure video game protagonist from the 90s. This is all before the equally indispensable proofreaders catch ten thousand stupid typos.
What was the topic? Oh right, you don’t need an MFA program to get feedback! And a good thing, too! Let’s see what else this person says about MFAs and novelists. …
[Readers of commercial fiction] expect a chain of cause and effect, a closed ending, linear time, and an active protagonist, among other things. Language might not be the focus of a commercial novel, but that doesn’t mean the language is less skilled—it just means that the story is the focus of a commercial novel, and we expect that story to have some conventional structure.
That’s all very well, but Piranesi by Susannah Clarke is currently sitting at a sales rank of 1796 for all books, 23 for Contemporary Fantasy, and it’s been out for 3 years and still has this amazingly good sales rank, so maaaaaybe “readers” of “commercial fiction” are not actually all that unwilling to deal with a book that isn’t all that conventional?
I grant, maybe the publisher just ran a sale over Thanksgiving weekend, and in that case the sales rank would be higher than usual. I have no way of knowing, so let me think of another example. Okay, All the Light We Cannot See is another bestselling nonlinear commercially successful novel, and it’s well above 10,000 in sales rank right now. It was published ten years ago. It’s doing great!
I just don’t buy this idea that readers of commercial fiction expect a, b, c, d and novels don’t succeed if they deviate from this so-called conventional structure. I do think it’s reasonable to say that a lot of so-called commercial fiction does meet those four criteria — a chain of cause and effect, a closed ending, linear time, and an active protagonist — and that this is not a sign of a book that is less worthy or less artistic. But apparently MFA programs totally teach students that they should sneer at novels that do meet those criteria:
In MFA programs, we’re often encouraged to seek alternatives to traditional storytelling, to focus on character and not plot (though, for many reasons, I think this is a false dichotomy). We’re taught to value language and image more than a strong chain of cause and effect. It’s not that we’re actively told to avoid the traditional modes of storytelling, it’s just that other modes are privileged. And when we do see a genre piece in workshop, there’s often a palpable disdain.
An attitude of open contempt is very active discouragement. Certainly the character / plot thing is a decidedly and even blatantly false dichotomy, and when you teach students that this dichotomy is real and then add the contempt, then you’re actively teaching them that plot is to be despised. No wonder Jane Friedman says NO to MFA programs! Talk about harmful!
Well, let me see. Okay, the author of this post then explains what she means by “provides professionalism,” and she adds that and MFA provides a chance for writers to give and get feedback, and provides a community of writers, hmm. I just can’t see spending time and money on an MFA for any of this.
Here’s the ending of this post:
I still remember one day in my MFA program when a professor asked me what I was reading those days. “Oh, you know,” I said. “Some craft books.” The professor looked horrified, as if I’d confessed to somehow cheating. “Hmm,” she replied. “I hope they don’t mess you up too much.” After that remark, I didn’t touch a craft book for five years, and when I finally did, I felt like the act was somehow shameful. …
And personally, I feel that this is a sufficient indictment of MFA programs, or at least that program. Honestly, I think the whole post is worth reading, but I also think it could be deleted and replaced with the above paragraph and the words
JUST SAY NO TO AN MFA
because good lord above, who needs to face that attitude of sneering contempt when they want to write a novel? Look at this author! She didn’t touch another craft book for five years! That’s terrible! After reading her post, I feel there should be a huge warning sign blinking on and off above MFA programs
IF YOU WANT TO WRITE A NOVEL, THEN JUST SAY NO TO AN MFA UNLESS YOU CAN COMPETELY IGNORE YOUR TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE OF SMUG CONTEMPT FOR ACTUALLY WRITING NOVELS
which isn’t as pithy, but seems like good advice, even if that’s not exactly the advice that the author of the post had in mind.
Please Feel Free to Share:
Perhaps it depends which MFA program it is? Will Wight, who is a very successful indie author, said it gave him the time and space to write, basically… ie it’s not really necessary in terms of what it offers per se, but it gave him deadlines and so on to meet, which was personally helpful to actually finishing a novel. Obviously his program did not discourage him from writing genre fiction (his most successful series is progression fantasy, which is quite a niche subgenre!)
It’s interesting when there’s a big mismatch between what the professors want to teach vs what the students plan to do with the degree. We see that a lot in computer science – given that most students become software engineers, it really should have more of a focus on real world practicalities than it does
Thank you Rachel! Getting to read your books early is a whole master class in novel construction in and of itself and it’s a real privilege. I was part of a creative writing program in college (undergraduate) and I’m pretty sure none of us went on to novel writing, although some of us did write non fiction. The person who had the most talent of all of us died on Pan Am Flight 203 (Lockerbie). His brother ended up writing a novel about him, then there was a PBS documentary about him, his brother, and the struggle to bring the terrorists to justice. I can’t think of those years without thinking about that terrific guy and his lost talent.
Thank you very much, Alison! I’m glad you feel that way!
Tragic story. That’s terrible.
I think surely the attitude of the MFA program is set by the faculty, and therefore must vary quite a bit. The snootiness toward genre is common, I think, or at least one hears about that all the time; it’s the refusal to treat novel-writing as a craft that baffles me. Particularly when it seems to me that everybody and their cousin is writing a novel. Definitely something to specifically check before enrolling in a class or program.
What is an alternative to traditional storytelling? I’m confused as to what they’re supposed to be seeking. Or writing. I can understand that a story might have an open ending or be nonlinear, or even have an inactive protagonist (if you can call them a protagonist at that point). But can you call it a story if it doesn’t have cause-and-effect? Even slice-of-life stories have some measure of that.
Maybe they’re taught some theoretical framework that makes a pretense of not including cause and effect?
Anything that says Oh no, can’t tell stories that are actually stories, is probably founded on some sort of pretense.
I’m assuming they mean books like those written by John Barth, Donald Barthelme, AB Yehoshua (A Late Divorce)–Faulkner maybe? Maybe even something like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, where the timeline is non linear.
I remember well the Look I got from my graduate advisor when I confessed not only to having read LOTR—that might have been excused as a temporary madness—but to actually having enjoyed it.
The lack of subtext, its inability to fit properly into a deconstructed view of the post-colonial modern novel… .
I mean, if you can’t publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal on the Marxist Literary Criticism interpretation of LOTR, why bother reading it?
I’m glad my teachers gently steered me away from getting an MFA. Getting a plain old M.A. in English led me toward my first “real” job after college, working as an editor. I don’t think an MFA would have helped at all in a job interview, and I’m not sure it would have helped me write better. Except perchance in a peer-reviewed journal while I was working my way toward a Ph.D.