Should You Get an MFA in Creative Writing? (Pros and Cons)
So…should you get an MFA in Creative Writing, or not? I asked myself this question for YEARS.
In fact, about every two years for a decade, I’d freak out and apply to MFA programs. I never wound up going, and eventually, I sold my first novel…and my second and my third.
So what did I learn? Today, I’m going to share with you the pros and cons of an MFA in Creative Writing, based on my own experience as both a published author and as a writing coach to dozens of writers working on books, some of whom have MFAs and many of whom don’t.
My personal MFA story
Here’s a quick story. In 2011, I quit my job as a lawyer in order to have time to write. I was committed to becoming a published author. I didn’t know if I wanted to write fiction or memoir, but I knew I wanted to publish a book.
I was 29 at the time, and seven years earlier when I was been 22, I’d written down a goal that I wanted to reach by 30, writing a book, along with learning to speak French.
I hadn’t learned to speak French yet, so…it was time to make the book thing happen. I truly figured it would take me about a year to write a book and get a book deal…and even that sounded long. HA!
Nope. It took me six.
I took writing classes back to back on everything from how to write beautiful sentences to how to write humor to how to write a book proposal.
Some of these were great, others were weirdly discouraging, and I left them feeling worse about myself as a writer and a little bit depressed.
And every two years or so, I would have a moment of thinking, should I just do it? Should i just get an MFA?
I’d decide to go for it—I loved school, I always had, and being a student again for something I loved as much as writing sounded kind of like a dream.
I’d go through the entire process of applying…and if you’ve never done it, know that it is a process.
Getting recommendations. Writing Statements of Purpose. Paying $100 per application. Polishing my writing samples…all for the chance of getting one of like 5 spots in a program to which I knew hundreds of people were applying, and, if I was admitted, moving to some location that wasn’t in my current home city and dropping tens of thousands of dollars on more education when I already had student loan debt from law school.
I did this three times.
The first time, I was rejected at all but one place where I was waitlisted and never got in. The second time, I was admitted to one school that I turned down because I got nervous about the money.
And the third time, I got into a program I was really excited about, but by this time, I actually had friends who were graduating from MFA programs or had graduated.
And what I was noticing was that they were graduating without having written books. And then when they finally did write books a few years out of grad school, they were having as hard a time finding agents as I was.
Plus, a couple of them had actually graduated from their MFA programs unhappy they’d gone because it had stifled their creativity, and they couldn’t write anymore.
That was…the last thing I wanted. Having taken some non-MFA creative writing classes myself that had wound up squashing my creativity rather than the opposite, I really didn’t want that.
In the end, I couldn’t stomach signing on the dotted line and investing about $50,000, which is what it was going to cost me, for a program I wasn’t confident was going to help me enough.
Luckily, I didn’t have to.
Eventually, I signed with my literary agent, who, shortly after, sold my book, then my next two books. And when I realized I had some good stuff to teach people following in my footsteps of wanting to be published authors, I started a writing program.
Now, I work with all kinds of writers, including writers who have MFAs.
So is it worth it? What are the pros and cons? First, let’s talk about the pros, then we’ll talk about the cons.
Pro #1: Making a commitment this large to writing leads you to take it seriously and prioritize it, which is how you find your voice
When you invest time and money in something like an MFA program, you tend to take it seriously, right? It’s human nature.
So committing to a graduate program is a way of dedicating yourself to be held accountable to write. That’s not a small thing. I think there’s tremendous value in that, and this is a major reason why I almost went.
Pro #2: You’ll have a serious writing community of talented writers & mentors
Being surrounded by people who share your same goal and are also dedicated to it can be a really powerful thing. So is, obviously, being mentored by good writers who are also good teachers.
Now, do you need to fork over $50K or more or spend three years taking full-loads of semester-long classes to get this? Eh…
I eventually found this community for myself. But it took me awhile. It certainly wasn’t efficient.
Pro #3 is a kind of an expired pro: It used to be that if you wanted to teach, you should get a masters
But these days, most teaching jobs at universities are given to people with PhDs, which you’re not going to want to get if what you actually want is to spend your time writing creatively and not writing about writing creatively.
The positions that are not reserved for PhDs are so competitive that a masters barely gets your foot in the door.
And adjunct professorships pay…very little. Like, a couple thousand dollars a semester. So don’t be fooled into thinking this degree will get you a salaried job you can live on unless you want to teach at a decent-paying high school. In which case, great.
But…in that case, go because you want to teach high school, not because you want to be a novelist.
Maybe it can help you get an agent? But honestly, if you write a good book, you’re going to get an agent without the MFA. Everyone I know has, including myself.
Now for the cons that I see working with writers everyday.
Con #1 is obvious…it’s quite expensive
The average cost of an MFA in the United States is currently about $37,000 per year.
At 2-3 years depending on the program, that comes to nearly, if not over, $100,000.
That ain’t cheap.
Con #2: Certain programs can be stifling or even crippling
One spring, during the years when I was sporadically applying to MFA programs, I went to a writing residency where I made a new writer friend who happened to have gotten her MFA from the best school in the country years earlier.
It was fully funded, she hadn’t paid a cent. And she was very clear with me: it had destroyed her creatively. She said she hadn’t written a word for years afterward.
It had taken the joy out of writing for her, and in this moment when I was meeting her, about a decade later, she was finally starting to write again.
This story was very disturbing to me, and I’ve since heard versions of it from several other writers.
MFA programs also don’t often allow—or at least don’t encourage—you to write in genres, even if that’s what you like.
You may love horror or romance—and want to write it, which I think is a great idea, since I’m a firm believer in writing what you love to read—but most MFA programs aren’t going to encourage you to write in these genres.
You’re more likely to be pushed, however implicitly, to write in a more literary and less commercial fashion.
And you might not want to do that.
This is a totally arbitrary feature of these programs, by the way, the under-appreciation of plot. Well, not arbitrary, I think it’s ultimately classism.
I think genre writing, and writing in general that has a great plot, is as difficult to pull off as any kind of writing and therefore equally if not more impressive than non-plot-driven fiction.
But that’s another discussion for another time.
Con #3: It doesn’t teach you to write a novel
If that’s what you want, don’t expect to learn that there. No one I know finished their MFA program with a novel.
Several people with MFAs came to my program to learn HOW to write a novel, including one who’s doing her MFA and my program simultaneously.
So, listen, you are going to have to decide for yourself.
Ready to write your book?
But this is the part where I am going to invite you to check out my program, The Book Incubator, because I specifically designed it to give writers the pros of an MFA program without the cons.
When I’m not writing, my mission in life is to help talented writers write their dream books. I love it. I live for it.
Because before I published my novels, I first had to figure out how to write one. It wasn't easy because none of the writing classes I was taking showed me how to actually write a novel.
Not until I had a newborn baby and only a couple of hours to write every day did I come up with a process. The process worked. I wrote my entire novel during my 8-week maternity leave.
Now, I teach it in my program The Book Incubator and it works for dozens of other writers.
Like in an MFA program, you have a select community of talented writers and well-credentialed mentors. It only costs about a tenth as much as an MFA, but lasts a full year.
It’s designed to liberate you so you can realize your unique vision in your unique voice, no matter what genre you’re writing.
And 95% of people finish writing their books before their year in the program is complete.
If you're curious to know more, I have a free video walking you through my exact process for writing a book. You can get it by clicking below and answering two questions to apply to the program. You get the video whether you join or not—no pressure to enroll.
Just click below to tell me a little bit about you and your book—you can fill out a form online. I’m so excited to hear from you!
