Ouch. Sarcasm. Look, I was just trying to say, respectfully, that the issue is not black or white and also to answer the OP's question. But, yes, it's my money -- though, if you'd read my comments you'd know that I didn't pay anything for my MFA. You'd also know that I wasn't trying to say that doing a degree is the be all and end all, nor is it necessary. I think I made that clear. I was just pointing out that there are reasons that a person might want to do a degree. Perhaps not as the straight path to a shining career (as I said). But there are other reasons. It depends what you want. I was happy to come out of my BA waiting tables. And yet I don't see my time spent at university as worthless, which in essence is what you said and what I was responding to. It's neither one nor the other. I'd be the first to say that my "MFA and two bucks fifty will get you a cup of coffee". Yet it has been useful nonetheless for me. Anyway. Sorry for the thread-jack. Peace?
I agree with you, Shadow. It's the black and white nature of some peoples comments, and what I saw as an effort to deflate and dissuade, that I was responding to. Anyway, yes, choosing the right school, if that's what you want, is important. And yes, in the US most schools would prefer you take your masters someplace else -- not so in the UK, which, to tell the truth, I don't think a very good practice. (and btw, I'm an American living in the UK, so I've seen both sides). Good points.
I have been thinking about taking a few classes at a local university. Since they are very costly, I am left wondering if enrolling in such a thing is worth it. Did any of you attend a clas of the sort? I've read that Stephen King thinks they are overrated, but then again he also believes that most books on writing are worthless. What are your thoughts on the subject? I feel confused as there are so many things I want to improve and I can't tackle them all at once (I wanna buy a good grammar too but can't decide which one would be the most useful.).
Well I don't know of how much help this will be to you, but my high school offers a Grade 12 creative writing course and I went in thinking it would be an easy mark and a joke. Turns out I ended up learning a lot, not only just about writing itself but as myself as a writer. It was definitely worth taking and I always thought "who needs a writing class?". I know this isn't a paid university class though, so sorry I can't be of any further help.
Thanks for the input. It definitely helps knowing a fellow writer has taken a course and noticed some improvement.
A creative writing class depends on the teacher. I've heard of both good and bad experiences, and almost always the people who liked the class and got something out of it were those with a great teacher. It also depends on the interest level of the other students. Some are just there for an easy grade, so the feedback you get from those students probably isn't going to be very useful. If it's possible, I would see how effective the teacher is at teaching. After that, it's up to you since you'll be paying for it.
I've taken some Gotham online classes. I thought they were very good. The focus is not on an instructor delivering lectures, but rather on workshopping - every student presents a story and the rest of the students (and the instructor) critique it. There's a lot of discussion of each student's work. This workshop method of learning is something I found very positive. All of the students, being people who had paid for the course, were very serious about writing and were very willing to give serious, honest critiques. In return, they expected to receive serious, honest critiques from their fellow students. And the instructors guided the discussions and offered suggestions of things to read and so on, and they were all published writers, so we students took any input they gave seriously. The courses gave me confidence. Of course, they told me in no uncertain terms what was wrong with my writing, but they also told me what was right with it. They let me know that I wasn't deluding myself when I thought I was writing well. The confidence I gained from being critiqued honestly was well worth the price of the courses.
I have taken many courses in Creative Writing at my university, and I will tell you what I tell everyone who brings up this question. The only true benefit of these courses is that they expose to material you might never have picked up otherwise, and they allow your work to receive proper, honest criticism. Creative Writing courses do not give somebody the ability to write in the least bit, but rather they allow you to discover what your talents and weaknesses are as a writer. Most universities, however, require that you take some sort of introductory course before getting into the serious classes. These introductory courses are often full of undergrads just looking to pick up an easy gen ed credit and not well read individuals whose opinions you can trust. I would recommend looking into Gotham so as to avoid the this kind of no-benefit class.
I can see how that could easily become frustrating. However I've been considering Concordia University, since they require applicants to submit a portfolio and a letter of intent. I guess that might weed out some of the less desirable students. I will definitely have a look at the Gotham site as it might be a good alternative. I thank you all for sharing your insights.
Such courses can be amazing, or they can be sewage. Many years ago, I took a class taught by Peter Elbow (known for his technique of freewriting). Now maybe it's because it was a pass/fail freshman Humanities elective at an engineering school, but it was not only a complete waste of time, it killed my interest in writing for several years. There was no class leadership, and classmate "reviews" consisted largely or "I kinda liked it" or utter silence. No analysis, not5hing substantive, and no one was even required to really participate, either to present writing to the class or to critique. As long as you turned in something to the instructor every week, you received a P grade.
They can be good or they can be bad. I wouldn't advice just taking a basic creative writing class just because. If you're already studying at a University/College and have some humanities/general electives, you might as well see what these people know. (IMO, that's all college ever will be anyway, for the most part.) My community college has a decent certificate program, so I am gonna try to ride it out. It's been pretty cool so far. But I can't say it's anything I'd recommend to writers not in college. (But if you're going to my college, take the class cause we need enrollment. )
He also wrote a book on writing himself, if I recall correctly. Take his words with grains of salt. I agree with this. I was a Creative Writing major through college, which seemed silly at first, but you learn a great deal through workshop sessions. Having said that, there are plenty of workshop groups and communities that do what these classes do, and they may be cheaper. As far as writing goes, a lot of creative writing classes don't teach you much else than what you can find through the combined research of books dedicated to teaching the craft (since, most of the time, that's where your teachers learned it). But workshops can greatly improve your writing if the workshop is worth its salt.
I took 4 creative writing classes with the same professor in college, on top of about 10 English/Lit classes. The Eng/Lit classes didn't help a whole lot, except for bettering format and understanding of grammatical rules. The creative writing classes, were very helpful, as I liked my Professor and enjoyed the books he had published and used for his classes. He was very insightful, helpful, and his criticisms, well, I had papers sent back to me full of red, but his suggestions and comments were always extremely helpful. I learned a lot in my creative writing classes, though it was more of a foundation from which I could build upon in the years after college. Do you need it? No. Might it be helpful to you? Maybe. It will depend greatly on the teacher as to what type of experience you have. In a few instances in classes I took, I made an appointment before signing up for a class to meet the teacher and ask them about the syllabus and got a feel for their attitude and way of explaining things just by that interaction. I decided to not take a couple of classes by doing this, when I realized the teacher was a prick. Saved me the money. Is there anything in a creative writing class you couldn't learn on your own? Not really. You could spend $200 on books on how to write through amazon and probably end up learning more than you would in classes. The only thing the classroom brings is the interaction with your peers and the criticism of the "authority"...the teacher. It is your money though, so how you choose to spend it is up to you. Personally, if I could go back in time, I might forgo college classes, save myself the headache of money spent and loans taken, and just order the books I ended up ordering later on.
For me, the Gotham courses I took were not about what the instructor was saying. They're not about the instructor imparting information to the students. They're not about getting facts out of textbooks. They're about serious critique. My fellow students were almost invariably more important than the instructor. The instructor could help guide the conversation and encourage the students, but he or she did not take on the role of a professor, really. The instructor was more of a coach, urging the students on to perform better. The main benefit of the courses was the interaction with the other students. When the other students are intelligent, talented, and motivated (as most of mine were), the critiques are extremely helpful. Though I've read probably fifty books on writing, none have been as valuable as the critiques I've received from my fellow students. I can't sit here in my ivory tower reading books on writing and calling myself a good writer. I needed the feedback of people who take writing seriously. There's no substitute for honest, serious critique.
It depends where you go. Personally, I enrolled in a creative writing course in 2009 and dropped out after a month - they promoted purple prose and told me that my opinions on the connotations of certain names were "wrong". I didn't think opinions could be wrong but there you go. I found a single session of an English literature course (2010~2011) much more informative than a months worth of creative writing classes.
I brought this up with a the head of the writing department at my school, and she said a big concern with attending a creative writing program is a failure to develop your voice. By learning from specific teachers, by having them give you a grade, you might start to emulate their voice. It is either because you are inspired by them and want to be more like them, or you know that they will give you better grades if you sound more like them, because that is a style of writing that obviously appeals to them. She said that only by avoiding such formal education does your voice have space to truly develop. Writing circles is much less like this, because you get a variety of input, and there is no person who ultimately grades your work.
Learning to write to a particular lecturer/professor is a useful skill. Always check out what they have written on the subject My main area of study was archaeology with history as a minor a subject. (another useless arts and humanities subject ) As a writer that combination is really useful. History teaches the writing, empathy (well as long as you focus on social, rather than political history), Archaeology adds science, practical experiences in a variety off offbeat areas, sociology, anthropology, world building (how to describe an unfamiliar world is a big part of it), and a ton of useless knowledge you may need just in case lol I find stratigraphy and the concept of layers (boy I hated that at uni), transfers very well to story telling. My American archaeology/history friends don't seem to have had any trouble getting jobs in publishing, banking, environmental science, forensics etc.
I would add: Learning to write to a particular lecturer/professor is a useful skill, as long as it doesn't hinder your own personal development as a writer. If you can do it and still develop your own voice, that is great, but (I think) difficult to do.
Hello everyone! I'd like to start a freelance writing career, most likely concentrating on nonfiction magazine articles to pay the bills while I pursue fiction writing with whatever time I have left. You know, in my "free time". Hey, stop that snickering. I can hear you, you know. I bought the book "Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer" by Moira Allen, and though there's a great deal of useful information in it, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. I wish I knew someone who actually does this for a living so that I could call them up, tell them I'm a confused wussy-boy, and ask them to hold my hand and get me on the right path. However, scanning my roster of non-writerly friends reveals to me that this is not an option. I was wondering whether there are any reputable online courses that could serve the same purpose. I know there are lots and lots of courses out there. I've seen some of their websites. I assume that some are good, some are bad, and some are run by evil overlords trying to separate me from my dwindling cash flow. The problem is, how can I tell the good from the bad? Any advice would be appreciated, of course. Thanks for your time! Unless, of course, you haven't even bothered to read this far, and in that case, assume I've written something really rude about you that you will never read. Ha. That'll show you. -Daniel
'the gotham writers workshop' has the best courses online and if you'll look at the list on the right side of the page, you'll see they do offer one for article writing: http://www.writingclasses.com/ however, i don't know why you'd need to take a course... you can study articles such as you want to write that have appeared in magazines, for free... or at the most, for the cost of few copies of various publications... if you're a good enough writer, that's all it will take... but if your writing skills need improving, then i'd strongly recommend gotham's over any other courses... i've written columns and articles for both magazines and newspapers, so if you want any one-on-one help, just drop me a line any time... love and hugs, maia maia3maia@hotmail.com
Well, you have a sense of humor, and that's a start! I also don't have any writerly friends like you're describing, but I have done some research online for books and resources to help me improve my own writing. I've found that many Universities publish a synopsis of their English departments' reading line-up for particular classes. The relevancy of this is sometimes they include books specific to writing in a certain form or about certain things that aren't available in a typical bookstore. The idea I use is there must be some credibility to the guide if its part of a college curriculum. Still, use your own judgement (or you'll end up with an odd collection of quasi-useful books!), but it might be a way of finding resources you might normally not run into.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses here, maia and Cosmic Latte. Very much appreciated! I'm actually more interested in classes that teach one how to navigate the confusing and turbulent waters of breaking into the freelancing business, as opposed to classes that simply teach how to write magazine articles. I just seem to be having a difficult time with seeing how I can go from "I read a book about freelance writing" to "Holy crap! I just sold an article...I guess I'm a freelance writer!" There's a stuck toggle switch somewhere in my brain that is rusty, cranky, or scared (or, more likely, all of those things simultaneously) that interferes with my perception and prevents me from seeing the path that connects my current reality to what I'd like to replace it with. Not that I wouldn't benefit from an actual writing class (I haven't taken one since my college days, and I graduated in 1992!), but all the shiny technique and word-carpentry in the world won't help me if I can't figure out what I actually need to do to create this new reality. Again, my thanks to you both! -Daniel
You might consider searching for writing conferences in your area. I went to one and they offered a crash course in freelance writing, e.g. how to break into the business, etc. I opted for a different class at that time, but I think you would find it very helpful. Writing conferences in general are a great way to interact with other writers and further your education on the subject. I highly recommend them.
