MFA BAD BOY

Here I am in my second semester of doing my level best to be a good student, to read all the assignments, to write as well as I can, and to be as helpful to my teachers in running the best workshops and lectures they can, and being as supportive of my fellow writers as I possibly can … and I think maybe it isn’t working.

MY SINS

STORY-STRUCTURE:

From the Hero’s Journey to Save the Cat, I’m a huge fan of studying about story structure.  But I’m in the wrong place for it.  ONE SENTENCE AT A TIME is the only structure in play.  Don’t say “plot point,” someone may smack you.

AUDIENCE:

I think my first sin is that I like to talk about the audience for a given work.  Apparently, serious literary types don’t give this any consideration at all.  Shocking, right?  I mean, to me, audience is everything.  But if I bring this up, I get evil stares and classmates who look at me like I’m nuts before admitting that they’re not thinking about audience at all.

MONEY:

This another thing I’ve learned one should not talk about in an MFA program.  I tried to justify my interest in considering audience by talking about marketability of a book and its potential commercial merits.  People looked at me like I was the reason school shootings happen. In what I would describe as a well-concealed, hardly detectable, mostly internalized FIT OF RAGE my lovely prof actually said that none of us should be thinking about publishing for a long time.  Hmm.  Maybe she’s a head-hunter for Starbucks or something.

SELF-PUBBED EBOOKS

Again, mentioning this has gotten me some nasty stares.  In my program, no one really gets angry or insulting–ever–which is nice, but you can tell when people are pissed off.  It seems that over in MFA land we’re supposed to pretend the Internet doesn’t exist, except maybe as a way to find some literary journals to which we might submit our work.

MY TAKE

For better or worse, at least here in the first year, my program seems to be about THE WRITING and really nothing else.  Even when that nothing else might benefit the writing (like a discussion of audience), you’re already walking on that narrow, twisty mountain trail towards Mount Doom.

SO

So, I’ll keep my mouth shut about writing as a way of making a living (nobody can do that, I was told by one teacher and one classmate), and just keep working on THE WRITING.  Good enough.  I mean … why should Grad school prepare you to make money?  That can’t possibly be the purpose of an education, right?

AM I STILL HAPPY?

Yes.  I am still happy.  My journal is filled with ideas, notions, tips, thoughts, excerpts, etc., all of which are worth the price of admission.