Tag: Lesley University

My MFA in Creative Writing Program Explained

If you hadn’t heard, I’m getting my MFA in creative writing at Lesley University.

This week, my third semester wraps itself up as I claw my way toward the finish line and a degree. Technically, I should have finished up last week, on Friday to be exact. Life doesn’t always work out the way we envision it, though. Since I started this blog as a way to document the madness (check out my About page for more on that), I thought I’d write a post that gives my take on the program.

Lesley University’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program Explained:

Each semester kicks off with an intense–and I do mean intense–nine-day on-campus residency in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The summer residency happens in June. The winter residency happens in January.

I live just up the way in Salem, so I commute on the train. During the residency, which kicks off at 9am each morning and doesn’t wrap up until 8pm each night, I attend interactive workshops taught by creative writing faculty from one of five concentrations (Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Writing for Young People <– that’s my concentration, and Graphic Novels). I also attend seminar lectures from visiting guests such

Mr. Reynolds, an incredible writer and mentor in our program

as Jo Knowles,  M. T. Anderson, and Jason Reynolds (who also teaches in the program) just to name three whom I particularly enjoyed.

Not to mention all the wonderful social time that happens each evening after the day’s classes and lectures wrap up. I’ve met so many talented, funny, wonderful, and supportive people at the two residencies I’ve attended thus far. If I’m lucky, I’ll stay in touch with some of these fine folks for the rest of my life.

Prior to each residency, I write and submit two creative pieces, each about 6,500 words long. A designated faculty member and other students workshop both of them. I have to say, there are so many things that I have loved about this program, but the critique workshops are my favorite. Not only do I get to read about six pieces of creative writing by others and practice my skills as I give feedback on them, but I get to receive nuanced and thoughtful feedback from six people who are as passionate about writing as I am.

As the on-campus residency wraps up, I work with my mentor to build a study-plan for the rest of my semester that will play out long-distance via email and texting and Facebook messaging, etc. It’s a personalized study plan based on what I think are my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, what my mentor sees as my strengths and weaknesses, and what my writing goals are in general (to become a famous, globetrotting novelist! Ha ha. *sigh* Just let me dream, okay?)

Break-down of Semesters 1 & 2: In a Word, Busy.

I take three classes, though it feels in practice like I’m only taking two. I’ll just treat it like I’m dealing with two classes. For my “main” class, I work with my mentor. Over the course of the semester, I read craft books and novels and write reflective or analytical essays about them. At the same time, I work on my own creative stuff. I submit my essays and my creative writing four times (once a month), and each time I get an in-depth analysis back from my mentor on what I did well and what I need to work on. As if that’s not enough to keep me busy, there’s that pesky second class I mentioned.

The second class is an interdisciplinary studies class, which means that since I’m in the

This is my final project for my first Interdisciplinary Class: The Artist’s Way. It’s supposed to be a collage representing my journey as a writer.

Writing For Young People concentration, I have to take something that ISN’T related to writing for young people. For my first semester, I took a class modeled after Julie Cameron’s Artist’s Way. I took a science fiction and fantasy class in my second semester that focused on the short story. This semester, I took a follow-up to the science fiction and fantasy class that focused on the novel.

For this second class, the I.S. class, I also have to read books, write reflective or analytical papers about them, and write my own creative stuff. All that stuff gets submitted four times per semester, too.

Sound like a lot? Yeah, it is.

It’s great, but it’s a lot. Cue the stress.

Ah, but that was just the first two semesters.

Semester 3: Odin, It Was Rough.

As I said, I’m wrapping up my third semester in this program. A week late, it’s true, but at least I’m finishing. Not everyone does. Third semester is notorious in this program for being insane.

In addition to managing all the work for my SFF novel-writing class (which has been off-the-hook outstanding, by the way), this is the semester when I had to write my big “craft essay.” Now, I want to pause here for a moment and say that the folks at Lesley really ought to call this our “Craft Thesis” since we aren’t allowed to graduate if we don’t write it.

This beast to which I am referring takes the place of reading a couple of books and write a 2-4 page reflective paper about them four times during the semester. Instead, we have to pick a craft topic of our own choosing, research the holy heck out of it, and write a 12-18 page paper on the topic.

What did I choose to research? Glad you asked. In an attempt to marry my two great loves

in life–biology and creative writing–I elected to write a research paper exploring the neuroscience behind writing that “hooks” readers.

Look at all those scientific articles about neuroscience and reading!

Sounds pretty rad, am I right?

It was, but don’t forget that while I was doing all that research [shudders at the thought of all that research], I was also writing and submitting about 24,000 words of my own creative writing spread out over four submission cycles.

Semester 4: The Future Looks Bright

I submitted my craft essay (they really should call that sucker a “Craft Thesis” to give it the psychological weight it deserves) last Monday and cheered. I’ll be submitting my last batch of creative stuff on Wednesday, and I am looking toward the horizon with a sense of optimism steeped, perhaps, in a bit of denial. It would be nice to get at least a couple of weeks of down time to catch my breath, but we just got the email with instructions on how to format or workshop pieces, which are due December 1st.

Yikes!

Fourth semester is the one in which I devote 100% of my attention on my “Creative Thesis.” This is the culminating creative project, the thing that showcases my supposed mastery of writing fiction (for young people, mind you). No pressure. No problem.

Did I mention that my right eye has been twitching for the past week? No kidding. It really has.

Books I’m reading to inform my creative thesis this semester.

Fourth semester will be great. I’ll have no I.S. class competing for my time and attention. I’ll have no analytical craft essays to write, big or small. It’ll just be me and my book and my mentor trying to help me make it not suck so bad. I’ll need to put together 100 to 150 polished pages of a YA novel that I and the program administrators won’t be embarrassed by. I think this is doable?

Technically, I already have 150 pages of my Creative Thesis written. As of last night, Scrivener informed me that I’ve got 159 pages, to be exact. The problem is… oh, there are so many problems. The biggest problem is that, from a structural standpoint, Under the Purple Sky is a hot mess. I attempted to tell a YA sci-fi survival story in the first person POV via two different timelines that weave together as readers experience the main character’s psychological ruin during a global disaster that wipes out 99% of the human species, and her tentative road to recovery three years later. Ugh.

I’ve got my work cut out for me. But, I remain hopeful. It will be nice to be able to focus on just one single project for a full semester, and if I play my cards right, I’ll walk away from all of this in July with a degree. I might even have a decent draft of a book, too. That, however, remains to be scene… er, seen. Ha, ha.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to this past year-and-a-half.

If you are curious about Lesley’s Creative Writing program, specifically their low residency program, feel free to ask in the comments. I’m a subject sample of n=1, but I’m happy to share my experiences thus far.

November 6, 2017
The NaNoWriMo Debate: Are You “For” or “Against” It?

The Debate Rages On: Is NaNoWriMo a good thing or not?

Emotions run high when this question is asked. I mean, folks get seriously heated. Fans of NaNoWriMo start heating the tar and gathering the feathers whenever someone suggests that maybe NaNoWriMo isn’t the best thing ever. Critics of NaNoWriMo sharpen their pen nibs in preparation to eviscerate the works produced by anyone during the event. It’s a little crazy, to be honest.

NaNoWriMo Explained

Okay, let’s pause for a moment. If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, let me explain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up. The acronym (which I’m too lazy to type yet again because of the annoy placement of capital letters) stands for National Novel Writing Month. Folks can go to the website, create an account, announce a novel project, and then attempt to write 50,000 words of material in a single month. That averages out to 1,667 words a day. I won’t bore you with the history of how this international phenomenon got started. For that story, click here.

For or Against?

I am FOR!

With some qualifications.

I agree with many others that NaNoWriMo is not a good fit for everyone. Justin Brouckaert articulated my feelings pretty well in his guest post on the Submittable blog titled A Case Against NaNoWriMo. Despite what the declarative title suggests, Justin is not vehemently anti-NaNo. He just wrote a horrible piece of trash (I’m paraphrasing him) in NaNo and thought he was going to go nuts from the pressure.

Different people have different writing processes.

Some folks absolutely adore extrinsic motivators, which is pretty much exactly what NaNo is. Other folks fold like a wet napkin in a high wind at the first sign of pressure.

Some writers thrive on establishing a rock-solid daily writing habit. I like to write every day, no matter what. (Not that I always get to do things the way I want to. See my earlier post about my kids for more details on that front.) Other people tend to write best when they produce work in a more accordion style, with long stretches of empty pages followed by rapid bursts of prolific words.

Some folks are communal writers. They love talking shop with other writers, joining up at coffee shops or in library meeting rooms to sit and write together, posting updates on all the social media platforms. Hooray for the global connectedness that is the internet! Other writers, though, are solitary people (when they’re creating, at least) and find the whole social, communal aspect of NaNoWriMo repellant.

My Own Experience With NaNoWriMo

All I can say is this: for me, there are more positives than negatives in participating.

For starters, participating in my very first NaNoWriMo taught me that I have the capacity for self-discipline needed to write an entire novel.

Also, the stamina. I mean, people! Writing a novel is like running a marathon. That might be too gentle an analogy. It’s like taking part in an Ironman competition. I went into that first NaNoWriMo all, “Yeah! I’m going to write a whole novel in just one month!” Well, that’s not what happened. I did “win” the event by writing 50,000 words in the month of November, but I was startled to discover that my book was far from finished. I continued writing (every day, thanks to the habit I’d cultivated during November) and proudly finished up my book in March of that year. It topped off at just over 96,000 words.

It was a disgusting beast of a first draft. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was a horrible piece of trash. But it existed. I’d done it. I’d written a full draft of a novel. If nothing else, I now knew that I had the sheer stamina necessary to write a book. I tucked that draft away in the bottom drawer of my writing desk, where I shall probably keep it until my dying day.

See, I think of NaNoWriMo not as a chance to pen a masterpiece, but as an opportunity to simply practice the art of writing. It inspires me. It excites me. Heck, it bolstered my confidence enough join the North Shore Writer’s Group to apply to the MFA in Creative Writing program at Lesley University. NaNoWriMo exposed me to new people and new ways of thinking and new opportunities.

So, yes, I think NaNoWriMo is a positive force for creativity, despite what some might say.

What do you think about NaNoWriMo? Have you participated? Will you again? Why or why not?

October 9, 2017
#IWSG – Adding Personal Details to Stories?

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. Or, well, maybe you don’t. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…

Have you ever slipped any of your personal information into your characters, either by accident or on purpose?

I sure have, but first, allow me to drop a plug for IWSG. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff. There’s a Twitter Pitch, which I haven’t checked out yet, contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out!

Okay, back to the question. I often work personal information into my writing on purpose, but sometimes I do it unintentionally, too.

Here’s an example of when personal stuff just sort of slips in there when I’m not paying attention. This past winter, during one of my critique sessions for my Lesley University Low-Residency master’s program, someone pointed out that my main character sounded like she was from the Midwest. The story being workshopped was something I’d discovery written. I hadn’t generated any character dossiers and hadn’t fleshed out a background for anyone.

The comment left me agape. You see, despite the fact that was born and raised in Massachusetts and am surrounded by Bostonians with the classically difficult to imitate accent, I’ve been told multiple times that I don’t sound like I’m from the area. In fact, people often tell me I’ve got a midwestern accent and drop midwestern slang. I chalk that up to the my father’s influence. He was born and raised on a farm in Iowa, and we visited his family often when I was a kid.

Who knew my father had shaped my psyche so deeply that it was affecting my writing! In any case, I decided to have my main character be a girl who grew up on a farm in… you guessed it, Iowa. Why not just roll with it, right? So now my dad is a teenage girl fighting for her life in the Canadian wilderness. Fabulous!

More often, personal information makes its way into my stories on purpose. I’ve written stories that take place in my hometown, at my place of work, or that involve events I’ve lived directly. All fictionalized to varying degrees, mind you.

My current WIP is a young adult SciFi horror story about a group of youths trying to survive the elements (and other things) in the backcountry of Canada. As a teen, I was a wilderness backpacking enthusiast, and a couple of times I and my group members found ourselves in genuinely dangerous situations. I’ve incorporated fictionalized versions of those events in my WIP.

So, yeah, I draw on my life experiences to add authenticity to everything I write.

What about you? Do you slip personal details into your writing? How do you feel about it?

October 4, 2017
Beating the Cold Season with Some Good Books!

Every September, I get back into the classroom and, within a month, I catch a cold. I blame my students. They get it first, and then they proceed to coat every surface they touch with their contagion. Last year, the virus took up residence deep in my chest and overstayed its welcome by about six weeks. It was vicious. Several of my colleagues and even a few of my students developed secondary pneumonia. Thankfully, my family and I live in a state of lightly controlled squalor, so we’ve got exposure theory on our side. Our immune systems are primed and ready for battle, but I’ve got a secret weapon in my battle against the common cold: books!

And yet, here I am, all hopped up on cold meds (this might be a very interesting post), holed up in bed while the rest of the fam shares hot-wings and watches the Patriots game on TV. Now that I think of it, perhaps there are some perks to catching the annual back-to-school cold.

Books (in all forms) Make Everything Better!

Just look at all those lovely books!

If you’re anything like me, your “to read” list grows faster than your “have read” list does. One of the original Twilight Zone episodes that haunts me the most is “Time Enough At Last,” starring Burgess Meredith as a guy who just wants to be left alone so he can read his books. I won’t spoil the episode because it’s available on Amazon Prime (you should watch it), but the ending is tragic in a way that only a bibliophile can fully grasp.

Audiobooks have become a staple in my life these days, too. I check them out from my library, and I buy them via Audible.com. Whenever I’m in the car or out for a walk, I’m listening to a book. My students helpfully showed me how to overclock the reading speed to 1.25x, which shaves about 2.5 hours off of a 10-hour book. It’s amazing.

That said, as great as listening to books can be, it’s not quite the same as reading them myself.

I am a slow reader. A pathetically slow reader. And, since I’ve started up the Masters in Creative Writing program at Lesley University, my reading speed has slowed even further. Now I find myself reading at two levels. I used to read for the simple pleasure of getting lost in the story. Now, I pay close attention to word choice, verbs, description, pacing, syntax, structure, flow, et cetera. In other words, I read with a writer’s eye, which slows me down.

My current bout with the rhinovirus isn’t nearly as bad as last year. Last year, I felt like I was dying. This year, I just feel like someone has stuffed my sinuses with a soggy loaf of bread. Not pleasant, but it could be worse. It didn’t stop me from getting out to Barnes & Noble yesterday for a YA book event where I grabbed myself a few ARCs to read… eventually… when I find the time. (That’s them in the photo at the top of this post.)

Here’s what I’m currently reading!

I might be guilty of exaggerating my misery slightly so that my spouse keeps the kids at bay, but I’m not completely faking. I am in bed with a sinus headache, and I do have to rest up so that I can make it through teaching my classes next week.

But really, I just want to snuggle in and cherish this rare opportunity to READ!

Books make everything better. Aren’t they great? Have you ever used books to get through something unpleasant, like cold season?

September 24, 2017
Why Did I Try Writing a Book in the First Person POV?!

This past Wednesday, I took part in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group’s monthly blog hop. The prompt dealt with trying new things and surprising yourself with your writing. My response to that prompt lives here. I am not a professional blogger, nor do I aspire to become one. I’ve only been tracking my adventures and misadventures in the writing realm for a couple of months at this point, so that post is long and rambling.

Since writing it, though, my mind has returned to the question again and again. In what ways have I surprised myself with my writing? With the hope of releasing that question from my brain (so I can get on with other things), I’m returning to it. This time, however, I have a specific topic to address: Point of View.

What We Read Shapes What We Write

I grew up reading (mostly) fantasy stories, and they all used either the third person limited or omniscient viewpoint. My very first introduction to the genre came in the form of my mother reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy to me when I was six. A few pages at a time each night. It was love at first reading.

As soon as could, I found and read as many books as I could by C. S. Lewis, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Jordan to name just a few of my early favorites.

In middle school, I stumbled across a battered old copy of Stephen King’s short story collection, The Skeleton Crew. It was spine-tinglingly incredible, and it sparked my love affair with King’s writing. It also inspired me to start writing my own stories.

I turned into a rabid Stephen King super fan. I mean, I never sent him letters asking for his fingernail clippings or anything. He’s way too smart to fall for that, anyway. Still, there was a time when I wouldn’t drive through Bangor because I didn’t trust myself not to go full-on creeper outside the gates of King’s house. King wrote some of his short stories in the first person POV, but not many.

Trying New Things Lets Us Grow

Fast forward to now. I’m halfway through a master’s program in creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They’ve got six concentrations from which to choose. I’m focusing on writing for young people.

From my limited research, there seems to be a growing first person trend in the YA genre right now. To be clear, I know there’s always been plenty of first person stories in YA, but in the past five or so years it’s exploded in popularity, so much so that I began picking up and reading a bunch of first person YA books to expose myself to the viewpoint and its use in my genre concentration. Sadly, I found that many of the books I read made me want to gag. Many were self-centered, angst-ridden “I, me, me, I me” tripe.

But, like it or not, first person POV is hugely popular in YA these days. Combining it with present tense seems to be really hot right now. Recognizing my limited exposure to that viewpoint as a reader and a complete lack of experience writing it, I decided to focus on first person as an element of my coursework last semester. What’s the point of a master’s program if not to push yourself as a writer and try to improve?

Ugh! First person POV, why are you so hard?! Also, what the heck was I thinking?

At least with third person, I have years of reading and thousands of stories to draw on as I write my own stuff. There are narrative techniques that I find natural and intuitive. I don’t have to think too hard about it as I’m writing. Not so as I struggle to write a book in the first person. Two books, actually, for two different classes. One is a middle-grade steampunk piratical fantasy adventure. The other is a gritty YA wilderness survival story with science fiction and horror elements. Both are presenting unique challenges for me. Let me repeat myself: what what I thinking?!

Diving Into the Craft of POV

I own and have read numerous craft books, too many to list, but I took a photo of my collection. It’s over on my “Useful Articles” page. Anyway,

when I told my mentor (last semester) that I wanted to stretch myself as a writer by trying to write a novel in the first-person viewpoint, she assigned me excerpts from two different craft books to read, then crossed her fingers and whispered a quiet prayer to the Gods.One was a book I already owned, put out by Writer’s Digest and written by Nancy Kress titled Characters, Emotions, and Viewpoint. It’s a great craft book, and it was good for me to revisit it. I hadn’t cracked its pages in over ten years.

If you don’t own this craft book, your collection isn’t complete. It’s outstanding!

The other was a craft book I’d never heard of before by an author I was unfamiliar with—David Jauss. The book isn’t in print anymore. I struggled to find a copy on Amazon, and when it finally arrived I thought, “Wow, this thing even looks old. That makes it even more awesome!” I was right, by the way. Alone With All That Could Happen is my new favorite craft book. One of the best I’ve read, and if you checked out the picture of my collection, you know that I’ve read quite a few of them.

Here’s the rub. It’s one thing to read about a bunch of excellent techniques to develop characters and engage in world-building in a particular viewpoint. It’s another thing to sit down and execute those techniques with any degree of success.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (and the Hopeful)

I am particularly bad at going all the way inside my characters’ heads to share their thoughts. Too familiar with outside narrators sharing character insights from a distance, I guess. Most recently, my current mentor gave me feedback that included, “You’ve got a lot of third-person narrator techniques embedded into this scene. Try adding more first-person elements to bring us closer to your main character.”

Yep. That’s the face I made. Oh, yeah.

Guess I’ve got some work to do, and while I could get discouraged by that (and sometimes I do get discouraged), I prefer to remind myself that I chose to give first-person a try to see what it felt like, to see what I could do with it. I actively sought to surprise myself. Thus far, I’ve succeeded, and as difficult as it’s been to stretch my abilities as a writer, it’s also been tremendous fun. I mean, come on. Who doesn’t love surprises?!

Have you ever intentionally attempted something new and different and risky as a writer with the hopes of learning and growing? Tell me about it in the comments section.

As always, keep writing. Keep creating. Keep striving to make a mark on this world by building and sharing other worlds.

September 10, 2017