r/MFAInCreativeWriting

Hi everyone,
I really love short form fiction like flash and short stories. I have a background in poetry and mostly write pieces in these genres. However, I have seen a few posts in this subreddit mentioning how short stories are dead, no one reads magazines anymore, and they are mostly supposed to be writing exercises for a novel. I could see myself working towards an anthology of short stories but a novel doesn't feel compelling to me right now.
Since I am not an experienced writer, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter. Anyone else dealing with the same feelings?

Thank you :)

sorry if this post is a bit uninformed and kind of rambling. i’m 20 years old, and a current undergraduate student in English and Creative Writing. i’ve known since starting college that i want to apply for an MFA. i’m strongly interested in being a university professor, want to break into writing professionally, and feel that the uninterrupted time to hone my craft will really benefit me as a writer. i have a few practical concerns about this though.

for one, i’m worried that i don’t have a developed enough portfolio to get into a fully funded program. i think i need more time and life experience to fully find my direction as a writer, even though i know i want to eventually do this/teaching writing full time, and i’m not sure applying for an MFA when i don’t feel like my artistic identity is developed enough is a good idea.

i’m also concerned about burnout from being in another full time academic program after four years of college without interruption—there’s the risk of burnout, and i think i could benefit from doing something new and different for a couple of years beforehand. i’m looking at teaching english in thailand or vietnam, so that i can benefit from the low cost of living on a salary of USD, and on the side i would try to get positions as a submissions reader, some kind of editor, etc, and try to submit my writing to contests and literary magazines. my concern with this pertains to the lack of immediate applicability to getting into an MFA—at least the teaching abroad. there’s also the issue of becoming distant from the professors and workshop instructors i worked with in college. i plan to stay in contact, but i worry that having my only sources for letters of recommendation be from a few years ago and not a current literary position will hurt my chances of getting accepted.

i know an MFA is what i want to do, and have known this for a while—i just don’t feel like i’m going to be immediately ready for that, as a writer and as a person, at 22. so i’m asking—is it better to apply immediately after, when i don’t really feel ready but have the benefit of closer proximity to good letters of recommendation, or is it better to do something unrelated for a little while and hone my craft in the meantime?

hey all, i hope you're doing well. i've graduated college and am taking some time off before applying for an MFA. i write literary fiction, not particularly bound to any genre. the main reason i want to get an MFA is because i love the craft of writing and i just want to learn and know more--my college experience didnt feel like enough!

but theres something that gives me pause, which is that i've heard that MFA programs may have a tendency to stifle the voices of writers or push them to create formulaic, overwritten content. now i'm a big believer in the value of education and i certainly do not believe all places are like this, but i can see how it might be the case, especially given how the market operates today. however i'm not sure WHICH places are said to be like this, or if it's just a subjective experience that sometimes crops up.

so i guess i just wanted to ask, for those who have been in MFA spaces--what has been YOUR experience? what sort of places would you recommend--particularly places that you felt like accommodated your vision for your work, but also genuinely improved you? somewhere where you weren't being fitted into a mold?

(this is not to say i consider myself a particularly eclectic or 'special' writer. i just worry, knowing how much i can be a teacher's pet/people pleaser, about being in an environment where i'd feel like i have to make myself small to succeed. you know?)

or maybe this is an entirely mistaken notion? who knows. i just want to talk about it!

Hi all! I'm 28, I've gone back and forth on whether to pursue an MFA for years, and I think I'm reaching the conclusion that I do, indeed, want to apply (to fully-funded programs).

However, the stipends alone (particularly those under $25K, which seems to be most of them) just aren't going to work at this point in my life. I would love to hear from people who did other part-time work (or full-time!) on the side still.

How manageable was it? Were you miserable?

Edit to add: My "day job" is freelance copywriting, so I work remotely.

hey y'all, i'm gearing up to apply to fiction MFAs this fall, and need some advice on a few things. for context: i graduated with a BFA in an unrelated discipline 12 years ago, and am applying to fiction programs.

1. letters of rec. i'm truly lost on what to do here. i have a strong portfolio of short stories (a few of which have been published) and a finished novel under my belt, but basically no professional/academic connections. i have taken online workshops with a novelist who has already agreed to write me a letter, but i'm lost on what to do for the other 1-2 letters most programs require. do i hit up one of my professors from 12 years ago, despite having no contact with them since graduation? would their rec even matter, since i studied a completely different field back then? is it cynical to start attending more workshops/writing events with the express purpose of finding people who would write letters for me?

2. work/funding. i am 100% self-sufficient with no financial support from family or a partner. i make a working class living as a bartender, and simply don't see a reality where i can attend even a fully funded program without continuing to work. is picking up a part-time job while in an MFA feasible, and even if so, will professors/advisors be dickheads about it? is this the kind of thing that's better left unmentioned?

3. professional opportunities outside academia. is an MFA a good pathway to working in the industry, rather than academia? i don't particularly want to teach, but the type of fiction i write is never going to provide a living wage, so i have to approach the choice to attend with some level of pragmatism. is this another thing that i should avoid being straight-up about in my applications? i.e. do programs tend to bristle at applicants who are looking to grad school for professional development?

lots of questions in here so i know not everyone can answer all of them, but any insight will help a lot. thanks!

I'm wondering if anyone here has gotten both an English MA and an MFA at the same time. I'm interested in both an English MA and a Creative Writing MFA, and I'm trying to determine if it's feasible.

Northwestern's Litowitz program is a combined MA and MFA program that is specifically designed for this, which is appealing to me. It's possible to get both at other universities, but it's something you'd have to coordinate yourself, and I'd like to see if others found the workload reasonable.

I'm also wondering if this path is redundant. It seems that a good chunk of a creative writing MFA curriculum is taking literature courses, so perhaps you get many of the benefits of an English MA in an MFA program. At the same time, though, it seems like you wouldn't have to do that much more work to get the English MA in addition to the MFA.

Thoughts?

hi, 27F here, graduated from undergrad in 2021. for as long as i can remember i wanted to write, then somewhere around my teen years i started wrestling with my mental health and self esteem. i convinced myself that i couldn’t do it, that my writing wasn’t good enough, and because of that, it was even easier to convince myself that i didn’t want it (the most insidious lie of all i think.) i’ll spare everyone the details of my sob story, but things didn’t get better for me in college. i had a lot of personal struggles, experienced some of the most fraught years of my life, and just barely managed to graduate with a journalism degree and a 2.3 GPA.

lately i’ve sort of been coming home to myself, and coming home to writing as a byproduct of that. this is always what i’ve wanted, i just couldn’t admit it to myself again until now. realistically, i’m a few years away from being ready to apply to any MFA programs (and even that timeframe may be generous.) but i know it’s something i want for myself eventually. i’ve seen folks on here say that GPA doesn’t matter, but how much truth is there to that? would it be wise for me to take some college courses to bump that number up? and what worries me more is letters of recommendation - i always got lots of praise from my journalism professors on the actual quality of my writing, but you don’t get a 2.3 GPA by being a star student. i doubt any of them would be willing to vouch for me. has anyone been in this position? who wrote your recommendation letters, if so?

i realize that i’m absolutely getting ahead of myself and catastrophizing, trying to just focus on re-establishing some creative habits and building confidence in my work for now. but i’m also the type of person who needs to map everything out as much as i possibly can, and i know i’ll continue to spiral over this, so i thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. thank you if you’ve read this far :)