M. Suzanne Terry

Paying closer attention to my writing life reminded me that I may need business cards at some point. I’m not quite satisfied with this copy but it’s close.

For the past 12 weeks, I have been experimenting with the concept of a DIY MFA. I don’t have any career aspirations that actually require an official MFA, but I know that there’s so much that I could learn from such a program that would be beneficial to me as a writer, and I am a big fan of lifelong education. I essentially wanted to outline my own class to take each semester, leaning into the wisdom of others and all the rich resources that are out there to improve my writing. Each semester would be 12 weeks long, giving me three courses a year plus a nice break between them.

So I read a ton of the background info on the DIY MFA website (see link above), created a sort of MFA 101 syllabus (gosh, I’ve missed this part of teaching so much), and jumped right in. 

There are definitely challenges with trying to teach yourself something that you don’t already know. There are also delightful discoveries.

If I give myself an honest assessment, I would have made a B in the class I created if I had taken it for real from an accredited university. I accomplished the main goal, which was to build strategies for incorporating the following four elements of a traditional MFA into every week:

• Writing (putting words on the page to improve craft, creativity, and productivity)
• Reading (learning both what works and what doesn’t from the examples of others)
• Community (collaborating with writers/artists, connecting with an audience, and/or submitting/performing work)
• Education (listening, watching, and reading things to learn how to do the previous three elements better from people who excel at them)

But I didn’t come close to finishing all the things I had outlined to do. I loaded myself up with articles to read and podcasts to listen to (the plan was to mimic a studying/lecture situation), and I made extravagant goals that, looking back, pretty much ignored the fact that I have two jobs and am not a full-time grad student. 

I gave myself a ton of resources to get through and activities to complete every week. It didn’t look like that long of a list when I started, but about seven weeks in, out of curiosity, I added up the time it would take to get through the resources outlined in that week’s plan. Almost 11 hours of podcasts alone, which are not my favorite media by a long shot. Before I started this project, I might have listened to one or two podcast episodes a month. And suddenly I expected myself to dive into 11 hours of them a week? Bless my heart. No wonder I was overwhelmed.

Additionally, podcasts were but one aspect of my education that I was trying to fit in. I also listed weekly writing, reading, and community goals that, if completed in full, would have taken at least twice as many hours than the education portion. This resulted in a to-do list that would have been a heavy load even if this project was the only responsibility I had in life.

It was easy to get discouraged by looking at all I wasn’t getting done every week. Upon reflection, however, the reason this typically straight-A student is pleased with the overall outcome is that no semester in a traditional MFA would have been this packed. A 9-hour class schedule in most programs is considered full-time, because it takes into account that, to do well, you will likely need to spend 3-4 times as many hours outside class, reading and completing assignments, as you spend inside class. I went into this as if it were one (3-hour) course, but the syllabus I created was easily the equivalent of a 12-hour graduate workload. That I finished a little more than half of it means I exceeded my initial expectations. 

And I loved every minute of it.

Well, most of the minutes. Gonna be more selective and seriously dial back the number of podcast episodes I listen to each week for the next round starting in January. I just…that is not the life for me. 

But it forced me to be more mindful of my goals and how they balance. As a result, I’ve written more in the last 12 weeks than I have in the rest of the year combined. I also feel less stressed about decisions about my involvement with my various artsy communities (specifically, those times I want to do something but need to say no) because I now have a better overall understanding of my creative life as a whole. More of that, please. 

I also think having an official textbook for each semester would be helpful because then I can choose additional resources that complement it rather than jumping topics so much. For example, the next session’s textbook is Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which I have been through once already, but I know there’s so much more to learn there. And Cameron’s book is so detailed that the syllabus will basically write itself.

So this first session was a success, even if it didn’t always feel like it at the time.