“To achieve great things, two things are needed – a plan, and not quite enough time.” Leonard Bernstein

The last week of August I started the last year of my MFA – my thesis year. I thought I’d tell you a bit about my path into this next year. There is no manual on how to organize oneself for such a thing.

Background: Over the last several years* I’ve been writing my first book-length story with the intention of taking it through thesis – the writing capstone project of the MFA. My advisor is Ben H. Winters (http://benhwinters.com/). He and I are aligned on the goal – a publishable^ first novel by May, 2016.

Current State: Coming into this summer I had finished the 5th draft of the “novel-in-progress”. During August Ben read it and very kindly made over 400 comments throughout the ~170 page document. Comments ranging from sentence-level suggestions to big-picture concerns. Without exception Ben’s comments are spot on.
While he was doing that, I read the manuscript to myself out loud, and made over 300 comments. Most of my comments were small, text tweaks – adding color here, altering a dialogue tag there.

Onward: I have now done a few things. 1) I’ve read all of the comments and done some exploratory writing to better understand the challenges. 2) I’ve created a writing schedule covering each week from now through April 25th, 2016. 3) And I’ve printed Ben’s commented copy and my commented copy.
I have set these two copies of the manuscript on either side of my laptop and begun the work, according to schedule.
The schedule has me rewriting, from scratch, the entire manuscript twice – once before Thanksgiving, and once again by the end of March – with a read by Ben in-between.
I will work for two hours a day, every day, hoping that will be enough effort to accomplish the work I’ve scheduled.
Do root for me, won’t you? And if you’re looking for me I’m here at my desk – writing.

*A tale unto itself.
^A manuscript an agent will read.

How is work evaluated in an MFA Creative Writing workshop?*

The first thing to note is that the classroom is called a workshop. The idea being that instruction comes via creative collaboration. The intent is not to have an expert telling novices how to do something (we aren’t learning thoracic surgery or small engine repair). The goal is to get hands-on with the medium and discover what can happen.

Three or four of the ten or twelve students submit a piece via email a week before the session. Participants prepare by reading the submitted work and notating it (by hand or electronically) where it is not functioning to potential – voice, character, pace, organization, etc. – or where it is working well. The goal is to assist the author in making the piece what they want it to be. So comments like, “if this happened, that would be really cool” are not considered helpful.

At meeting time (my current one meets every Wednesday night from 6-8:30PM) everyone brings their marked copies and the pieces are discussed openly – each getting about twenty minutes. The professor (a published novelist and professional teacher) chimes in regularly with expert commentary and instruction from which everyone benefits. The author of the piece being reviewed is not permitted to speak. The idea is that the work must stand on its own. The author simply listens and takes notes – lots of them.

When the discussion is over, the author is permitted a few minutes to comment or ask questions (it is poor form for the author to defend the piece). Then everyone (including the professor) hands the author their marked copies and he/she takes these home to review and consider for their next draft.

This event of having your story “workshopped” is as good as it gets. Having a group of 8-12 people, who are equally serious about writing, converse about what makes good writing is a sort of oxygen. As in any craft, knowing where and why you are missing (or hitting!) the mark is essential to developing expertise.

*At least in the ones I have been in. I believe that our experience is fairly typical. Although there is some chatter about variations on this theme – should the author speak, should everyone submit every week, etc.