The MFA in Creative Writing: The Uses of a “Useless” Credential

Authors: time and symbolic resources for artistic identity

Respondents expressed a range of reasons why they decided to apply to MFA-CW programs. In line with a 2010 survey of MFA-CW applicants in the Poets & Writers 2012 MFA Rankings (Abramson, 2011) in which the most frequently cited reason for applying was to have “time to write” (55%), our respondents frequently reported that “buying time” was a major factor for them. As Kelsey, who has gone on to publish two novels, explained: “Well, when I was graduating [from college] I knew that I wanted to go to an MFA program to keep writing and have more time to [do so].” The MFA-CW provided “time” for Kelsey, who would otherwise have felt compelled to find employment, most likely in a “day job” that would take time from her writing. Like others below, Kelsey’s calculus made the decision to “buy time” with potential tuition fees and lost wages a clear one.

While Kelsey saw herself as “buying time” to write, she could have, as recommended in The Creative Writing MFA Handbook (2005), simply taken the time to write without paying for a degree granting program. Instead, as it was for Michael, an author living in the Northeast who worked in marketing out of college, the MFA-CW served a symbolic purpose in making occupational aspiration of being a writer seem more “real”:

Michael’s motivations were not atypical among respondents. While some, like Kelsey, “always” knew they wanted to be novelists, others like Michael first tried “a real job.” Yet despite this distinction, most respondents, in a variety of ways, felt that their desires to become novelists were made more “real” somehow by attending MFA-CW programs. Morgan, who also worked a “real job” after college, explained:

For students, enrollment in the MFA-CW was itself a form of professional identity formation. While the “time to write” was sometimes real for entrants who were trying to balance their writing with paid employment, for others, “time to write” served a more symbolic function in that it was being enrolled in a program, rather than simply writing, which made their time spent writing feel like a legitimate investment in a professional identity rather than a hobby.

Once enrolled, respondents did not feel that MFA-CW coursework improved their writing, but found that it served other purposes, including the time and identity resources discussed above. Kelsey said that her MFA-CW workshops allowed her to “think about writing a different way and to have a vocabulary to talk about writing which, for my own work, has not been too helpful. But when I write [freelance] reviews for magazines or websites, I know how to.” Colton, who has published two novels, cited his MFA-CW workshops as making him more accepting of negative reviews for his novels: “I just kinda take the good ones as encouragement and then—I don’t know, once you’ve been to workshop so many times…you just kind of lose the emotional aspect of it.”

For Kelsey the “sideline activity” (Janssen, 1998) of reviewing the work of other novelists is a skill she feels she honed and developed from having to critique others’ work in her MFA-CW program, whereas on the other end of the writer/reviewer exchange, Colton harnesses his experience of having his writing critiqued in MFA-CW workshops to manage his response to negative reviews of his work. While neither Kelsey nor Colton spoke much about how “workshopping” dramatically changed the quality of their writing (it provided “just things to think about,” according to Colton), both ultimately found the experience useful for their careers, particularly in learning the “softer” skills of the professional identity: learning the language to talk about writing, how to deal with criticism of one’s work, and how to critique the work of others. These less instrumental and more implicit forms of skills acquisition also extended to informal education in the machinations of the publishing industry.

This was the case for Maggie, who wrote what would become the “lead” fiction title for a major publisher and be heavily promoted by them in her third year of an MFA-CW program in the Midwest. She remembers her time in her MFA-CW as “a vital turning point. So moving into that community after the theoretical discussion of writing and the workshopping… that’s where I really sort of began to learn a lot about the agenting process.” She felt that the two most important things she learned in her MFA-CW program were that a manuscript “almost has to be ready to put on the shelf [before submitting to an agent], and… that agents really function a lot like editors now.” Maggie found that although most of her professors resisted discussions of industry concerns—lest the MFA-CW be confused with a vocational or professional program—older students were more apt to privately share information about the publishing industry:

For Maggie, and many other respondents, this informal information swapping within a like-minded network of aspirants was quite important.or other novelists, like Colton, his time in an MFA-CW created social ties and a “collaborative circle” (Farrell, 2003; see also Hargadon & Bechky, 2006) which he has relied on throughout his career. Colton has three people that he met in his MFA-CW program who continue to read and edit his work:

Maggie and Colton both reference the networks that their MFA-CW programs afforded them, though they talk of networks with different benefits. Maggie saw herself most benefiting from the informal “rumor mill” or “grapevine system” of industry news she acquired from other students, whereas Colton found a social circle of likeminded authors who provide feedback on each other’s work. Barbara, a successful novelist in her late mid-60s who did not attend an MFA-CW, provides evidence of the negative case, lamenting that she doesn’t have the social resources that MFA-CW graduates possess:

Just as MFA-CW attendees do not feel that they learned how to write in MFA-CW programs, Barbara does not feel that her lack of attendance has hampered her ability as a writer (i.e. “I’m not saying I feel uneducated”), but instead provides evidence of the negative case that is positively asserted by those who did attend (i.e. “I envy people who have a circle”). Overall, while MFA-CW graduates do not feel that they learned how to “write” in their graduate degree programs, they describe gaining other key skills and building networks through the MFA-CW that have served them well in their chosen careers. MFA-CW programs gave them time to write and a venue in which their aspirations to be novelists could be made to feel more real both to them and to people around them. In turn, although their programs were oriented toward ostensibly insulating them from the “business side” of writing, they learned about the practice of being a working novelist and engaging in sideline activities, swapped information about the publishing industry with each other, and established creative circles within the programs that they would go on to rely on during their careers. Similarly, novelists who work as professors at MFA-CW programs are uncertain about how their teaching relates to their work as writers, but find many uses for MFA-CW programs, including the same sorts of creative communities found by students, as well as the provision of a steady and livable income that gives them time to write.

Teachers: a sense of community and teaching the unteachable for wages

Teachers in MFA-CW programs express a range of feelings about their occupation. Most think of their teaching as a “day job” which supports—intellectually, socially, and most frequently, economically—their passion as novelists. Mallory, who has written four books, has worked as a professor in an MFA-CW for over a decade. Most important to Mallory is the sense of community she finds from her work, which isn’t always available to her in her career as a novelist:

Many of the MFA-CW teachers reported that the sense of community they found in their programs was important to their mental health, and broke up long stretches of writing alone. While most did not regularly lean on other faculty or students for support in their writing, simply being around people who shared their passion made their lives as writers more meaningful.

Despite this, many teachers felt reservations about being paid to teach a skill that they feel is outside the bounds of formal education. Jasmine, an MFA-CW professor in upstate New York expressed the common opinion that creative writing cannot be taught: “I don’t know why we do it. I know why I do it, but we’re tasked with teaching the unteachable.” Some, like Greg, justified this disconnect by simply stating “it’s a job, it’s a way to earn a living.” While this commonly professed inability to teach what one is ostensibly being tasked with teaching—creative writing cannot be taught—could be dismissed as a core facet of the illusio (Bourdieu, 1996) of the literary field, rather than simply serving a power-laden rhetorical function it is deeply embedded in the very structure of MFA-CW teaching practice. In MFA-CW programs the reliance on the workshop format, which decenters not only the professor, but also formal instruction more generally and forbears the attainment of pre-defined knowledge acquisition, ensures that even if creative writing could be taught it will not be taught. As such a belief in the impracticality of even trying to teach the ability to write creatively is reinscribed in pedagodical practice.

For some MFA-CW professors, such as Zach, creative writing, which cannot be taught, is based on personal experience and personal discovery, for which working in MFA-CW programs limits engagement with life outside the academy:

While Zach references wanting to “go back” to a time when novelists could make their living from writing novels, he does not specify the time period to which he refers, and its historical existence in the U.S. is dubious. While the early and mid-twentieth century  have been reinterpreted as a “golden age” of literature in the United States, the book market was comparatively quite small (Thompson, 2012), and most writers could not expect to make an income from their books. Randall, who served through much of the 1970s on the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Panel thinks that this history has been lost, and replaced with an assumption that novelists have always, and should be able to, live off their work as novelists:

Many MFA-CW teachers describe having come to a difficult peace with the tension of ostensibly training a next generation of novelists who will not be able to make livings as novelists, and doing so despite not actually believing that the skills required to become a novelist can actually be taught. Yet overall, while teachers at MFA-CW programs do occasionally feel that their work as teachers can be beneficial to their students’ writing, more often, they find teaching to be beneficial to their own writing. And most often, they use their employment in MFA-CW as a productive social outlet to spend time around other writers. Most centrally, MFA-CW programs provide a livable income to already-working writers who cannot subsist solely off the advances for their book projects.

Publishing professionals: networks and promotional resources

In May and June, literary agents begin to receive the bulk of their submissions from that year’s MFA-CW graduates. Some of these will trickle into publishers’ inboxes quite early, but the deluge really comes during the fall or winter publishing seasons. Literary agents and acquisition editors take a range of stances on submissions from MFA-CW graduates, finding pragmatic reasons mostly related to the industry knowledge respondents like Maggie discussed, and indirect and informal promotional opportunities attendance might provide. Like MFA-CW students and professors they are highly dubious of the claim that one learns how to write well in MFA-CW programs and instead take a more negative position, complaining that the quality of writing can even be adversely affected by MFA-CW attendance. Some literary agents, such as Laurel, an agent in New York in her mid-40s, appreciate the increase in submissions to her office around graduation season, as she feels it makes one aspect of her job easier:

Laurel, who does not comment on the quality of submissions, believes that the MFA-CW funnels would-be authors to her agency, and she believes that the most important training young writers receive from an MFA-CW program is how to find the appropriate literary agent, how to write a query letter, and other minutia of the publishing industry which is informally traded between students and more frequently avoided or expressly rejected by professors in formal MFA-CW classroom spaces. Alex, an acquisition editor at a major New York imprint, echoes Laurel’s impression, stating directly that “those programs cannot teach you how to write.” Instead, making a distinction between writing and being an author, he feels that MFA-CW programs should be more oriented toward teaching how the publishing industry works, downplaying the possibility that the MFA-CW helps students learn to write well:

While Laurel assumes that students are learning about the industry through professors and not through the informal “grapevine system” of information sharing between students, like MFA-CW students themselves she also makes reference to the softer skills of professionalization—which may be an inadvertent outcome of attendance in the program. She is distinguishing between being a “writer” (who may or may not have the ability to write creatively) and an “author” (who may or may not have the ability to write creatively, but has at least some understanding of the publishing industry and how it works).

Randall, who works at an independent publishing house on the West Coast, finds a “sameness” that bothers him when describing what he sees as a twice-annual “dump” of submissions to his publisher:

Although this type of mimicry may be more valuable to editors of popular fiction who are looking for hits that can be marketed and promoted in accordance with trends, for acquisition editors who are seeking a “timeless” quality in works they hope will contribute long-term (if slower) sales on publishers’ backlists, mimicry of the “current hot guy” is a significant impediment to publication.

While Randall is quite critical of the trend-hopping and what he believes to be the inferior creativity of creative writing produced in MFA-CW programs, he does not feel that the MFA-CW is entirely without value. While claiming that he would “hope not to notice” whether a submission came from an MFA-CW graduate or not, he is somewhat disheartened when acknowledging a second logic of sales and promotability for the submissions of some graduates:

Blurbs, the short snippets of praise from well-known writers or reviewers that appear on book jackets, are thought of as one form of “advertising” for books. They are often used in catalog copy to signal to bookstores that the author has famous friends who may assist him/her, and to others in the industry that the author should be treated well given that their famous friend may hold a grudge if they are not. It is also believed that for general readers, positive appraisal from an author they like or have read before may induce them to pick up the book while browsing. Just as authors describe the accruement of social capital from their attendance in MFA-CW programs, Randall describes another way in which this social capital is converted in the “blurb business.”

Agents and publishers also see benefits—both in relation to networks and sales—from representing or working with professors at MFA-CW programs, all despite doubting that the ability to write well has actually been learned through attendance. This was described by Sophia, a literary agent in New York:

Whereas MFA-CW students may be able to get blurbs from their famous professors, their professors also serve as intermediaries to the literary field. For Sophia, it is not merely the social connection, but also the social trust and influence engendered through the professor/student relationship that makes representing a novelist who works as a professor an added bonus. Some acquisition editors also feel that working with MFA-CW professors provides an additional sales potential, as professors are tied into an academic network of others who might buy their books, or perhaps even assign them in classes. Nathan, an editor at an independent press who is quite critical of the rise of the MFA-CW in the creation of new writers, optimistically hopes that MFA-CW graduates—the vast majority of whom he believes have “no chance” of ever securing a publishing contract—may create a new generation of readers, when he tells us that creative writing programs make students “better readers”, not better writers.

Overall, while publishing professionals are either indifferent to the quality of writing coming out of MFA-CW programs or critical of it, they acknowledge that the existence of the programs make their jobs easier in many inadvertent ways: Despite purporting to train students how to write well, they train students in how the industry works, and the social ties formed within programs can be of benefit to publishers, both during the promotional practice of “blurbing” or in attracting new authors. In turn, with regards to increased sales, authors who work as professors in MFA-CW programs may be more attractive to publishers if they are tied into networks of other MFA-CW professors who may read and assign their books. And finally, while MFA-CW programs might not train their students in how to “write well,” they may train their students in how to “read well,” creating new markets for modern literature that publishers depend upon.

We have seen how the MFA-CW is used in diverse and divergent ways by aspirant authors (who use the degree to “buy time” to work and symbolic resources for the writer’s identity, and who gain professional practice knowledge), teachers (who use the degree as an ideal “day job” and source of community), and acquisitions editors (who use the degree to simplify their position and to market books). Although not through the more widely recognized jurisdictional or closure-related processes, this landscape of practice is crucial for the functioning of the U.S. literary field today, and the formation of professional identity through “soft” skills and symbolic resources, which make the degree far from useless.