Should you do a creative writing MA?

Plus, details of the first In Writing Creative Hour, this Sunday.

As promised, in today’s newsletter I want to share some thoughts and answer some of your questions about creative writing MAs. It’s a longish one – if you don’t have time to read right now, do scroll to the bottom for info about Sunday’s inaugural In Writing Creative Hour. And if you’d rather listen to this newsletter as a podcast, as always that’s an option for paid subscribers.

I don’t think it had really occurred to me to do an MA before the pandemic. I’m not sure I considered myself qualified, or maybe I was embarrassed at the thought of telling people that I was attempting a different kind of writing. Maybe I thought I shouldn’t need to study writing when I’d already been working as a journalist for a long time.

It was making the In Writing podcast that planted the idea. Not all my interviewees had studied creative writing, but several of them had – Emma Jane Unsworth, Curtis Sittenfeld and Kiley Reid to name a few. When I interviewed Anna Hope in December 2019, she talked in the fondest terms about her studies at Birkbeck, University of London:

I wasn’t sure because I had no money at the time and it wasn’t cheap, and I was thinking “Is it going to be worth it?” And it was so worth it, it was wonderful. … I remember the professor at the beginning of the course saying “You know, you can call yourself writers from here on in,” and me just going, “Whatever! We’re not writers” – but actually, over time, that started to feel like it might be a possibility. And what is great about Birkbeck is that they teach in the evening, so you get all sorts of people who’ve got all sorts of jobs, the age range is really varied and people’s backgrounds are really varied. We have still a fantastic writers’ group that met there and carried on meeting and reading work and workshopping, and the workshop format is really interesting because you get used to critical feedback. It’s a powerful experience and I think it helped me hugely to believe in myself as a writer.

(Anna’s episode is worth listening to – she’s particularly insightful on the subject of overcoming rejection and self-doubt. Find it here.)

Still, it hadn’t occurred to me to do an MA myself. I was plugging away with journalism and the podcast, and occasionally working on a book idea and then giving up on it. It was interviewing Kit de Waal in July 2020 that was the clincher. Here’s what she said, edited slightly for length.

People are really quite snobby about creative writing degrees, and although mine wasn’t very good, I would never tell someone not to do one, especially if they can afford them – I mean, I think the cost is probably the only reason you shouldn’t do one. People say, “Oh well, Gustave Flaubert never did a creative writing degree, Ernest Hemingway never did a creative writing degree” – but what those men will have done is spend hours writing and hours talking about writing with their friends. Many of them didn’t work. They would have dedicated their life to being a writer. So you know, there are many ways to learn the craft – you don’t have to do a creative writing degree, of course you don’t, but you do have to spend the time, and you do have to have some respect for the craft.

That conversation convinced me. I wanted both permission and structure to think and talk about writing a lot. I wanted to learn the craft, and I needed a kick up the backside to stick with it.

Thanks to Anna, Birkbeck was the first place that sprung to mind, and the only university I applied to – and for that reason, while some of what I’m going to say will be true of MAs in general, I only really know what I’m talking about in relation to Birkbeck. I started in the autumn of 2020 and will finish when I hand in my dissertation this September. Here are a few thoughts that I hope will be helpful if you’re considering the same.

Time and money

I’m studying part-time, taking the MA programme over two years instead of one – this was thanks to good advice from Anna, who told me it would pass in a whirlwind if I did it full-time. I’m really glad I’ve been able to stretch it out and make the most of that structure for longer. I also think the workload would have been impossible to manage full-time, because I still have to make a living as a journalist.

In terms of how many hours a week an MA will demand – it’s a ‘how long is a piece of string’ situation, but the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. Some of the modules I’ve taken have required a lot of reading and homework – e.g. poetry – and if your MA is workshop-based, you’ll not only need to write every week, you’ll also need to read what your course-mates are writing, and provide feedback.

I paid £4320 for the first year, and £4410 for the second year. (I think it went up slightly in year two because of inflation. Luckily, the rates paid to freelance journalists also increase every year with inflation… Ahahahaha.)

Anyway, I was lucky to be able to afford those fees. I had a bit of money saved up and I had family who offered to chip in (thanks Dad, thanks Uncle Peter). I know that makes me very privileged. Even with that help, I’ve had moments of financial worry over the last couple of years. It’s not a cheap thing to do.

But if you can’t lay your hands on that money, don’t immediately think that an MA is out of the question. There are government loans for postgraduate studies. There are non-repayable bursaries and scholarships available. There are discounts for alumni, so if you’re thinking about returning to a university where you’ve studied previously, it’s worth asking about that. You can apply for help with childcare costs from the government or the university. You can pay your fees in instalments. There are options.

Is it worth it?

It has been for me. It’s provided exactly what I wanted: time, structure and accountability. My confidence has grown. I don’t know whether my creative writing has improved – I can’t quite bring myself to look at what I was doing at the beginning of the course – but I’ve definitely done a lot of it. I’ve allowed myself to take it more seriously, because the environment demands that. I don’t feel like an imposter any more, because on my MA, nobody is treated as an imposter. We’re all writers, as Anna said.

I’ve taken modules in short stories, screenwriting and poetry, none of which I had attempted before (other people did other things, like playwriting, genre and memoir). Finishing a short story felt like a huge achievement (I’ve still only finished one). Screenwriting was brilliant, under David Stafford. I’m not sure he’s still teaching at Birkbeck, but he kept reminding us that the process was supposed to be fun, and that actually, enjoying it was more important than anything else. I did have a lot of fun writing a half-hour screenplay for that module, and I also learnt things about plot and character that have helped with other forms of writing.

Poetry was the hardest option module I took – the more I learnt, the more I understood how incredibly difficult it is. But I wrote a sonnet that was published, and that’s not something I ever thought would happen. (I’m not sure I’ll write any more poems, tbh.)

The workshop format – sharing and critiquing work with your peers – is terrifying at first. I did my first workshop on Zoom and before it was my turn to receive feedback, I switched off my camera, went to the kitchen and had a brandy. I was shaking with fear. Now I’m much more blasé about it, and what I’ve realised is that it’s not just receiving other people’s notes that helps your work – it’s giving notes, too. I’ve learnt to read in a deeper way, and that’s provided me with more tools to use in my writing.

Some questions from you

Thank you Alex Holder for this question.

I'd like to know how often you meet as a group on the MA: How many in-person things and how often? Also do you get frustrated with writing tasks and just want to get on with your own novel or do you trust that they're making you a better writer?

I started my course in the depths of the pandemic, so I didn’t do any classes in person until the second year. As a part-time student, I’m in school one evening a week; if I were full-time, it would be two.

It may differ depending on the teacher, but I wasn’t given a lot of writing tasks. Mostly we were told to get on with writing short stories, or screenplays, or poems, or novels. It might be that you don’t particularly want to write a poem, and you’d rather be getting on with your play or whatever – but for me, it’s all been good discipline and helpful from a craft point of view.

Paul Isaacs asked me:

How much is it about the benefit of what you learn about writing, versus the benefit of giving you a helpful environment to write?

Such a good question. I think for me, the environment (and time, deadlines etc) has been the most useful thing – but because I’ve had that environment and the time and the deadlines, I’ve learnt a huge amount. The two things are tied up together. I would have liked to have been taught more craft – that’s not a major focus at Birkbeck – but I think the workshopping process sneaks in some craft via another route, because it demands that you constantly work at improving.

Annie White asked:

Firstly how beneficial is it compared to short-term writing courses? I really love writing short fiction and have taken some six to eight-week courses that just focus on that. … Is the MA more broad and if I want to focus on a specific type of writing would it be better to keep doing courses instead?

Yes, mine has been broad. If you know what your focus is and that you’re not interested in branching out, you might be better off sticking to those short courses – or there might be other MAs that would allow you to specialise. If anyone knows of one, do tell us in the comments.

Annie also asked:

I keep telling myself I’ll look into MAs “next year” when my writing has improved and I’ll be able to make the most of it. … Would you recommend waiting until the right time?

No. I would say, just do it. You’ll come on in leaps and bounds once you get there. Make the most of the opportunity to do an MA by doing it while you still need help, not waiting until you don’t any more.

If you have a question I haven’t covered here, please do comment and I’ll reply. If you’ve done an MA yourself, do share your experiences too.

And finally…

Studying is a good way to use up some of those notebooks that people give you for birthdays and Christmas when they know you like writing. God, it’s been a relief to make a dent in those lovely notebooks.

Please share this post with anyone you know who might be interested:

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The In Writing Creative Hour

10am BST, Sunday 26 June

As promised, this Sunday I’m holding an online writing hour for paid subscribers (with thanks to the London Writers’ Salon, who hold several every weekday and gave me this idea).

Meet me at 10am London time. Bring a drink (probably caffeinated rather than alcoholic, but that’s your business). We’ll all log on and say hello – you’ll be welcome to chip in if you want to tell us what you’re working on, but not required to – and then at 10.05, we’ll mute our microphones and get writing. At 10.55, we’ll return to say goodbye, and log off at 11.

You can write what you want during that time. If you feel like writing a love letter, you can do that. If you have a novel in progress, pick that up. If you want to write in your journal or start a poem or short story, that’s great too. The idea is just to give us all some time and space to focus, with the solidarity of being in it together.

Look out for an email early on Sunday morning with a Google Meet link to join the session – and remember, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber.

I hope to see you then! Until Sunday, good luck with your writing.