Did an MFA Help Me?

Do writers need to get an MFA? This question is one so many people go back and forth on in the writing world. Do writers need to get a master’s to show that they have the education behind their writing talents? Behind their stories? Will an MFA suddenly make a writer the writer they have always wanted to be? There are plenty of writers who do not have MFA’s: writers who are successful and writers who aren’t, writers who have books and writers who do not. I decided to get an MFA anyways. 

Whether you have an MFA and are cheering on your alumni school or wondering if maybe you should be thinking about an MFA, there are several things I have learned from enrolling in a graduate program and finishing my master’s degree that have made me biased towards the idea that getting my MFA was the best thing I could do as a writer.

After I received my undergraduate degree in English and Communications, I didn’t want school to end. I enrolled in a limited residency graduate nonfiction program and continued my education. A limited residency program enables students who are in vastly different areas of the world, varying ages, and a culmination of jobs to pursue a degree in writing. Only two weeks per semester are required to be at the campus while the rest of the work is completed online. My program included doctors, journalists, educators, veterans, and writers who all wanted one thing: to become a better writer. 

Each semester we read a lot, we wrote even more, and we learned from our mentors, professors, each other, and from the authors we read and work-shopped. Throughout the program, I learned a few things that I wouldn’t have been able to learn elsewhere. 

I love to read, like so many writers. When my professors assigned books I found myself more readily reading than writing. And when I finished the assigned books, I had an inner battle forcing myself to write instead of grabbing another book off my bookshelf. But many people in my program were able to pick apart books and assigned readings. In my naiveté I thought a lot of the books I read were fantastic: while my peers critiqued and bluntly stated what they thought was not working.

I was cowed. If my peers were so ready to comment on well-known authors, on bestselling books, on published articles, what in the world would they say about my writing? After that initial mindset though I started to see some pieces of work like my peers did: I started to see past my initial reading and look deeper into the books. I started to read the books not as a reader, but as a writer. I noticed when an author was playing with words in a poetical way, when an imagined scene was included in a nonfiction book, when lists were loaded throughout the writing, when a setting was written so well I could see the scene right in front of me. My notes after reading a book turned from the content of the book into made-up exercises where I simply wrote in all capital letters, HOW CAN I WRITE LIKE THIS.

We have a lot of great ideas as writers, some days our ideas seem to come to us like the mosquitos flock to a damp swamp, and other days our ideas come slow and few. But when we decide to transform an idea into an article, essay, or book we are putting a lot of belief into that idea. We believe that it is a good idea, an idea that will spark the reader’s minds. We believe it to be an idea that will ultimately sell. During my MFA program, we decided on our thesis and spent four semesters writing a manuscript for that idea. Every semester we told more and more people about our idea, even as our idea changed and morphed into something more solid and complete by the last semester. 

Talking through your ideas is incredibly helpful. When you have to defend your intentions you automatically include relevancy and importance to your creation. You are selling your idea, and the more you do it the better you get at it. When you advertise your idea you might see when others eyes light up as yours do at a certain point, or if they give you a blank stare and look like they want to be anywhere else than with you. You learn what are the most relevant parts of your idea and you start to form and mold it until your idea becomes an idea someone else wishes they had come up with. 

As writers, we need to know how to tell a story. While this might sound obvious, it is a craft element that many writers could improve on. In a story, there needs to be a narrator, a character, some sort of tension or problem, and a resolution. While some nonfiction essays might be based on an idea instead of a narrative, the best essays we read and studied were essays that contained some sort of narrative arc. As readers, we are mainly interested in finding out the resolution to the plot, and thus we continue to read the narratives embedded in the book, learning both emotional and superficial narratives.

One day we brought a piece of our work to class and our professor had us highlight our work to see what we were doing in our essays. We were to highlight the parts of our essays that were scenes. A scene has character, dialogue, and often some sort of movement. Our professor told us that she has done this with essays that are in large publications, and almost all of them were at least fifty percent scene. I stared at the few highlighted sentences I had and realized that much of my writing was superficial wonderings of myself instead of layered scenes that were building my piece to move forward.

There is, very easily, one single most important thing that I was able to take from my MFA. What was that? It was the community of people I would never have had the pleasure and privilege to meet and interact with if I had not enrolled in a graduate program. The community itself fosters writers who are interested in each other’s work, who support each other by sharing their work, who always enjoy reading work by one another. We are always discussing the importance of some of the elements of the craft of nonfiction writing. Being involved in a graduate program meant entering a community of people who were all adept, curious, and eager to learn about a topic that I had previously only been called a nerd for. 

Community is so important to writers! We cannot be writers by ourselves. We need people to tell us when our grandeur ideas are simply bullshit, or when we think we’ve flushed something out but we’re still missing something. We need people who pull us away from our writing when we need distance. And if anyone is from a small town like me, a community like this is hard to find. When I need references, resources, advice, connections, tips, feedback, or teachings, I have a list of people I could reach out to, and not only that, a group of people who I know wants to help me succeed in whatever my goals are. 

When one thinks of all the fingers flying across keyboards or pens over pieces of paper it’s easy to be intimidated. We’re trying to do the exact same thing that you’re doing. But instead of being intimidated, take pride in the fact that you’re one of those people. You’re a writer. And all those fingers and pens out there? They’re searching for better ways to be better writers. We’re in this together. 

Getting an MFA isn’t necessary and doesn’t really mean anything in the spectrum of authors and writers. But when I entered the program my level of writing needed structure, lessons, and lots of hours writing to get to a better level. I needed to find my voice and was able to identify what I value most in my writing through learning the elements of the craft, experimenting with different forms of writing, and taking so many notes that I still remember old lessons turned new when I go through my notebook again. With feedback from a great community, I am reminded that writers are often introverts, highly sensitive, and emotional people. We need others to assess and evaluate our work. Whether you find that through an MFA program, through an online or virtual writing group, or through friends, it is the most important part of your writing. Find your community and continue to put the hours in. You’ll get there!

Written from the viewpoint of Rebekah Morris, graduated 2020 with an MFA