Me and the MFA - Part 2

I’m here. At Hamline. An MFA student, carrying my bag of books and my (very busy) schedule around with me. Scurrying off to the library, taking a million notes in every lecture, meeting and talking with someone new every day. I’ve been here 3 days and it feels like two weeks already. They call this an “immersion” program and they’re right. I’m so fully immersed that I can hardly imagine the world back home!

Mind you, I nearly didn’t get here, no thanks to Virgin Australia airlines. Their staff’s behaviour at Melbourne airport was so unbelievable that even now I can hardly credit their “so sad, too bad” attitude.

Imagine setting off on one of the most important things in your life, knowing how vital it is to be there on time and not miss the first day, where so many crucial things occur. And then to be told you’ve been taken off your connecting flight (with no consultation) and you should just “go home and come back tomorrow”. No attempt to help you get on another flight or advise you what else you can do. Thank goodness for my terrific travel agent who rebooked me so I arrived only 6 hours late.

Virgin, I hope you feel my wrath through the airspace. Won’t forget, doubt I will forgive.

But I digress. Once here, I was able to finally relax. The first day was the all-important orientation, first introductory session, library session, Q&A – all that stuff that totally sets you up with everything for the course. Without it, I’d be floundering and way behind on everything.

I’m excited about the resources that Hamline offers online. The library class showed me all the books, but since I’ll be 12,000km away, it also showed me how to use the databases and online resources. On Day 2, when we had a session on how to write a critical essay, I could see how vital that online library will be for me.

I’m excited about the workshopping! Over the years, the workshops I’ve been in, both as a teacher and a writer, have often focused more on nitpicking the piece of writing, paragraph by paragraph. Here, the emphasis is on discussing the core elements of character and plot and voice, examining structure and creating an in-depth conversation about what questions the piece answers and what questions it raises. It’s a different approach and one I am already enjoying. No need to copy-edit (and how I hate having to do that and point out errors, simply because it sucks up so much time).

Of course, I’m nervous about my turn (in two days time) but I’m also looking forward to it.

This residency, the focus is on plot, so we’ve had two lectures on this already. The one yesterday brought in elements of structure, but in a more defined way, and plenty of new ideas that I will think about later (there will be many things for me to ponder later as all this new knowledge sinks in). Today’s lecture was on plot in picture books and for the first time, I understood how plot can work beyond the problem-based story. Sure, those other kinds of plots are harder to write, but when you get them right, they still work.

I’m excited to be among such a great bunch of writers. This is the thing about courses like this – for a period of time, you are among those who understand what it is that you are trying to do. We’re all here, on the same track, working hard to increase our skills and write something amazing. Everyone here shares. Everyone (even, or especially, the faculty) knows how hard this is, but also how worthwhile it is, and how much it means.

As one of the faculty said on the first day: “We are all in the same place when we start a new story, not knowing if it will work, or how to make this one work.”

As always, I’m on squirrel watch. (I take photos of squirrels everywhere I go!) So far, the count is 3 squirrels and 4 rabbits. I haven’t been fast enough to get a squirrel photo yet, but I will!

Me and the MFA

Have you ever had something you dreamed about for years, something that you secretly pined for every time you saw an article about it, or perhaps an advertisement? Usually these are things that are more than just another purchase like a big TV – they’re something that calls to you, that you know will expand your imagination, your world and your ability to create.

For me, it’s been an MFA. A Master of Fine Arts degree.

With this has always come huge obstacles. I live in Australia and MFAs are only offered at universities in the USA. They cost a lot of money, more than a Masters degree in Australia, plus I’d have to pay air fares on top of that.

When I first starting thinking seriously about studying again, I looked at the alternatives. Back then, you had to live in the US for two years while you studied, and I couldn’t see how that would be possible. But no university in Australia seemed to be offering a Masters the way I wanted to study it – as a writer, not as an academic who is also writing a novel. And by the time I started getting really serious about this dream, two more things became part of the decision-making.

One was that my writing career had moved very decidedly into writing for children and young adults, and there was very definitely nowhere in Australia where I could pursue this speciality. The other was that many universities in the US had begun to offer low-residency MFAs. Rather than have to live there for two years, I could go for 12 day residencies and do the rest of my study online. More air fares but a lot less in living expenses!

Over the past three years, I’ve felt myself creeping slowly towards the real possibility that I could do an MFA. The final stage was attending the Association of Writing Programs conference in Denver in April 2010. There I was able to talk to faculty at three of the five universities offering a low-residency MFA in writing for children and young adults, and make a decision.

So – in two weeks I am off to Hamline University in Minneapolis-Saint Paul to begin my studies! One of the attractions of Hamline is that I can begin with a one-semester block and if, for some reason (like finances), I can’t continue, that’s OK with them. Another was the friendliness of their faculty member I spoke to, and the great answers she gave me to all my questions.

Some of you who know me will probably be asking – why on earth do I want to study writing when I have been teaching writing for twenty years and have 45 books published? Because I firmly believe that there is always more to learn about writing, and that I still have plenty of room to improve! I’ve felt as though I’ve been on a bit of a writing plateau for the past few years, and I want to get off it.

I’ve found in the past that intensive study always lifts me into new ideas and new ways of writing. The summer school I attended at CSU Fresno in 2002, for example, led me into writing verse novels.

So along the way, as part of this experience, I want to write about and reflect on what I’m learning, and I’m going to post some of those reflections here. I hope you’ll come along for the voyage with me.

Can you "Grade" Creative Writing?

The answer to this question presupposes that you believe creative writing can be taught. You can assume I do, because I teach in a creative writing course! But I like the way we emphasise the word "professional" in the title of our course, because we all believe that part of our job is to teach students about the real world of writing and publishing - not in order to put them off, or make them give up, but to be realistic about what it means to be professional, and to become published.

I had a conversation today with two students about their Thursday morning subject, Industry Overview. We have a number of guest speakers in to talk about various writing and editing "jobs", and we also talk about getting published. Today we had two publishers/editors talking about what they do and how they do it, and it's entirely understandable that students go away feeling a bit depressed about how hard it all seems.

My answer to them started with "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't mean anything". We all get rejections, especially in the beginning, and understanding how it all works, and how to get better - how to get "publishable" - is part of learning how to be a published writer. The exceptions really are the exceptions. Most writers spend a lot of years learning how to improve, and if you don't go in with the willingness to learn, you may have a very short writing career.

But the issue of grading comes into this, too. As teachers, we wrestle with this constantly. You could say "who are you to stick a grade on a short story or a poem?" and that is a good question. But we're teachers because we've been out there in the industry, we're published, we have (usually) a lot of years of experience behind us, and most importantly, we want to share that knowledge and help others (yes, there are some teachers who don't, so steer clear of them). We talk about assessment criteria, about that indefinable "wow" factor in a piece of writing, about revision and craft, and about students taking risks rather than writing safe.

What I have discovered over the years is that nearly all students want grades. They may not like getting a C instead of an HD, but they want to know where they are. It's human nature. In a professional course, regardless of all the helpful comments a teacher might make, or all the feedback in a workshop, a grade gives a writer an indication of where they are with that piece and what more needs to be done with it. I can't tell you how many times students have left their assignments in a box in our office, disregarding all the feedback we've spent a lot of time writing, all the suggestions, and just wanted THE GRADE. And the reality is: the grade is only one part of it. Every piece submitted is still a work in progress.

The grade tells you where you are now with that piece. But you as the writer decide where that piece will be in the next draft, the one after, and the one after that. I was at the Association of Writing Programs conference in Denver this month, and I went to all the sessions on grading and assessment. I was really interested in what other writing teachers thought about this, how they approached it, and discovered we all had similar experiences. I did get a lot of great ideas about how to further refine my processes and relate this to students. But someone raised a really good question - how do you grade a work in progress?

And the answer is - you grade it as a work in progress. We often see students workshop a story or a poem, then put it in for their final assignment with hardly anything changed, despite having received some really good feedback and suggestions. I liked what one person suggested. She gives first drafts a grade based on that version, and discusses with the student how they can go about revising in order to improve that grade. Yes, a bit of a carrot and stick process. But it feels like the process you go through in order to get published. Yes, this draft has potential, but it needs this and this and this, and then it might be publishable. That's a carrot most writers understand!

Have you ever done some kind of writing course? Did you get grades? What did you think about grades and the value you placed on them? I'd love to hear the student's point of view. (And yes, I have been a student - I love being a student - and I like getting grades, too. But I like constructive comments even better.)
And by the way, you've got one more day to put your hat in the ring to win a picture book - see the post below.