Should i get mfa in creative writing

On the other hand, you could learn things from these people. It also introduced me to some people who became very good friends and writing colleagues over the years. I think that a good workshop is invaluable. But it has to be a good workshop. To make these two groups as comparable as possible, we only gathered novels by non-MFA writers that were reviewed in The New York Times , which we took as a mark of literary excellence.

Using a variety of tools from the field of computational text analysis, we studied how similar authors were across a range of literary aspects, including diction, style, theme, setting, and even how writers use characters.

Needless to say, novels consist of much more than just these features. What makes a single novel a great novel, what makes, say, Junot Diaz sound like Junot Diaz, is of course mostly immeasurable.

But these features remain the fundamental building blocks of any novel, so if MFA writing were in aggregate to have some essential difference from books written by authors without MFAs, it should be perceptible at the very least at this genetic level of prose.

When we did this, the computer was successful only about 67 percent of the time at guessing correctly. To put this number in context, with the same procedure we can predict bestselling novels about 82 percent of the time or whether a novel is a mystery or romance 85 percent and 95 percent of the time, respectively. For example, MFA novels tend to focus more on lawns , lakes , counters , stomachs , and wrists. To test whether this was the case, we used a method called topic modeling that examines themes instead of individual words.

How about style? Surely, we thought, there should be some stylistic differences between these novels. The way writers put their words in order, that special MFA voice, should be detectable at some level. However, taking syntax as a measure of style—if we see style as the way writers sequence their words, the way they put their sentences together—we saw little difference between the two groups. MFA novels tend to use pairs of adjectives or adverbs less often, or avoid the more straightforward structure of a noun followed by a verb in the present tense.

So far, nothing. Our students come from a variety of fields, but they all share a common passion — an interest in improving their writing ability. Whether you are interested in establishing yourself as a writer or advancing your teaching career, our online creative writing program lets you gain essential credentials without uprooting your life. We invite you to explore our online program and see what it will take to make that next step into your profession.

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Skip to content. Is an MFA worth your time and money? Identify your end goal To pursue her goal of publishing a novel, immerse herself into literary culture, and satisfy a crossroads moment of her life, Jordan Rosenfield decided to apply for MFA programs. Filed Under: Craft. September 2, at am. Brande says:. April 7, at pm. Edward Hicks says:. April 6, at am.