Thanks for your thoughtful, articulate and balanced feedback.

Armand

I feel like I need to speak up for the other side here–the loan takers and part-time workers. I’m in my third year of grad school (did a year as an MA, then transferred to an MFA) and have taken out large loans every year. The first year, I worked full time as well, but for the last two years, I’ve been a graduate assistant. My funding as a GA covers tuition and a small stipend–not enough to even pay all my bills, let alone eat or buy shampoo–so I never thought twice about taking out the loans. That first year, I probably should have passed on the loans, but I took them and paid off my credit card debt, bought a laptop, and invested the rest. I thought this was wise because the interest on my student loans is much less than that on my credit cards and is considered “good debt” by credit agencies.

I suppose that I may regret my decision when I’m an adjunct and trying to pay back these huge loans, but I never thought of grad school (especially a degree in writing) as a path to a job. I had a job when I started grad school and although it paid well, it didn’t make me happy. Grad school makes me happy. I’m teaching, which as anything other than a GA I’m not qualified to do, and I spend every day immersed in books and poems and words. My writing has improved exponentially since I quit my full time job, and so has my quality of life. I’ve traveled more, met more interesting people, and learned more in the last couple years than in my whole life before.

I can’t say any of this with the benefit of hind-sight, but I think that the experience I’m having right now is worth any amount of financial burden I’ll face in my future. If I were still working full time, or even working a part time serving or retail job on top of my GA work, I wouldn’t have time to go to conferences, readings, and other literary events, and I’d be more strapped for time on things like papers and weekly reading. (And while sometimes I wish I could focus on just one paper, or one book instead of two or three at a time, I often find that my courses compliment each other in a way that taking one class at a time wouldn’t.)

So, to sum it all up, I consider my loans the price that I have to pay for the best few years of my life. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, but it has allowed me, if only for a short time, to live the writer’s life, which has been a dream of mine for quite some time.

Here are two that provide a good amount of support:

University of Alabama. Tuscaloosa:

“…It’s our policy to accept only applicants to whom we can pledge financial support for the duration of their programs…. All of our students qualify for Graduate Teaching Assistantships, which include a stipend paid over 9 months (currently $10,007) and full tuition remission…”

link: http://www.as.ua.edu/english/08_cw/support.html

University of Oregon, Eugene

” …The Creative Writing Program attempts to fund all admitted students with Graduate Teaching Fellowships (GTFs). Students with GTFs receive full tuition waivers (worth $13,734 in 2004-05), partial payment of student fees, health insurance, and a stipend of $9,314 per academic year…”

link: http://www.uoregon.edu/~crwrweb/faq.htm

I don’t think any school will cover all your expenses, but those cover a healthy portion.

If you just want to write and do not feel the need to explore other related careers options (like teaching) you migth be better served attending a good writing workshop (sans degree) at a place like Grubstreet in Boston (grubstreet.org) or Gotham Writers in New York.

best of luck-

Armand

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Glad that it helped allay some of your worries. Keep checking Gordon’s Blog, and let us know what’s happening as you work your way through your MFA program.

Armand

Thanks for your questions and interest. I’ll try to briefly answer your questions below:

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What kind of full-time job or jobs did you have while you were pursuing your MFA degree?
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Nothing spectacular. First I worked foodservice and later foodservice + tutoring. Both allow for flexible schedules. If you hate food service try retail.

For the first year, I worked part time at Starbucks @ about $9/ hour (that includes tips). I also did a nonpaying internship at a tiny local newspaper.

In the second year I parlayed that experience at Starbucks into a horrible food service job at Denny’s-like restaurant found here in New England called The Ground Round @ about $10-$12 an hour (waitering). I also did a nonpaying internship at an ad agency.

By the third year, I decided to work forty hours a week, so I got a part time job tutoring at a local community college*(1) and then found a job waitering at better restaurant in town. Pay for tutoring was $18/ hour and the new restaurant job was $20 per hour (roughly, it was all tips).

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When you were going to school part-time, did you take evening or weekend classes?

One nice thing about Emerson College’s set up is that almost all classes are offered once a week from 6-10 pm. So I was taking one class a semester once a week maybe like: Wednesdays 6-10.

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What did you do to discipline yourself to finish your creative thesis?
I actually found it much easier to write when I went to school part time. I think the whole hurry up and graduate thing is overrated. I think, IMHO, what we do is fall into a trap like this:

going to school = going into debt and putting my life on hold.

The reason I switched from full to part time was so I wouldn’t feel like that. I still had to borrow some money, but only enough to pay my tuition which wasn’t so bad especially since part time didn’t cost much. In the meantime, I was paying my bills myself (I did have to have roommates). And by the last semester, as I stated above, working full time allowed me to pay the tuition bill out of pocket.

Suddenly, my life was my life again. Instead of being an obstacle to life, college and writing had become part of the flow. It took me four years to graduate, but I had the time and energy to write. Having ‘a life’ -even the seemingly nominal life of a waiter and tutor- put me in contact with ideas and people outside of the literary circles at Emerson and gave me a bigger perspective. It actually took some of the pressure off writing because it was now something I did rather than my one golden hope. Maybe the tutoring would lead to teaching (it did). Maybe the waitering could lead to a cool, high paying bartending gig. (It didn’t)

I notice I haven’t really answered your actual question. I guess my general theory is that each writer has to find her or his form. (by forms I mean like: screenplay vs. comic books vs. literary short fiction vs. memoir vs. poetry etc) If you’re having trouble actually putting words on paper, consider messing with different forms until you find the one that tells the story that needs to come out. I’m presuming here that the reason you got into writing is that there’s something in you that can’t be expressed in any other way.

If you can’t find any form (and this is not about you, since I don’t know anything about you- I’m just using “you” in general) you may be in the wrong field. I think some people who went to writing school would be better actors (they need to get the story out orally) or stand up comedians or even would be film-makers, editors, agents or web designers. All these are noble career choices.

In my opinion, writing is hard because 1. it’s lonely, 2. because it does not produce any immediate rewards, 3. because most of us associate writing with a ‘lifestyle’ that almost none of us will ever achieve, and 4. because it involves heavy revision which for almost everyone is a massive pain in the behind.

OK- so 1. I write because my massive ego pushes my desire to create alone (by myself) rather than sharing work credit with others. (If I liked creating with others, I might have tried teleplay). And that desire for the product to be unequivocally mine overshadows the loneliness of creation. 2. The lack of immediate results often kills me but the older I get, the more patience I learn. 4. (I skipped 3, it’s down below) I also am lucky sole who doesn’t mind editing and re-editing. I joke that I have a dash of autism- I’m prone to revisiting thing. Like everyone else I do suffer from the ‘I’ve read this so many time that I don’t know if it’s good anymore’ syndrome. In those cases, I rely on my wife (who is an excellent proof reader) and a few friends whom I bother every four months or so (would you read this for me?) or the old put-it-in-a-drawer-and-forget-about-it-for-six-weeks trick. Sometimes I don’t have these options so I just keep revising and hope I’m doing the right thing. Sometimes I just settle on my best compromise (this is the best way I could write this scene, and I’m going to live with it and move on)

3. The one that hurts the most is the writer’s lifestyle thing. Like everyone else, I would love to get up late, stroll around the woods then retreat to a coffee house with my shiny new mac laptop and write like a madman, and still get home in time to make dinner for my wife and then spend the night relaxing and thinking deep thoughts. Those days may come, but they ain’t coming anytime soon. However, strangely, I’ve started looking forward to my late fifties (I’m 35 now & we intend to have children) when such a thing might be a possibility. Sometimes I think what I’m doing now might fuel a true writing lifestyle twenty years down the line.

The good news is the lack of a writerly life has really only hurt the feelings of the part of my brain that’s in charge of that kind of fantasy stuff (the same part of my brain that generates the win-the-lottery fantasy). It hasn’t really put much of a dent in my desire to write.

In fact, I often find my desire to write the strongest when I just don’t have time to do it. Not to get too personal, but it’s kind of like when I don’t have sex for a really, really long time. The lack of time just eats away at me and pretty soon, the desire to write is always there, spinning in the back of my mind. Then, when I finally have time to write, it comes out all glorious and whatnot. Of course, those first drafts are usually waaay overwritten, but then I get to move on to phase two- revision.

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Holy crap I wrote a lot.

OK- here are my questions right back at you:

1. What kind of writing do you do and why?

2. What was it specifically about your job that left you unable to write and can you avoid that quality in a job in the future?

3. Are you writing more now that you are full time in school?

4. How much of your MFA program time is spent working on papers (about books) rather than writing your own book?

thanks - Armand

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*(1) Getting the tutoring job was massively helpful for my future teaching work. While you can go the private tutor route, most colleges now have some sort of student tutoring center. They are usually called ‘The Student Learning Center’ or something like that. Sometimes they even have writing-specific centers. These might be called the ‘Writing Center’ or the ‘Writing and Literacy Lab.’ I’d advise finding employment at these types of places if possible.

Thanks for your note. As I write this occassional series, feel free to provide feedback based on your own MA experience whether you agree or disagree.

thanks again,

Armand