To MFA or Not to MFA

There’s always been a debate in the writing community over the usefulness of creative writing programs.  My own experience with creative writing courses in college wasn’t particularly positive— I don’t think the experience benefitted me as a writer, but I didn’t hate it, either.

Now with the huge increase in creative writing MFA programs— 20,000 students contributing $200 million dollars to universities!— the debate has shifted from whether creative writing programs can actually teach you to write, to whether what they teach you is worth the $80,000 in debt you have to take on to get your degree.

Now Richard Jean So and Andrew Piper have produced an analysis of what difference MFA programs actually make in their writers’  work, by closely comparing 200 distinguished novels produced by MFA graduates with 200 distinguished novels produced by writers without degrees.  (In the latter case, a New York Times review was taken as a mark of quality.  “Hey!” I wanted to say. “I’ve been reviewed favorably in the Times!  I must be distinguished!”)

What So and Piper have concluded is that the MFA makes no difference at all.

They started with writing a program to analyze the text in terms of word usage.  What they found was that graduates use pretty much the same words as non-grads, though MFA grads tend to use words like lakes, lawns, and wrists more often.

They then analyzed themes, and found that MFA grads tend to slightly emphasize themes like “family” or “home,” but otherwise no difference was found.

What about style?  If style is the way that a writer sequences words, then there turns out to be no difference between the two groups.  MFA programs do not teach style or voice.

MFA students would seem to spend $200 million per year in order to learn to write just like everyone else.

But surely the graduate experience produces a more enlightened mind, a greater awareness of the needs of minorities, women, and the dangers of patriarchy.

Um, well, no.  Even though 66 percent of MFA grads are women, the protagonists of MFA grads’ novels are 61% male.  (Non-MFA grads write about men 62% of the time.)

What these statistics tell us is that successful writers are very much alike, no matter how they came to writing.  Successful writers work hard, develop their talent, learn from their mistakes, submit their work for publication, and read more or less everything, in more or less every field.  Successful writers have enough life experience to provide subject matter for their fiction, or at least can fake it well.  (One of my problems with my college creative writing classes is that I had such little life experience that I didn’t have a lot to say.)

Successful writers network.  MFA programs may offer an advantage here, in that they provide a set of peers to network with.  But you don’t have to spend $80,000 to network— you can join a critique group for little or no money, and if you can’t find one in your neighborhood, you can find one online.

So should you go for an MFA?  Sure.  If you get a full scholarship.  There’s nothing like getting paid for two or three years to do what you’re going to do anyway.

Can writing be taught?  Some aspects of writing can successfully be taught, because I’ve successfully taught them to people who have gone on to successfully publish and get nominated for awards.  (And there are still a few places available in Taos Toolbox, to which you should apply if getting published and award-nominated appeals to you.)

But much of it’s down to talent, application, and hard work.  I’ve seen writers with enormous talent fail through lack of application, and writers with limited promise work hard and raise their game and end up in the winners’ circle.

How you want to do this is up to you.  Just don’t take on a lifetime’s worth of debt in order to do it.