Repost: MFA vs YYZ
Originally published November 2021
I read an interesting review in the London Review of Books the other day that talked about the state of Literature, which you know is important because it’s got a capital letter, and the rise of MFA programs in the United States. As I understand it, MFA programs have produced a few different types of writers, but few really excellent ones, because they all put the same stamp on people. Or something quite to that effect.
I’ll admit, as someone who never attended university, it’s all a little over my head.
Looking in from the outside, MFA programs seem like they produce people who idolize writers like Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates, who write fiction that’s technically competent but sometimes hollow, and who all seem to celebrate graduating by publishing a novel that’s kinda-sorta about the internet and how it has impacted society. I may have a few specific people in mind, and on some level I’m a little jealous of them.
I can see the appeal of these programs. There’s the work that one gets out of these programs, the nuts-and-bolts sort of instruction that leads to technically good writing. I could definitely use that. There’s the mentorship and connections one gets, too. As someone who’s on the outside looking in, I want this. I could use someone to help me with my writing, help me get published and help me avoid the common mistakes I’m sure lots of people make. And there’s that degree too: forget looking good on my wall, it would look great on a CV.
And mine is pretty bare. I went to college for a couple of years and earned a degree in journalism. There I learned the fundamentals of writing copy - keep the important stuff up top, let a story peter out, write in inverted pyramid, etc - but not much about prose. That was the extent of my official education in writing: classes where we learned a little about grammar and spelling, a lot more about CP style and cramming in as much info as possible while avoiding using opinions. And when we did, in our hastily written opinion columns, we shied away from sounding too verbose. “Save it for your novel,” was the professor’s refrain when we did anything outside the lines. I don’t think too many of us ever got to that point, although I know for certain at least one of my classmates did.
Instead, I taught myself how to write by fits and starts. A little in journalism school, yes, but that career flamed out before it started. I learned just as much by reading everything I could get my hands on between the ages of 20-25. In those days, I was reading everything from Michael Chabon to Cervantes, although I admittedly leaned pretty hard on the Penguin Classics back catalogue. Most of those books are a blur, but a few writers stuck with me: David Foster Wallace, whose fiction left me cold, but who could write a hell of an essay. Another was Raymond Chandler, whose spare prose seemed like something I could imitate, although I rarely did. But mostly, I aped whoever I was currently reading until I sort of settled on, well, whatever it is I do now.
I call it the YYZ school of writing: buying cheap used books at BMV in Toronto, living around the city and writing for small outlets based in and around the area, slowly developing a voice of my own. I don’t know if that’s the one side of the MFA Vs. NYC debate since I never read that book, and besides, it sometimes seems like all the people with MFAs moved to Brooklyn.
But I look at the writers I admire - I could namedrop, but what’s the point? - and I see they all have degrees of some sort. Some of them have PhDs, others have BAs, but it seems like the majority of them have MFAs in creative writing. Let me quote from one such author’s biography, for example: “She has an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth.” I mean, that’s two degrees from pretty prestigious schools. How am I supposed to compete with that?
As someone who’s starting out in this field, I feel like I’m so damn far behind everyone else and it makes me want to give up. I’m 35 now, I have a couple of years of post secondary education and zero degrees. Writers younger than me are getting book deals, winning prizes and getting published. Admittedly, I’m late to the game: it’s only been a few years since I seriously started writing fiction. But I wasn’t ready to start writing until then. When I tried before, it felt hollow, fake and empty. It just didn’t work for me. I wonder now if I should have pushed myself and went to university.
But I have a lot of regrets when it comes to those days. I wish I went to a school in Toronto and made connections; I wish I had my driver’s license and could have gotten a better internship; I wish I transitioned and got my mental health in order in my 20s. There’s a lot of things I could, if given the chance, have done differently. But here’s the thing: time is fake, it’s a construct to help make sense of our lives. The past isn’t a place that exists, we can’t travel back there. We can only use it to make sense of ourselves and to learn to be better. I can regret all I want, but it won’t change the fact I spent my 20s doing nothing much. And that’s okay: I’ve learned that now’s the time I have to push myself and get better at this craft of writing.
Does a MFA do that? Does anything? I don’t know, but I think at this stage in the game, it might not. I’m not a young person anymore, I’m not at a point in my life where I can afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars going to school and having a professor telling me to read “A Good, Small Thing” for the upteenth time. I think the MFA, the creative workshop and all that, well, they’re behind me. I’m more in the “take an evening class in creative writing online” queue these days.
Which isn’t a bad thing! I took an online course earlier this year and was left with a couple good connections online and a story I’m really proud of. It was easier than going back to school and cheaper, too. It was an experience I’d wholeheartedly recommend.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe I don’t need an MFA. It would help, sure, but it’s not something one must have. The connections would be important, but there’s other ways to make them: I’ve found being nice to people on Twitter helps. The education would be, too, but you can always scour the reading lists and apply them on your own terms (hint: Where I’m Calling From is all the Carver one really needs). What’s important is the doing, the actual writing, and that’s something that you either have or don’t. Gosh, I’ve known people who want to be writers but never seem to make the time to sit down at a keyboard; I’ve known people who would never call themselves a writer, but make time every week to bang something out.
There’s a poem by Bukowski I think about sometimes:
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
I hear this poem criticized in some corners these days as elitist, as Bukowski gatekeeping who can and can’t be a writer. Maybe it is. But to me, it’s always been a warning from someone who actually did write and probably had a lot of people tell him they were inspired by his work. It’s a warning that writing isn’t easy, that like any other job, it’s a lot of work. And unless you’re prepared to sit down and actually work at this, to get to a point where the words come out of you, it might not be something you’re really able to do.
Writers like Bukowski or Hunter Thompson inspired a lot of people by the way they lived, and maybe tricked people into thinking there’s a lifestyle one can have as a writer; but for those two, their hard-living lifestyle ended up overshadowing their talent to the point where by the end they were mere shadows of what they’d been. Compare the fresh, exciting prose of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail with the tired, jaded and burnt out writing of Hey Rube: it’s someone clawing at shadows, trying to recapture a lost youth. Another lesson: be yourself, not a copy of someone else - or what people want you to be.
Which is maybe the thing I fear most about getting a MFA. I hear so much negativity about those programs and how they churn out a certain kind of prose style, it makes me scared I’ll lose something I’ve hard to get. That if I went to school, I’d end up writing something unremarkable, if technically competent. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be anyone other than me.
But then again: if I’ve worked so hard to get my voice, would taking a few classes really do anything to make me lose it? Or would getting the feedback and instructions help me refine it instead? I say there’s cookie-cutter writing coming out of MFA programs, but at the same time, there’s also prodigious stylists and singular voices: Torrey Peters, for example, whose novel Detransition, Baby has some of the sharpest prose I’ve read this year.
At the same time, there’s a big advantage I don’t see getting mentioned too often. I work retail, and I really don’t like the levels of anxiety it brings out in me. As a trans woman, I get a fair amount of flak from people (“Thanks, sir”, that sort of thing), and I imagine I’m honestly pretty lucky in how little I get real shit from people. I can see the appeal of going for a funded MFA program, working as a TA and staying out of the real world for a number of years, while also pursuing a passion. I get that vibe, and I wouldn’t blame someone for doing it. I might even do it, if given the chance. As has been pointed out to me, this angle - a minority group taking a MFA as a respite from the real world - is often overlooked when people debate the merits of getting this degree.
In sum, I’m not sure what the best answer to the MFA debate really is. I can’t decide how I feel about it, if it’s something that is dragging literature down, or helping minor voices get heard. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading so much from a specific cohort of writers this year; maybe it’s because I’m jealous on some level that people younger than me were able to get their shit together and pursue a passion.
Is an MFA in my future? I doubt it. I’m so far behind, I’ll probably never catch up to people I admire. At this juncture, I figure I’ll maybe take some classes while I work my regular job. If I’m lucky and work hard enough, maybe I’ll finish that novel I’ve always wanted to write. But one thing I need to do is keep my insecurities in check and not look down my nose at people who worked harder than me, started earlier than me and earned a degree. It might not make one a talented writer, but it’s certainly an achievement and I should treat it as such.