Thank you, Naomi. As an aspiring novelist almost finished with the second draft of my first (literary) novel, I found this extraordinarily depressing. I’m 33, have a family, have no MFA or intentions of getting one, and genuinely believe (in a non-market-driven, mostly aesthetic, but also selfish sense) that “the writing is all that matters.” I’ve had stories published in journals no one reads or has ever heard of. I do not have an agent and have no clue how to go about snagging one. And yet I continue to write, and I have no plan to stop. I guess my hope is that my novel will find an indie press with decent design and distribution, but who knows? Anyway, thanks for making be feel bad.
I admire your almost computer-like analytical skills and bone-dry way of dealing with uncomfortable facts. Keep up the good work.
I am sorry. It is a very depressing circumstance. I wish the literary fiction world was not like this. I do think indie presses take people without credentials, so that's a good option. If the book can get framed as upmarket or book club fiction, then it'll have a better chance too with major presses.
Interesting. When I retired and started writing seriously, I wondered about the value-add of an MFA and concluded that it depends on two things. First, whether the commitment to write is strong enough to persist against all the many setbacks that confront writers, and secondly, where you are in your life journey. Not specifically mentioning age, but it is relevant to cost-benefit analysis, or likely return on investment. The investment cost spread over three or four decades of writing is a good investment in one's art. Spread over one decade, it is questionable, but do it for the love of learning if it pleases you, rather than for any likelihood of enhancing success. ...
Beautiful stories, written for the sake of being beautiful, lose me quickly. I'd much rather read your "simply-told stories about stuff that people already care about." Those, written with literary skill, I consider worth the time spent reading them. IMO, there's poetry to read if a gripping tale doesn't matter! In my younger years, though, I was much more invested in improving myself than I have now become. LOL
I agree. The MFA is really for young people. Everything about it feels geared to people in their twenties. Of course those are also the years when people should be learning more remunerative job skills too! So in some ways those people suffer the most from the diversion into MFA labs
I guess writing skills don’t really matter as long as you know the right people and what people will pay for. Makes sense though. Meritocracy is pretty much dead everywhere, but it isn’t much deader than it is in the arts. Of course, I’m probably not even a good writer, but now I’m wondering if there’s even any point in trying anymore.
Thank you for this interesting piece, Naomi! It seems that the publishing world in the US is much different from the one in Germany where I live, but then again, I am not that familiar with what is going on here behind the scenes either. To me, the main thing remains that writing needs to be one of life's pleasures, not a scheme where you succeed or fail ...
Yes I do think the US system is quite different from Germany, but it's hard to feel pleasure in writing a novel, in my experience, if you don't feel like it has an audience.
I puzzled about how to sum up my reactions to it all. As I am British, I will quote Dr Johnson, "No one but a fool ever wrote anything other than to get money."
And because the author of the post and nearly all the responses are from the US, I share that Sylvia Plath had a great ambition to have a story published in The New Yorker, but never succeeded.
You know I love everything you write but u have to respectfully disagree on some points.
I had access to all the thing you mention— ny, lit people etc. I chose to do it my way. On my terms. Anonymously. I told you this before, if you really are talented, people , the ‘right people’ will notice . I know you put in a lot of work before that happened to you but that’s. Debate for later.
Mfa is fine if you go open eyed knowing all it gives you is the ‘space’ ie— time, community etc— to write . I did it but honestly I looked forward to my lit classes a lot more than the workshop classes which was a pain in the ass— to hear twenty versions of what your story is about.
But I was also lucky I have a twin who is one of the best editors I know . She really helped in the early days although now she’s turned so commercial I dare not show her anything . But when in dire need, I know I can go to her.
My undergrad which I eventually finished at 32 from the new school gave me multitudes more than my mfa.
So actually I agree writing classes help but not nec in doing an mfa. There are great continuing Ed writing workshops taught by the same people who teach the mfa courses . Sigrid Nunez for eg taught me at new school but she teaches at the Y (taught). It’s possibly true that ny gives you more access to all this. The new school teachers— Sigrid, Zia Jaffrey, changed my life . But they taught me at an undergrad albeit honours program . Ps— you should read zia. I think you’ll like her
Ever notice how many people with upper-middle class lifestyles went to college? How many wealthy business leaders have MBAs? Sure! Of course, plenty of poor people have college degrees and plenty of MBA grads are junior assistants to assistant VPs at an SEO farm too. I agree that it is mostly down to going to a top program to enter New Yorker/Paris Review circuit. The blog-to-small press to big press thing can perhaps still work as it did for Kate Zambreno to a certain extent but replace "blog" with "substack." But DON'T replace "small press" with "self-publishing" or even "starting a press with Peter Thiel money."
MFAs are also occasionally useful for:
getting a job in publishing, though this often requires a bit of entrepreneurship (start a magazine and hope THAT goes viral) or willingness to move somewhere either expensive (NY, Boston, SF) or unpleasant (whatever dump a university press is located in)
for teaching at non-MFA programs (community centers, a home-based workshop, enrichment classes for children, the community college)
and for other kinds of writing--being a columnist for Eater (sounds weird but I know two people who did that), ghost writing for Kindle superstars of various types (porn! bullet-point business books!) and other things where people do hire partially based on credentials as they lack other means to tell good writing from bad.
There are no jobs in publishing and the few jobs that exist are tremendously competitive, plus you're not writing and you work in an office like the rest of the schlubs. And a MFA isn't necessary because an English undergraduate degree is all you need. I'm not trying to be a downer. Only get an advanced degree if it's a guarantee of more money than your current job. Not everyone is like Naomi, who got a full ride, stipend, and one class to teach during her MFA.
Both, which is why I said both things. They're not contradictory. It's tremendously competitive because of the sheer numbers of applicants. And a MFA doesn't give you any advantage over an BA degree, so it's more schooling, money, and time when you're in the prime earning years of your career. Thinking an MFA is going to give you an advantage in a overcrowded field with tons of applicants is just wrong.
Yes, it is contradictory (as well as just being factually wrong.) Degree requirement inflation is endemic to almost all fields, and publishing is not different. Yes it is true that an MFA is better than a BA when it comes to entering publishing just as a matter of pure math--there are fewer MFA grads than there are BA grads (plus many MFAers have a BA as well). An MFA is especially useful if one seeks to enter the rarified circles described in the OP, and also some MFA programs have a bit of a publishing track and almost almost no BA programs do.
You don't work in publishing. You don't know what you're talking about.
Yes, I know you are an idiot. But let's take a moment to further demonstrate it via the comment you posted that I no longer see here, but which was helpfully delivered to my email inbox by Substack:
"It's true. I don't work in publishing. I have worked for academic journals as an editor and I am an English professor who sends many undergraduates into the publishing field, but much less so currently. An MFA might be a leg up in publishing, but marginal and no difference than an MA in English."
False. Why? MFA programs are more likely to have a publishing line to them than an MA in English, and are more likely to engage with the work of contemporary writers, even beyond faculty, guests etc. than an MA in English. The concerns of an English student are not that of the publishing industry, but there is a much closer connection between someone who wants to publish and the industry of publishing.
It's also the case that an MFA in creative writing is easier than an MA in English. An MFA is so easy to get that I know one person who got his (low-res) MFA while simultaneously pursuing a PhD in philosophy.
"But, according to that logic, a real leg up would be a PhD in English."
That's not logic, that's the slippery slope fallacy. No surprises that a humanities academic would be unfamiliar with logic. We both know that MFA programs are usually two years and in the US PhD programs are much longer, and again, English isn't the same as publishing or creative writing. (There are a handful of PhDs in creative writing, though the fad for them has faded in recent years.)
"But since students pay for an MFA for what I believe to have a marginal utility in publishing, I question the MFA to publishing pipeline and think it's bad advice to give to others."
Consider that since you don't work in publishing, your estimation of its utility may be inaccurate. It's also worth noting that I did *not* give the advice that one should pursue an MFA to get a job in publishing: I listed a number of possibilities that MFAs are occasionally useful for, one of which was publishing, and I included various negatives involved in pursuing publishing. You just reflexively barfed out ignorant commentary in response. I guess misreading a text in order to carry on about one's ideological presuppositions is proof that you're an English professor, though.
"But, more importantly, since you clearly have a bitchy attitude towards slight push back from others, I'm sure you're not an alienating and difficult editor with a minor, unpromising side hustle as a writer who would never steer unsuspecting writers into the false promise of an MFA program under the fantasy that accruing more and more advanced degrees of dubious benefit for extreme expense would lead to financial success, especially because said writers want to write and not go into publishing or they would have chose that field to begin with. But if your effort to rationalize your lack of talents and mediocre career choices involves deluding others in to following your path, you can knock yourself out, my friend."
Hey, thanks! And you're right, I'm not an alienating and difficult editor--people seek me out on a freelance basis (I rarely advertise), and I was recruited for my current day job in publishing; a position was explicitly made for me. Is my writing career unpromising? I dunno, depends on what you mean by promise. My eleventh novel comes out in two months. My short fiction has appeared in Best American and McSweeney's and in grungy little weird photocopied zines. My latest anthology earned out its advance on publication thanks to pre-orders and direct sales. I live in one of the top 100 most expensive zip codes in the US and enjoy both my easy publishing work and fun writing projects. But am I studied by English professors (the real important thing!)? Not really! Am I a bazillionaire? Of course not. Will I be in the New Yorker? Also of course not. I've never even tried, and why should I?
(I also didn't get an MFA until after I started publishing novels. It did benefit me directly though--my thesis novel was published and made a few bucks, and when I got my first job in publishing, having an MFA put me on a higher salary track than two other editors hired at the same time.)
We'll also leave aside that "one" degree is different than "more and more" and that people should be clever enough as adults to pursue a degree, if they wish, at a less expensive place. There are a couple hundred MFA programs out there. Nobody's forced to go to Columbia, which sucks. (Naomi soft-pedals how much Columbia sucks, honestly.)
Finally, many people who wish to be writers are also interested in publishing, whether starting little magazines of their own, working in the mainstream of the industry, or in creating anthologies. The desire to write often begins with a fascination with the book.
I suspect that in your little idiot brain you know all this. You just don't like that someone knows better and didn't respond to your remark in the manner of a college freshman, eyes down and pouting.
As the metaphoric (but less than two hour drive from literal) guy in Gulfport that wants to be Faulkner, I did not need another reason to want to move to New York.
Fantastic piece, written with the wit, clarity, and candor that drew me to your newsletter in the first place. I hope we will someday see the essay anticipated in this paragraph: "That kind of inexhaustible life, this inexhaustible belief in your own voice—it's the most important thing a writer can have, and it's something that the MFA tends to destroy—but that's an essay for another day."
Thank you! Maybe someday :) I do wish literary fiction writers had a bit more grit, but maybe that's not something that can be taught (and anyway it's good for me they don't, because that's the only thing I have over them).
Great article. I am 75, retired in 2019 and did a two year part-time Post Grad MA in Creative writing at Exeter (UK) I then signed up with Jericho Writers for a one year online novel writing course. (I had to pay for these courses) and I have a novel almost ready to see the light of day and another in the pipeline. Everyone is different, and one cannot discount luck.
It's true. Luck is a factor, and this system is also changing quite a bit. Perhaps by the time you're ready to send out your book it'll all be different.
“With commercial fiction, the manuscript really does speak for itself. Agents and editors trust their own judgement a lot more when it comes to commercial fiction. They feel confident in their own reaction, and they feel confident that readers will share that reaction...
With literary fiction, the choice of what book to read is mediated by perception. It has to be a brilliant, talented, insightful book. And how do you know if it's brilliant? Because other people say it is.”
This bit is hilarious. It really sums the whole thing up. Apparently the distinguishing feature of “literary” fiction is that it doesn't have to be good.
This was a joy to read from start to finish.
Thank you, Naomi. As an aspiring novelist almost finished with the second draft of my first (literary) novel, I found this extraordinarily depressing. I’m 33, have a family, have no MFA or intentions of getting one, and genuinely believe (in a non-market-driven, mostly aesthetic, but also selfish sense) that “the writing is all that matters.” I’ve had stories published in journals no one reads or has ever heard of. I do not have an agent and have no clue how to go about snagging one. And yet I continue to write, and I have no plan to stop. I guess my hope is that my novel will find an indie press with decent design and distribution, but who knows? Anyway, thanks for making be feel bad.
I admire your almost computer-like analytical skills and bone-dry way of dealing with uncomfortable facts. Keep up the good work.
I am sorry. It is a very depressing circumstance. I wish the literary fiction world was not like this. I do think indie presses take people without credentials, so that's a good option. If the book can get framed as upmarket or book club fiction, then it'll have a better chance too with major presses.
Interesting. When I retired and started writing seriously, I wondered about the value-add of an MFA and concluded that it depends on two things. First, whether the commitment to write is strong enough to persist against all the many setbacks that confront writers, and secondly, where you are in your life journey. Not specifically mentioning age, but it is relevant to cost-benefit analysis, or likely return on investment. The investment cost spread over three or four decades of writing is a good investment in one's art. Spread over one decade, it is questionable, but do it for the love of learning if it pleases you, rather than for any likelihood of enhancing success. ...
Beautiful stories, written for the sake of being beautiful, lose me quickly. I'd much rather read your "simply-told stories about stuff that people already care about." Those, written with literary skill, I consider worth the time spent reading them. IMO, there's poetry to read if a gripping tale doesn't matter! In my younger years, though, I was much more invested in improving myself than I have now become. LOL
I agree. The MFA is really for young people. Everything about it feels geared to people in their twenties. Of course those are also the years when people should be learning more remunerative job skills too! So in some ways those people suffer the most from the diversion into MFA labs
What I think is depressing is that nowhere in this essay do you consider whether or not getting an MFA improves your writing.
I guess writing skills don’t really matter as long as you know the right people and what people will pay for. Makes sense though. Meritocracy is pretty much dead everywhere, but it isn’t much deader than it is in the arts. Of course, I’m probably not even a good writer, but now I’m wondering if there’s even any point in trying anymore.
I think Naomi's biggest point is about persistence. And you've got to love writing for its own sake. Don't be discouraged, my friend.
I don't really think it does much to improve one's writing, but I know others would dispute that.
Thank you for this interesting piece, Naomi! It seems that the publishing world in the US is much different from the one in Germany where I live, but then again, I am not that familiar with what is going on here behind the scenes either. To me, the main thing remains that writing needs to be one of life's pleasures, not a scheme where you succeed or fail ...
Yes I do think the US system is quite different from Germany, but it's hard to feel pleasure in writing a novel, in my experience, if you don't feel like it has an audience.
What a great piece of analysis!
I puzzled about how to sum up my reactions to it all. As I am British, I will quote Dr Johnson, "No one but a fool ever wrote anything other than to get money."
And because the author of the post and nearly all the responses are from the US, I share that Sylvia Plath had a great ambition to have a story published in The New Yorker, but never succeeded.
Thank you! Yes I comfort myself thinking sometimes of the rejection note the Bell Jar received
This was so helpful to me, thank you 🙏🏽
Thank you!
You know I love everything you write but u have to respectfully disagree on some points.
I had access to all the thing you mention— ny, lit people etc. I chose to do it my way. On my terms. Anonymously. I told you this before, if you really are talented, people , the ‘right people’ will notice . I know you put in a lot of work before that happened to you but that’s. Debate for later.
Mfa is fine if you go open eyed knowing all it gives you is the ‘space’ ie— time, community etc— to write . I did it but honestly I looked forward to my lit classes a lot more than the workshop classes which was a pain in the ass— to hear twenty versions of what your story is about.
But I was also lucky I have a twin who is one of the best editors I know . She really helped in the early days although now she’s turned so commercial I dare not show her anything . But when in dire need, I know I can go to her.
My undergrad which I eventually finished at 32 from the new school gave me multitudes more than my mfa.
So actually I agree writing classes help but not nec in doing an mfa. There are great continuing Ed writing workshops taught by the same people who teach the mfa courses . Sigrid Nunez for eg taught me at new school but she teaches at the Y (taught). It’s possibly true that ny gives you more access to all this. The new school teachers— Sigrid, Zia Jaffrey, changed my life . But they taught me at an undergrad albeit honours program . Ps— you should read zia. I think you’ll like her
Glad to see Montana (my alma mater) and Wyoming (my hometown program to which I have many ties) get a brief mention. I can vouch for both.
I've heard good things about both!
Ever notice how many people with upper-middle class lifestyles went to college? How many wealthy business leaders have MBAs? Sure! Of course, plenty of poor people have college degrees and plenty of MBA grads are junior assistants to assistant VPs at an SEO farm too. I agree that it is mostly down to going to a top program to enter New Yorker/Paris Review circuit. The blog-to-small press to big press thing can perhaps still work as it did for Kate Zambreno to a certain extent but replace "blog" with "substack." But DON'T replace "small press" with "self-publishing" or even "starting a press with Peter Thiel money."
MFAs are also occasionally useful for:
getting a job in publishing, though this often requires a bit of entrepreneurship (start a magazine and hope THAT goes viral) or willingness to move somewhere either expensive (NY, Boston, SF) or unpleasant (whatever dump a university press is located in)
for teaching at non-MFA programs (community centers, a home-based workshop, enrichment classes for children, the community college)
and for other kinds of writing--being a columnist for Eater (sounds weird but I know two people who did that), ghost writing for Kindle superstars of various types (porn! bullet-point business books!) and other things where people do hire partially based on credentials as they lack other means to tell good writing from bad.
It's true I didn't go into the whole teaching writing side of it. The credential can get you surprisingly far, especially if you're highly mobile
There are no jobs in publishing and the few jobs that exist are tremendously competitive, plus you're not writing and you work in an office like the rest of the schlubs. And a MFA isn't necessary because an English undergraduate degree is all you need. I'm not trying to be a downer. Only get an advanced degree if it's a guarantee of more money than your current job. Not everyone is like Naomi, who got a full ride, stipend, and one class to teach during her MFA.
Well, which is it? Is it tremendously competitive or is all you need an English undergraduate degree?
You'll be working in an office (or factory, or store, or school, or whatever) regardless--most writers have some form of job.
Both, which is why I said both things. They're not contradictory. It's tremendously competitive because of the sheer numbers of applicants. And a MFA doesn't give you any advantage over an BA degree, so it's more schooling, money, and time when you're in the prime earning years of your career. Thinking an MFA is going to give you an advantage in a overcrowded field with tons of applicants is just wrong.
Yes, it is contradictory (as well as just being factually wrong.) Degree requirement inflation is endemic to almost all fields, and publishing is not different. Yes it is true that an MFA is better than a BA when it comes to entering publishing just as a matter of pure math--there are fewer MFA grads than there are BA grads (plus many MFAers have a BA as well). An MFA is especially useful if one seeks to enter the rarified circles described in the OP, and also some MFA programs have a bit of a publishing track and almost almost no BA programs do.
You don't work in publishing. You don't know what you're talking about.
You're right, Nick. I am an idiot.
Yes, I know you are an idiot. But let's take a moment to further demonstrate it via the comment you posted that I no longer see here, but which was helpfully delivered to my email inbox by Substack:
"It's true. I don't work in publishing. I have worked for academic journals as an editor and I am an English professor who sends many undergraduates into the publishing field, but much less so currently. An MFA might be a leg up in publishing, but marginal and no difference than an MA in English."
False. Why? MFA programs are more likely to have a publishing line to them than an MA in English, and are more likely to engage with the work of contemporary writers, even beyond faculty, guests etc. than an MA in English. The concerns of an English student are not that of the publishing industry, but there is a much closer connection between someone who wants to publish and the industry of publishing.
It's also the case that an MFA in creative writing is easier than an MA in English. An MFA is so easy to get that I know one person who got his (low-res) MFA while simultaneously pursuing a PhD in philosophy.
"But, according to that logic, a real leg up would be a PhD in English."
That's not logic, that's the slippery slope fallacy. No surprises that a humanities academic would be unfamiliar with logic. We both know that MFA programs are usually two years and in the US PhD programs are much longer, and again, English isn't the same as publishing or creative writing. (There are a handful of PhDs in creative writing, though the fad for them has faded in recent years.)
"But since students pay for an MFA for what I believe to have a marginal utility in publishing, I question the MFA to publishing pipeline and think it's bad advice to give to others."
Consider that since you don't work in publishing, your estimation of its utility may be inaccurate. It's also worth noting that I did *not* give the advice that one should pursue an MFA to get a job in publishing: I listed a number of possibilities that MFAs are occasionally useful for, one of which was publishing, and I included various negatives involved in pursuing publishing. You just reflexively barfed out ignorant commentary in response. I guess misreading a text in order to carry on about one's ideological presuppositions is proof that you're an English professor, though.
"But, more importantly, since you clearly have a bitchy attitude towards slight push back from others, I'm sure you're not an alienating and difficult editor with a minor, unpromising side hustle as a writer who would never steer unsuspecting writers into the false promise of an MFA program under the fantasy that accruing more and more advanced degrees of dubious benefit for extreme expense would lead to financial success, especially because said writers want to write and not go into publishing or they would have chose that field to begin with. But if your effort to rationalize your lack of talents and mediocre career choices involves deluding others in to following your path, you can knock yourself out, my friend."
Hey, thanks! And you're right, I'm not an alienating and difficult editor--people seek me out on a freelance basis (I rarely advertise), and I was recruited for my current day job in publishing; a position was explicitly made for me. Is my writing career unpromising? I dunno, depends on what you mean by promise. My eleventh novel comes out in two months. My short fiction has appeared in Best American and McSweeney's and in grungy little weird photocopied zines. My latest anthology earned out its advance on publication thanks to pre-orders and direct sales. I live in one of the top 100 most expensive zip codes in the US and enjoy both my easy publishing work and fun writing projects. But am I studied by English professors (the real important thing!)? Not really! Am I a bazillionaire? Of course not. Will I be in the New Yorker? Also of course not. I've never even tried, and why should I?
(I also didn't get an MFA until after I started publishing novels. It did benefit me directly though--my thesis novel was published and made a few bucks, and when I got my first job in publishing, having an MFA put me on a higher salary track than two other editors hired at the same time.)
We'll also leave aside that "one" degree is different than "more and more" and that people should be clever enough as adults to pursue a degree, if they wish, at a less expensive place. There are a couple hundred MFA programs out there. Nobody's forced to go to Columbia, which sucks. (Naomi soft-pedals how much Columbia sucks, honestly.)
Finally, many people who wish to be writers are also interested in publishing, whether starting little magazines of their own, working in the mainstream of the industry, or in creating anthologies. The desire to write often begins with a fascination with the book.
I suspect that in your little idiot brain you know all this. You just don't like that someone knows better and didn't respond to your remark in the manner of a college freshman, eyes down and pouting.
As the metaphoric (but less than two hour drive from literal) guy in Gulfport that wants to be Faulkner, I did not need another reason to want to move to New York.
You're accumulating some social proof! I agree that New York might be a good move though for you...
Fantastic piece, written with the wit, clarity, and candor that drew me to your newsletter in the first place. I hope we will someday see the essay anticipated in this paragraph: "That kind of inexhaustible life, this inexhaustible belief in your own voice—it's the most important thing a writer can have, and it's something that the MFA tends to destroy—but that's an essay for another day."
Thank you! Maybe someday :) I do wish literary fiction writers had a bit more grit, but maybe that's not something that can be taught (and anyway it's good for me they don't, because that's the only thing I have over them).
Hi
Great article. I am 75, retired in 2019 and did a two year part-time Post Grad MA in Creative writing at Exeter (UK) I then signed up with Jericho Writers for a one year online novel writing course. (I had to pay for these courses) and I have a novel almost ready to see the light of day and another in the pipeline. Everyone is different, and one cannot discount luck.
It's true. Luck is a factor, and this system is also changing quite a bit. Perhaps by the time you're ready to send out your book it'll all be different.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. Paths to success have always been mysterious.
Thanks!
“With commercial fiction, the manuscript really does speak for itself. Agents and editors trust their own judgement a lot more when it comes to commercial fiction. They feel confident in their own reaction, and they feel confident that readers will share that reaction...
With literary fiction, the choice of what book to read is mediated by perception. It has to be a brilliant, talented, insightful book. And how do you know if it's brilliant? Because other people say it is.”
This bit is hilarious. It really sums the whole thing up. Apparently the distinguishing feature of “literary” fiction is that it doesn't have to be good.
Commercial fiction is certainly more reliably good, in my experience.
Maybe this accounts for the generally poor sales!
I so enjoy your writing about the writing world and the writing life--ever since your Cynical Writer's Guide :)
Oh my god, that book was my baby :) Love that you remember that
It was so good and helpful, and I've recommended it a bunch to others. Thanks for being so candid and cutting through the bullshit!