A degree in Creative Writing?

Some people who read this are probably writers. Or are considering being writers. And a lot of people ask me about my MA in Creative Writing. Did I like it? Was it worth it?

The short answer: no.

Well, yes, I did like it, but no, it wasn’t worth it.

Unless you are absolutely financially secure (or you live in a magical place where university is free or cheap, and doesn’t cost over $20,000 a year) and know you don’t want to do anything else in the next year or two but write. Or if you don’t know what you want to do with your life because you haven’t sorted out what you want to be when you grow up (no matter what numerical age you are) and want a seeming-legitimate way to pass the time while you find out (and write). 

Even then, I wouldn’t recommend it.

I confess, that was me. All of the above. 

I have no doubt there are exceptional programs out there that have been a tremendous help to some. But I argue that you can take online classes at a fraction of the cost and inconvenience, join a writers group, and you will get a comparable experience. A better one, if your group is dedicated and consistent.

I adored my classmates. To this day we keep in touch and talk about writing. But I think I would have had just as good a time, if not better, if the twelve of us had just been in a critique group and cut the profs out of the process entirely.

The male profs were disinterested, though I had two lovely lady profs who seemed to actually care, and whose classes actually imparted some knowledge and creative challenge. But the leader of the programme and the other main lecturers were there not because they like encouraging writers or discussing the brilliance of all kinds of fiction, but because they could not make ends meet as a writer. 

No shame in that, of course. Most of us can’t. But to take our your bitterness on your students because you consider yourself an under-appreciated high-brow author and you have to critique a fantasy novel or “chic lit”. (The work in question wasn’t chic lit, but the student who wrote it was a woman and it included a female protagonist in a modern setting. But it was far from humorous or light-hearted. It was an intense and moving story about two women, one homeless, one lost and wanting to give her life meaning and she tries to do that by ‘helping’ the homeless woman. In the end, nothing changed.) Still, it was treated as unsubstantial ‘women’s writing’, and dismissed by staff.) I don’t need to say here, surely, that there is nothing at all the matter with chic-lit. (Misogyny and racism in publishing deserves it’s own post, so I won’t go on about that here, other than to say, yes, it certainly was an issue in my creative writing MA in the UK.)

But speaking of chic-lit, I have plans for a novella or three.  And I’m quite excited about them.

Fun fact: After completing my own creative writing programme, I wrote a long and complaining email to the head creative fiction prof (not about the programme. That, I had done in my end of term paper. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t like ‘An MA in Creative Whiting’ a treatise on how all the authors we studied were white, male, and usually dead).

No, it was a travel essay of sorts, on a topic he wrote a lot about, so I shared it with him

He responded (based on this one email) that apparently I was better at non-fiction. 

This coming from a man who had been reading my fiction all year.

Ouch. 

Not all courses will be like this, naturally. You may have interested teachers who are generous with their time and their commentary, who will do their best to advise you, who encourage genre-writing and exploring boundaries between instead of sticking to what is considered ‘high-brow’. But more than instruction and advice, one benefits most from reading reading reading, writing practice, and critique. And you can do that without a degree. 

In fact, I was so bludgeoned by my course that I didn’t write for a long time after that. Others from my MA and people who were enrolled in completely different programmes experienced the same thing, that it stole the joy from writing. The burn-out is real, and you come away knowing what good writing is, not yet able to achieve it, and too demoralised to continue trying. Quite a demotivating situation. Most writers I’ve talked to on average take a year or two to start writing again after their course.

Having a group, however, is wonderful and essential. People, or even just one other person, who will motivate you to keep writing when you don’t want to, or commiserate with you when you can’t seem to get through a section of your novel, or who will go on artist dates with you to a museum or a park, or just to a cafe to scribble. Someone who will give you honest feedback and who likes reading the kind of stuff you like writing. (I wish for the sake of a few friends that I enjoyed sci-fi, but I do not. I know this is a personal failing, not a shortcoming of the genre. But I am not the target audience for their work, so I’m not their ideal reader.)

So cultivate a connection with other creative people, be accountable to each other, and keep working. At your own pace, yes, but keep working.