“When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.”
–Alice Hoffman
Source: According to @greenlightbklyn, this comes from Hoffman’s Here on Earth. (Thanks to @JBoltonFasman for RTing it.) Seems apropos in the wake of Hurricane Irene.
“Here is the most important thing: The best MFA program is the one that’s best for you—for your writing and related professional aspirations. Don’t rely on any “best of” guides or hearsay. Know your writing and where you want to take it. Are you an essayist? Make sure there’s an accomplished essayist teaching workshops in your dream program. Read what the faculty members in your genre are writing. Read their latest works in journals as well as their books. If they have interviews, articles, or reviews, read those, too. Do an aesthetic check. How likely are they to understand and embrace your vision? Are they superstars? Make sure they actually teach classes. Writers often teach or work as editors. Will your dream program allow you to teach and edit? Look for in-house and national literary journals, a solid reading series, a sense of community, and an opportunity to teach creative writing as well as composition.”
–Jocelyn Bartkevicius
University of Central Florida in Orlando
Source: Poets & Writers feature, “Advice from the Programs.”
This week’s quotation comes from the world of politics (Winston Churchill via @CoryBooker), but it strikes me as exceedingly significant for practicing writers, too.
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
“I did a low-residency program because I didn’t want to give up my job, and I chose a school that was far away so I would be exposed to different perspectives (I live in the Midwest, and I chose a program in the Pacific Northwest). Two things I wish I would have known before making that choice: Many of the students were from the region, so in many ways I was the one with a different perspective, and I was a bit of a minority (although this was also a benefit as a learning experience). Also, because of this strong regional contingent, a lot of local opportunities were generated during the time that I was in the program, including teaching assistantships and mid-term get-togethers that I just couldn’t participate in. I felt like I missed out on the full experience of the program due to geography, especially in regard to teaching and forming connections that would help in that area.”
Source: Lesley Weiss, quoted in “Should You Go Back to School? Four Writers Share Their Graduate-School Experiences and Help You Decide Whether or Not to Pursue an Advanced Writing Degree,” Writermag.com (free, but site registration is required to access the full article).
Brava, Lesley Weiss.
I can’t tell you how tired I am of people claiming that location should not be among the considerations when prospective students are applying to and choosing among or between low-residency MFA programs. I tried to counter that faulty notion myself when I devoted several paragraphs to “Geography” as a factor for prospective low-res students to consider when I was asked to contribute to The Creative Writing MFA Handbook.
Like Ms. Weiss, I opted for low-res in part because I did not want to move away from my job/life/connections where I was living (in my case, the Northeast) and I chose a program that was “far away” (in my case, in Charlotte, N.C.) because I thought it would be interesting to gain perspectives on a part of the country that was new to me.
And in some ways, that strategy worked. (more…)
Most writers do not sell the first book they write.
–Lois Winston, (Ashley Grayson Literary Agency)
Source: @JaneFriedman, tweeting from #MWW11 (Midwest Writers Workshop)
Sadly true words, at least in my experience.