“Sit In This”: Best MFA-dvice Ever

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“Sit in this.” That’s what Lisa Locascio Nighthawk, Dean of Antioch LA’s Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, told us graduates the day before our ceremony.

Here on Lopez Island, some of my own writing group, the Women Writers of the Salish Sea, had the same advice: “Celebrate your achievement. Write it all down–everything you did!”

I decided to heed all of them. I sat in my achievement for a whole week. I wrote it all down, on a big piece of butcher paper. And I celebrated–with my writer friends, and with cake.

Note my grad tassel as centerpiece

The cake, I made. But the Orange Twists were a special request from me to Iris Graville–as noted in her memoir Hiking Naked: A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance.

Here’s what’s written on that butcher paper:

  • 17 chapters—232 pages, 67,000 words—of my novel-in-progress Who’s a Good Girl (revised multiple times)
  • 50 books read (mostly novels; some short stories, nonfiction, and craft books)

  • 30 x 3-page literary analyses of fiction

  • One 5-page research paper

  • One 20-page research paper

  • One dozen (approximately) poems translated into English, plus commentary on peers’ translations

  • 20 (approximately) critiques of peers’ 20-page fiction submissions in workshop

  • 20 book group discussions (of which I led 4)

  • 80 weekly email check-in discussions

  • Five 3-page self-analyses of learning

  • Five 7-page summaries of learning from residency classes

  • One 30-minute PowerPoint presentation/seminar
  • One 12-minute public reading
  • Four 3-page annotated bibliographies
  • One 12-page annotated bibliography
OK, enough of that! Let’s eat.

While we were noshing & drinking, my friends asked me to reflect on my main takeaways from the past two valuable, packed, and expensive years. Here’s what I came up with:

  1. My instinct to immerse myself among a community of diverse writers–diverse in EVERY SENSE of the word, from age to class to life experience to race to gender identity, and more–was 100% correct. As a writer, I need to be around people different from myself. (As a human being, it doesn’t hurt either.)

[not pictured: all the diversity at AULA. I don’t like violating people’s privacy in showing photos]

2. Confidence is good, in art. Pride is not. I had to have the latter stripped painfully away before I could soothe the raw spots by applying the former. That’ll be a lifelong engagement.

3. Novelists need the help of other novelists. Poets and nonfiction writers can offer EXTREMELY valuable critique. But in the end…see sentence one.

OK, we got it. You worked hard. Now, about that novel-in-progress…

After a week of “sitting,” though, I’m ready to get back to work. Of course, it’s high summer now–a season that always has other plans for me than writing. But the last thing I learned will get me where I need to go, and that is:

4. Writing is writing. JUST DON’T STOP.

(You other writers: right? Feel free to chime in here with your own Writerly Takeaways.)

3 thoughts on ““Sit In This”: Best MFA-dvice Ever”

  1. I’m so glad you made time and space to celebrate and “sit in” the naming of what you’ve done. I hope you’ll keep that list handy for those inevitable days that doubts creep in. Sure, you’ll continue to learn and develop as a writer, AND, you’ve already done a shit ton of work in that process. Brava, my friend!

    In addition to being a terrific writer, you’re an outstanding cake baker! That chocolate cake, with its creamy icy, was the best. I’ll happily make orange twists for you, anytime.

    Writerly Takeaway – Be clear with yourself about your writing goals; they’ll greatly inform how to achieve what you desire as a writer. A novel/memoir/poetry collection/essay collection on bestseller lists? Literary awards? Being published in a specific journal? Getting your story on paper (or screen) for your family and friends? Self-publishing? Published by an indie press or one of the big five? Reading at a local festival? Being interviewed on a podcast? Whatever your goals are, they’re valid and valuable, each with different paths to achieve them. It’s easier to venture down the right road and arrive at your destination if you’re clear about where you want to end up. Whatever that destination is, all that matters is that it’s where YOU want to go.

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