Helpful tips for applicants + cross-genre work, Cont'd

by Marita Siddal

I started to write a comment about Denis's provocative post this morning, then realized the length made my input better suited to a new post!


General note on researching programs

I'll begin with an old adage: It never hurts to ask.

I went through the whole MFA application process twice. The first round, I was accepted by a few . . . and upon further investigation, I didn't care for any of them! I'll attribute this in part to my own belated realization that I wanted to study fiction in addition to poetry, and none of the programs to which I'd been accepted would offer this flexibility; and in part because, well, I didn't care for them.

When I began my second round, I cut to the chase. I didn't want to wait until after I'd spent $40 to $75 bucks on each application before being admitted and speaking to faculty extensively, only to learn that the approach and the attitude of the program wouldn't "fit" me. So I contacted administrators directly to inquire about their programs.

I'll plead with you, please do not pester these hardworking people with a barrage of open-ended e-mails. Try, as much as possible, to have a consolidated preface about your artistic passions and what you'd like to learn through an MFA.

You'll then face a variety of responses:

• The scattered, "Huh? We have a website . . . here are some links . . ." from poorly organized programs.
• The scattered, "Huh? What'ya wanna know?" from poorly organized programs.
• The somewhat pretentious, though somewhat justified, "Thank you for your inquiry. Here is a cursory, administrative-toned answer." from some of the highly competitive programs who are not concerned with courting you because they get the best applications anyway, and might legitimately be too busy fielding the flood of those applications to give you much individual time.
• The warm and gracious, "We have solid answers to your questions. Also, why don't we put you in touch with a few of our faculty and alumni who could answer your questions with their personal perspectives in greater detail!" from organized programs who, whether or not they already have an applicant pool full of glittering young stars, would always like to do whatever is within their power to help aspiring writers reach their goals.
  

VCFA leapt firmly into the last of those categories, and my conversations with faculty and alumni quickly led to my realization that I'd found my MFA home. Lesley University is another very earnest low-res program that I considered.

This process did take a while. But in the end, I saved a considerable amount of time by preparing a mere three applications as opposed to seven the year before -- and happily enrolling and attending, rather than regrouping for anothe round of applications in the wake of disappointment. (I do realize that many people, the reputable blogger Seth Abrahamson included, would advise that you apply to many more programs than this. However, I was only interested in low-res, which narrows my options from the start. Anyway, my point concerns relative effort rather than actual numbers.)


Cross-genre / Dual-genre

Denis, I think we chose our schools for similar reasons! Though I did have to decide beforehand which genres I'll pursue, VCFA's dual-genre option allows me to work in both poetry and fiction. Students can also opt to incorporate CNF and writing for children in a dual-genre degree. If you look under the section entitled SELF DESIGNED STUDY on this page of VCFA's site, you'll see a hint of how dual-genre works. (I'd be happy to answer any further questions about it!)

Overall, I'm an extreme believer in genre fluidity. Exploring a spectrum of the arts can only infuse a person's work with more comprehensive and flexible perspectives, whether or not they end up pursuing the explored genres seriously.

The only aspect that would concern me about an entirely open cross-genre model is how it might affect workshops. I'm considering my own development as a writer here . . . I do know, had I applied to VCFA in poetry a year earlier and they had allowed me to study in both poetry and fiction, I would've been a pothole in a fiction workshop! I simply wasn't ready to pursue fiction on a graduate level at that point. I browsed the Hollins site and couldn't quite tell, can you workshop in any genre you like? If you are not required to pass through another competitive application process beforehand, seems as though this might prove to be a hindrance or at least a slight hiccup in workshops. Not to say that someone who applied in one genre cannot offer brilliant feedback in another -- simply that they might not have as much experience in it yet, to the extent that a classroom could feel disjointed.

I would agree that study without too much formal recognition of genre might file down the nails of of competitiveness, perhaps for a different shade of the reason Denis calls to our attention . . . Statistically, cross-genre might still yield the same number of students from one school submitting works of the same genre to a single publication. This might be best illustrated with an example: you could have 4 students who each submit both CNF and fiction to the Kenyon Review under cross-genre, instead of 2 submitting in CNF and 2 submitting in fiction to that same journal when students must stick to one genre in their studies . . . Yet the former scenario suggests a simultaneously unified and diverse community of writers, rather than a set of CNF writers and a set of short story writers. Though students might generate the same amount of competing work, I wonder if they notice as much when their program does not categorize so closely.

Cross genre work + helpful tips for Hollins applicants

by Denis Yurchikov



Part I:

How many of you are planning to do some cross-genre work at your respective programs? One reason I chose to go to Hollins was that the program is focused on letting its students do pretty much whatever they want. I'm not sure if it will be exactly like that in practice, but in theory, even though I applied in nonfiction, I'll be free to choose whichever genre I wish to study. I'm one of those people who wants to do everything. I started my writing career (if I may unapologetically call it that) writing poetry, took one poetry workshop class at Berkeley, then took 3 consecutive nonfiction workshops, and decided to apply to MFA programs in nonfiction. While taking nonfiction workshops, I also started writing short stories and have been thinking about an idea for a novel, which I want to work on while I'm at Hollins. I’m pretty sure I have something in the order of 100 poems sitting in a folder on my desktop, and I’d like to start working on those again.

I think cross-genre programs are a really good idea because, potentially, they reduce competition. If you're at a program like the Iowa NWP, you and your classmates will primarily be writing nonfiction, and most likely submitting the pieces you write to the same publications. I think that’s slightly counter-productive.

In a cross-genre program, there will still be some competition, but I believe that over all, there will be fewer people submitting in the same genre to the same publications, leading to a higher chance of publishing success, and less possible anger/jealousy.

I realize that this argument is completely unsubstantiated, but I still feel that in addition to reducing competition, cross-genre programs encourage creativity and the idea that being a writer shouldn’t mean being a writer in just one genre.

I haven't seen many cross-genre programs out there that I can specifically name. Can anyone suggest some besides Hollins?

Part II:

As many of us who applied last year know, finding information on programs can be really tough. Compounded with the number of programs applicants have to research, the whole process can be pretty time consuming. I wanted to share something that I didn’t find for a while last year, which will be useful for any new Hollins applicants this year.

If you go to the Hollins MFA website, you get a pretty good idea of what the program is about. I have to say that this is definitely one of the better MFA websites out there (just try navigating Emerson’s website). Still, there are a couple of things you should look at right away.

First, go to “The Writer’s Life at Hollins” to find information on the first and second-year students and the FAQ (or, Things that People Ask Us a Lot (TtPAUaL)). I think the FAQ is the most important part of the website, as it specifies what Hollins looks for in a writer. As far as I can recall, Hollins was the only school I looked at that had such specific details about the kinds of people the program values.

Back on the main MFA page, you can find a pretty good rundown of what’s required to apply (GRE scores optional), and the actual application, which I loved. The application was so easy.

So yeah, if you found the FAQ, you’re in good shape. If not, now you will be. Perhaps other people can share interesting tips/tricks or information that’s not widely available on their schools’ websites.

PS. Hollins took 15 students this year.

On Obsessions

By Brianna McPherson

Ladies and gentlemen, I need to be honest with you. I am a hobby freak. Just within the last year I made a short film, took a singing class, bought a new watercolor set, indulged in various paper crafts, jewelry making and am currently teaching myself how to play the baritone ukulele. I don't say these things to impress you. (As if anyone could be impressed by my clumsy string plucking or sloppy paper folding!) To be completely honest all this hobbying is kind of frustrating, expensive and time consuming. The worst part, though, is that after I hit one little success in my hobby I'm off to my next new thing and won't return to the hobby I had been working so hard to master for months, perhaps even years. I've been doing this since I started college, when I was presented with unsupervised free time and bank account. I bought scads of fabric for (mostly unsuccessful) dress making, piano charts for songs I still can't play, a Food Network cookbook that I have opened only once, a tennis racket that has spent most of its life in the trunk of my car, among many other silly and strange things.

So far in my life I have only run into a few "hobbies" that I just can't get rid of: writing, spirituality and feminism. If those three things occupy the majority of my time, energy, thoughts and money, then what in the hell am I doing with a henna kit and a "how to draw manga" book? I'm not exactly sure yet, but recently I have been affirmed in my obsessive search for an obsession. When I was applying to Hollins, I found a little passage on their MFA website:

[W]e are pleased to see someone’s got obsessions. Fly-fishing, quilting, medieval Japan, the Fibonacci series, Indian motorcycles, goats, progressive jazz, the Appalachian trail, whatever—if there’s something out there in the world a student finds compelling, we feel hopeful. If it’s several somethings, even better.

Now, I always knew a strong sense of curiosity in the world around you is a sign of life in a writer. Even better, there's a grad program out there that wants me to be more than a writing machine. That's a heavy task to take on. I've always felt uneasy about taking on the persona of "the writer." That label conjures up images of somebody hunched over their laptop, moodily jabbing the keys and screening phone calls with the thought don't they know I'm writing? While I have been known to lock myself in my room from time to time, I am not just a writer. I am a woman who writes and has way too many art supplies for her own good. Maybe one day all of the experiences of pricking myself with needles, setting off the fire alarm in my apartment building and my misadventures with the tennis wall will come together in an elegant and coherent essay, but for now I am happy that these a simply signs of a healthy writer's life.

Marita Siddal (Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2012)

Halloo everyone! Looks as though I’m the first contributor who is enrolled in a low-residency program? Anyway, quick aside, I encourage anyone interested in the low-res MFA model to check out the Balance & Budget, or How I Chose My MFA Program post on my individual blog. Now to introduce myself . . .

I write both poetry and fiction, and thus far I’ve found my work cohesive in the subjects and themes I approach across both genres – and all the gray area in between.

The entire art world, even beyond creative writing, seems a gray area to me at times. One boundless space for my flurried (and perhaps oft confused and naive) explorations. I’ve been indulging my impulses in visual arts intermittently over the past few years – some amateur photography and mixed media, a couple of introductory art courses and a film minor during undergrad, etc. I have plans to explore poetry off the page with a few simpatico faculty members during my time at VCFA. Many of my primary artistic influences aren’t from literature at all – classical sculpture and Magritte and the film lineup at E Street Cinema, Beck and Thievery Corporation and Spoon and Franz Ferdinand.

I don’t spend a terrible lot of time reading, honestly, for someone who is already a month into her MFA program. I don’t find that this impedes my work at all. Lately I get through an individual book of poetry or fiction plus a gleaning of an anthology or two each week – or maybe that is a fair amount, I’ve always been an exceptionally fast reader so I can’t be too sure. My long-standing heavy favorites are Ted Hughes, Hemingway, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. I try not to let my admiration of Adrienne Rich turn into worship, and I think Tory Dent is one of the most under-appreciated poets of our time.

I delve into other arts extensively whenever I write. I'm always searching for intriguing vantage points in films, which I then turn inside out with words. I find that my own lyricism really wakes up when I enjoy beats rising alongside Beck’s voice sailing urgently through the lines “Now I'm a seasick sailor / on a ship of noise / I got my maps all backwards / and my instincts poisoned / in a truth blown gutter / full of wasted years.” Who wouldn’t want to rip the veil away from the truth of words after that? I also count myself very fortunate for living close enough to the nation’s capitol that I can check out the galleries and museums any weekend I want. On and on, I can’t explain enough how I want the array of arts to melt together. For me, the process feels akin to throwing Aztec chili powder into a mug of dark hot chocolate.

As for the “who what when where why” of my writing . . . I’m invested in what you might loosely call women's issues. The tortures and joys of intimacy, and the manner in which society views a woman’s image are central passions. I'd say that I have equal interest in poetry as supreme pleasure and introspection and poetry as a voice for activism. I’ll lay my darkest “secret” bare here, as I believe it is relevant: I struggled with an eating disorder for much of high school and college. My own experience and my emerging desire to help erode the societal pressures that may pose the same descent for others, all this has been pivotal in my life as a writer. I identify with the confessional poets to an extent . . .

I’ll finish with a quick statement of intent, for those readers who made it through the entirety of this meandering exposition: my overarching aim within my pursuit of an MFA is, naturally, to absorb all I can about craft and form from my mentors and my fellow students – all the while retaining my raw honesty and energy.

Goals

by Jonterri Gadson
I refuse to waste the time that the MFA gifts me so here’s my list of goals:

1. Write the best poems I can write - That’s the number one reason that I chose the MFA because I want to gain more exposure to poets, poems, and poetic techniques so I can use these things to write my own best poems. Plus, everything else follows from this: publications, future employment, the meaning of life. I just need to write my best poems and see what happens.

2. Keep to a writing schedule- This is something I started ahead of time. I spent 2-4 hours in the library every weekday over the summer. The library had a summer reading program so my son participated in that for a few hours while I sat in the café sipping iced mochas and writing (everything but poetry, see Jennifer's "Were You a Writer Today" post) like a mad woman. This library time has been the highlight of my summer. I can’t wait to get to Charlottesville and scope out a good place for my writing sessions. I need a not so busy coffee shop with free wifi, Universe, okay? I really don’t care where I do it as long as I get 3 hours a day in. Our class schedule is very light at UVA the first year(1 poetry workshop + 1 elective & no teaching the first year) so I have no excuse not to meet this goal.

3. Enjoy myself- This could actually prove to be the hardest one for me. I have family obligations and not a lot of free time, except on weekdays during elementary school hours like (8am-330pm). So my plan is to make myself available for lunch/coffee dates with any of my classmates. I’ll be the go-to girl for anything anyone wants to do in the daytime. Also, success is fun, so what really still matters is that I accomplish #1 on the list.

What are some of your goals?

The Summer Before the MFA

by Eric Tanyavutti

I like to be prepared. If there’s anything that decades of procrastination and laziness has taught me, it’s that events in life (my life, at least) tend to be less painful if I prepare. (Strangely, I do not apply this rule at all to my writing time or writing space; in fact, I tend to do exactly the opposite. But that’s another subject.) Yet if there’s anything this summer has taught me, it’s that there is no amount of planning and organizing that could’ve prepared me for the enormous task of getting ready for grad school.

After compiling my to-do list a few months ago, I was crushed by the enormity of it all. There seemed to be too much to do and far too little time. My fiancée and I had timed it out such that we had to move twice -- once to her new place in Chicago, and a second time to my new place in Champaign -- in the matter of weeks. We were downsizing our large two bedroom apartment to a more affordable one bedroom (in both places). Less space, which means less stuff. Less stuff, which means throwing things away. And throwing things away, things that you seem to always have a sentimental attachment to, is never pleasant. I also needed money to save as much money as possible, so I stayed at my place of work perhaps several weeks past when I should’ve. Working 40-50 hours a week while trying to move, study, write, and prepare is an inhuman prospect at best. Most nights after work was spent on the couch, simply vegging out. There was also the studying. Like Jennifer so eloquently covered in the last post, I spent more time preparing for craft classes, reading craft books, textbooks, handbooks, chapbooks, than I did writing in the whole summer and before, probably all the way back when I started to seriously consider applying to grad school. I don’t think I’ve been a writer in over a year. And still, even with all that preparation for grad school, I do not feel anywhere half as prepared to class and teaching as I want or intend to be. It’s a horrible feeling.

And then there were all the little things. The frantic rush to “use” my health insurance one last time before leaving my job for good. Thanks to that, I now have a hole in my head where an impacted wisdom tooth used to be. Forwarding addresses. Closing accounts of old utilities, opening a half dozen new ones. Spending hours in line at the DMV to get the license and passports renewed.

So I close with this. It seems to me that this summer has been one of the most stressful I’ve had in a while. Where I had (mistakenly) thought after getting accepted, “Gee, now the hard part’s over, thank goodness I can finally relax,” I’ve actually found it to be a ton of work. Is this the experience others have been having? How have you been coping (or not)? Has the amount of work and preparation surprised you (or not)?

Were You a Writer Today?

By Jennifer Brown

Writers write.  Am I a writer?  Well, not today.  And not yesterday either.  Did I burn out from the whole MFA application thing? Am I blocked?  Am I just lazy and waiting for school deadlines to kick my ass into gear?

You see, I’ve done very little work since I wrote the stories I submitted with my MFA applications.  I haven’t written what I would consider a full story at all since the apps.  I’ve completely re-written one of my application pieces in accordance with a workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and started submitting it.  And I’ve written two pieces of flash.  One of them is being published online with Clockwork Cat in the winter edition so I consider that a successful piece of work.  But I had great hopes for myself this summer that weren’t to be.  I quit my 50-hour a week stress-filled job a while ago, hoping to really get some writing done before school starts --- “really get some writing done” as in really write some new stories.  But aside from the two pieces of flash, it hasn’t happened.  A busy schedule didn’t exist to get in the way. . . so why?  Why aren’t I producing? 

I think the truth of the matter is that this whole MFA thing has me scared.  What if what I write isn’t good enough?  What if the students in my program or god forbid the professors look down on my work as “horror” (people sometimes describe it that way).  What if people think it is too flowery?  What if I got into school because my application stories were great but now I can’t do it again?  What if everything that I write from here on out just all-around sucks?  What if I write something and it isn’t perfect?

Ahhh, wait!  There it is!  What if it isn’t perfect.  There is the problem.  And I’m blogging about it here because I have a feeling that the I’m-Afraid-It-Won’t-Be-Perfect monster will plague more than a few of us as we begin to write work to share in our respective programs.  Sometimes I’m able to tell myself “0f course it won’t be perfect” and calm down and write, and sometimes I’m not able to do that. This subject is on my mind in part because of a wonderful quote fellow MFA Chronicles contributor Jonterri has on her Facebook page.  I think there is an antidote  to the I’m-Afraid-It-Won’t-Be-Perfect monster in there, so I’ll just quote it:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive.

~Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille

Beautiful wisdom.  I think I’m unblocked and ready to enter my program with courage.  Thanks to that quote tomorrow morning I’ll be able to answer the question “Are you a writer today?” with a big yes.  I think I have a story in me that wants to get out --- even though it probably won’t come out perfect!