Michael Collins on MFA Programs

Michael Collins's experience should not be taken as gospel truth about all MFA programs or teachers. It sounds like he has been a failure at it (why would his classes be rediculed by both faculty AND students?) and is trying to lash out. Many MFA and creative writing instructors are happily fulfilled in their lives both professionally and personally. And it is VERY possible, as with any job, to make time for both your job-related responsibilities and your own writing. It's not always easy, but juggling both a full-time job and a writing career never is. And I don't know of any other profession where you can actually REQUEST time off to attend writer's conferences, or have three weeks every Christmas and nearly three months every summer, to devote to your own work.

Unfortunately, Collins sounds too much like the typical, resentful, bunt-out "failed writer who teaches because he can't make a success at writing" sort of teacher who has given creative writing programs everywhere such a bad--and sometimes undeserved--repute through the years. These are not the kind of teachers who are EVER going to inspire young writers; rather, they will only succeed in snuffing their students' desires and ambitions with their own bitterness.

WARNING! FRANK, EXPLICIT, EGREGIOUSLY BIASED OPINIONS FOLLOW:

I did nine credits of graduate school over a year and a half, right up until my brain burrowed its way out of my skull and fled, screaming, from the boredom.

Granted, it was for history, not creative writing, and I don't want to make sweeping generalizations, since that's the territory of morons and Congressmen. And it's a different story for physicians and lawyers, of course. But I'd say unless your dream job absolutely, positively requires a master's degree, then graduate school's about as useful as pissing into the wind, except much more expensive.

If a creative writing MFA works for you, super! Go for it! But you don't absolutely, positively need an MFA to be a writer.

-JM

Collins

badducky said:

All this discussion about homelessness and making a living merits this brief excerpt from Michael Collins, I think.

from
http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/interview.aspx?ID=4670

"What drew Collins to literary academia as a subject? "In some respects the protagonist in the novel is an aberration of what can happen to a writer's life, it becomes demented," he starts to explain. Collins studied for a PhD in creative writing and his experience watching gifted writers waste their talent teaching left a deep impression.
“People I considered good writers and teachers became sidelined by red tape within the university,” he adds. “Everywhere I went it seemed like 80 per cent of the teachers had fallen by the wayside as writers.”
The irony of writers whose creativity has dried up teaching creative writing and being in a position to reject the work of students more capable than themselves is not lost on Collins, especially as he found himself on the receiving end of such judgment. “In the first part of the novel I talk about a priest turning atheist. In academic institutions a lot of the authors teaching creative writing are similar, and head towards mental breakdown like Robert,”
Seeing literary burnout up close made Collins aware he had to have a job outside academia and make writing a secondary source of income if he was to stay sane and inspired. It worked. He has never suffered writers' block. He is too busy for it."

Click to expand...

This is some of the strangest, most unlikley, out of whack stuff I've ever read. I don't know what university he's talking about, but he doesn't make much sense at all, and nothing he says bears out my experience with MFA progrqams, and sure differs with teh real numbers.

The only thning here that really makes sense, and that explains his entire attitude is The irony of writers whose creativity has dried up teaching creative writing and being in a position to reject the work of students more capable than themselves is not lost on Collins, especially as he found himself on the receiving end of such judgment.

Some MFA professor didn't like his work, so this makes MFA professors burnout cases with no talent. To me, it just makes Collins a whiner.

As for that last statement He has never suffered writers' block. He is too busy for it.

1. Wow, really? How many successful writers do you know who suffer from writer's block? Real writer's block is rare as hen's teeth. It's most often an imaginary affiction of beginning writers who lack enough experience to know what they're doing. 2. In his case, too bad.

What's really fuinny is his statement that “Everywhere I went it seemed like 80 per cent of the teachers had fallen by the wayside as writers.”

Doesn't he understand that even if this number proved accurate, which it positively is not, it's still 19% better than non-professors outside of academia?