The Truth About Creative Writing Programs?

Ryan Boudinot, a writer, just recently quit teaching a Master of Fine Arts course in USA. After he quit, he felt that he had the freedom to publicize a few harsh truths about creative writing programs in general, and he wrote an essay lambasting current courses. His essay in the magazine, The Stranger, caused amazing furor. Blog posts were written for and against his points. Social media was abuzz with talk of this man. The magazine was attacked and defended at the same time, with some people asking the magazine to redact the essay and others complimenting the magazine ion their good work.

In the essay, Ryan writes about his students. According to him, most of them were hardworking and thoughtful and they were very devoted to writing and were always trying to improve their writing. Unfortunately, he wrote, most of them had no ability when it came to writing. They had nothing interesting to write and no interesting way to write it.

His essay might have been very harsh and cruel, but arguments have been made against creative writing programs over the past few years. In fact, such programs have even become little more than jokes and are actually treated as such by a number of stand up comedians.

Just some time ago, Toni Morrison commented that the level of fiction nowadays was going down. He said that the youth nowadays was very much focused on itself and whenever they wrote fictional pieces, the pieces were always about themselves. He said that that was the problem with a lot of creative writing programs; people have always been told to write what they know about, even though what they know might not necessarily be very interesting.

But we were talking about Boudinot’s essay, and let’s get back to it. What exactly was it about? The following points summarize the essay:

1. Talent is inborn: In the essay, Boudinot claims that all writers are not born equal. Some people might really want to be good tutors as on the onlinetutorforme.com, but they won’t be able to succeed. Others will be able to succeed without many problems. He calls such students the Real Deals, and says that they are very rare.

• Early starters have it easy: People who start reading books when they are very young are much more likely to succeed in writing. There are exceptions, but if you start reading as a teenager, you probably won’t make it.

• Time management: Students who are always complaining about lacking time are not likely to succeed. Sometimes people do suffer from legitimate time issues, but that’s only once in a while.

• Reading is the key: If someone wants to succeed as a writer, they need to read a lot of books. When a professor sees a student slogging through a thousand page book in a week, that student is most probably a Real Deal. If a student can’t even read a few classics, then he should quit the course and focus on something that they like better.

• Writing class isn’t a therapy session: Yes, people suffer from tragedies. Yes, everyone is sorry about those tragedies. Everyone sympathizes with the student who was traumatized as a kid. But the sadness and poignancy of a story can’t replace grammatical rules and other writing rules.

The Reactions

The reactions were very different and they ranged from “What the hell is wrong to this guy?” to “What the hell is wrong with students nowadays?” A lot of people commented that they found the article true through their own experiences; like the man who said that he tried to write when he was young but found that he didn’t have the aptitude for it. Another person commented by saying that the article was the harshest and most helpful advice a creative writing student would ever get.

Other people set themselves against the theme of Boudinot’s essay. Some people asked professors who agreed with Boudinot should step down. Others said that there were numerous stories that were written badly could still be extremely evocative.

In fact, one person even cashed in on the outrage by starting his own website that curated all the material related to the essay and compiled it in the same place. The Stranger cashed in on the furor by publishing an interview with Boudinot and several other articles about the issue.

Other views

The Guardian later interviewed a former student of the program to which Boudinot had been assigned who said that there was no way that someone could write anything on the Internet without facing significant opposition. Even if someone wrote an article about the sky being blue, there would be another article rebutting the first one by the end of the day. Platforms like Twitter also allowed a lot of people to put their opinions forward, and by nature, opinions vary among people.

A lot of people have their own opinions on MFA courses. Proponents of the program say that such programs allow emerging writers to enter the industry while being guided by a mentor and by other established writers. Opponents of the program say that the programs are expensive and they don’t provide graduates with opportunities to get enough money to make up for that cost. The opponents also claim that such programs do not really churn out good writers; they create writers who are only skilled in certain types of literary fiction or writers who are able to write like other, more famous writers.

People who have studied in the programs usually have different experiences. But one thing that all of them agree on is that you have to love reading and writing a lot. If literature is just a hobby that you picked up for a month, then these are not the courses for you. They also agree that such programs are usually expensive and you aren’t guaranteed any income even after you finish the course.

Ultimately, it’s up to potential students to look at all the angles and come up with something that they like.