Posts Tagged creative writing MFA

Should you take a creative writing degree? The honest truth. An interview

Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in How to write a book, The writing business on January 27, 2019

There are many ways we can learn the art and craft of writing. One is a dedicated degree course, either at bachelor or postgraduate level. But what do they give you that you can’t get in other ways?

Last year I got in conversation about this with creative writing professor Garry Craig Powell – you might recognise him because he’s been an Undercover Soundtrack guest and interviewed me about Not Quite Lost. So I thought it would be good to write a proper, in-depth interview about it – and it turned out to be very long!

We’re publishing it in parts at Late Last Night Books. In part 1, we chew over the following questions, with actionable points at the end –

What are the benefits and limitations of creative writing degrees?

What experience level should a writer have so their work is enhanced rather than forced into a standard mould (the often-derided MFA novel)?

As writing is largely self-taught, do writers need formal teachers?

Misconceptions about creative writing teachers!

Thanks for the pic, Pixabay

Come on over!

And if you’ve taken a creative writing degree yourself – or considered it and decided not to – do share your experiences in the comments here. Also, post any questions you’d like us to tackle. If they’re not in one of the interviews, we can gather them into a special at the end.

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The writer’s persona in the narrative, MFA courses and Englishness – interview at Rain Taxi

Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Interviews on January 27, 2018

How much should a writer’s personality show in a book? Some authors keep themselves out of the narrative voice, even in a personal book such as a memoir. Others colour every page with their sensibilities and personality, even if they’re writing fiction. This is just one of the questions I’m discussing today in the literary magazine Rain Taxi.

You might recognise my interviewer – Garry Craig Powell, who has been a guest on The Undercover Soundtrack (he put Phil Collins songs to unforgettable and cheeky use). Garry has also taught creative writing at university level, so that’s another discussion we have – are these courses useful, necessary, a hindrance, something else? What about journalism – when is that a good start for a fiction author?

And then there’s Englishness. What is that? Well, it could be a quality of restraint – when saying less means more. It might also be a sense of Elysian yearning for an emblematically romantic world, including the tradition of stories about remarkable houses. We’re trying to thrash it out. Do come over, and bring tea.

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Self-editing masterclass snapshots – how much will you write to create your book?

Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in How to write a book on July 12, 2015

Last week I was back at The Guardian, teaching my course on advanced self-editing for fiction writers. My students kept me on my toes and I thought I’d explore their most interesting questions here. There are quite a few of them, and the weather is too darn hot, so instead of giving you a giant reading task I’ll be posting them in short bites over the next couple of weeks.

You’ll write a lot of material that is not intended for publication

One student who had taken a creative writing MA was bemused when her tutor set her the task of writing a scene from a different character’s point of view. This wasn’t intended to appear in the book; it was intended to encourage her to explore ramifications she hadn’t thought of. She said she found it a surprising idea, to create something that was never intended for publication.

We all have material we write that never reaches an audience. Sometimes this might be book ideas that don’t work out, or apprenticeship novels that are best filed in the ‘forget it’ drawer.

But those aside, a lot of our written output won’t end up between covers. I hadn’t thought about this until my student talked about this exercise, then I realised the amount of wordage we might write in order to get to the text.

In my own case this might be:

musings on the meaning of the central idea, to hone the themes and discover the story, maybe with an Undercover Soundtrack
ditto about characters, individual plot problems
outlines and refinements thereof, or scrawlings of events on cards
beat sheets for afterwards to aid revision
tryouts of story events from other points of view, like the exercise my student was set.

(Here’s my writing process in pictures.)

That looks like a colossal amount of wastage. If I look in the folder for Ever Rest, I have 68 exploratory documents, and some of them are 20-30 pages.

And then there’s the material that gets cut from the manuscript – even more pages written that the reader never sees. The novel that emerges is a super-concentrated distillate.

I hadn’t ever questioned this, but I realise that for some writers it seems odd. They often think that, except for a bit of polishing, every word they write is intended for the book.

There’s more about exercises to build and refine your story in Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books & How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence. More posts here about insights from my Guardian masterclasses.