Letters to the Editor

• Graduate writing programs

  [Read the article: What am I doing here?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I cannot resist putting in a word about graduate creative writing programs here. I am a published novelist. I have such an M. A. On paper, for getting day jobs, it has occasionally carried some weight. In terms of actually advancing my writing, it was worse than worthless - that is, a waste of time. Luckily, I got it on scholarship, so time was all I wasted. To the LW and anyone else in such a situation, I'd say: if you're enjoying the program, if you can afford spending time in it, and if you're in it on scholarship, go ahead. But don't pay actual money or go into debt for such a degree. In most contexts, it is a decoration rather than a credential to advance a career.

  In that hindsight that is always so accurate, I think the best investment of tuition money for a writer is in a program - not necessarily a college program - that will result in some kind of certification with which the holder can always get a job. EMT, paralegal, medical coding, nursing, some practical skill for which there is a consistent market that will keep being consistent through economic flux. Hindsight also advises me that the best jobs for writers are not necessarily the usual professional teaching and editorial ones. The best jobs for writers may be just that, jobs...ways to make money that allow for some emotional detachment from what one does to make it, that do not involve the infinite overtime many professional careers demand, and that don't leave the person brain-exhausted at day's end.

  My undergraduate program was good. It was run by Monroe Engel, a novelist with a bent for rigorous structural criticism, who offered a great deal of intensive individual instruction to the students he accepted. The graduate program I attended was mainly "workshop" courses, consisting of peer criticism with some input from the instructors. All too often, these sessions degenerated into tiresome and fractious personal carping. You don't need to pay tuition for that; you can get it through marriage or by joining any contention in a forum such as this one, and it will be equally instructive... perhaps more so.

  Sitting around in such graduate "workshop" writing courses gets a person intensive exposure to lots of passionate, not necessarily informed opinions. This experience can be actively damaging when negative. When positive, it encourages the bad habit of needing an audience before one has really earned one and a need for emotional support that is not going to be forthcoming in the real world. Real writing is a solitary activity. That barrage of opinion is not cross-pollination; it is pollution. It is noise. As a distraction or as an addiction, it's bad. People who really are writers and are past college age don't need to be sitting in workshop courses or worrying about what other people their age think about their work; they need to be writing. They need some kind of credential that will support that writing.

  It is my belief that the most useful thing accomplished by graduate creative writing programs is employing writers who need the money.

  Permalink Thursday, February 1, 2007 09:58 AM

• Literary agents

  [Read the article: Hey! It's National Traumatic Artistic Betrayal Week! Yay!]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Hello there, LW. I'm a novelist too. I have known one good literary agent...who exited the agenting profession in favor of early retirement. For the rest, I have only epithets unfit for a reputable public forum such as this one. Their main specialties seem to be jerking writers around as you have been jerked and making writers feel like two cents. Of course, if I encounter a good one who successfully promotes my work, I will happily eat my hateful words. Twenty years of experience, however, suggest that I won't have to.

  I am seriously considering publishing my next book with iUniverse. True, I will pay for the privilege...but probably no more than I'd pay printing manuscript copies and FedExing them around to agents. And with iUniverse, you get to skip the waste of God knows how much time and aggravation.

  Permalink Sunday, February 4, 2007 08:07 PM

• Just right

  [Read the article: I don't want more kids but my wonderful husband does]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Bravo, Cary. That's a civilized solution to a gnarly problem, and I hope it works.

  Permalink Tuesday, May 15, 2007 07:42 PM