No More Fluff and Puff: Your Customized MFA Reading List
You may find it enjoyable to flop down on the sofa to read fluff and puff, but this is your MFA. These authors are your professors, so choose them wisely.
Weekly Writing Exercise: Startling Descriptions
Choose something specific, something commonplace, and describe it in the freshest, most unexpected, most honest way you can.
Your Customized MFA: Getting Started
Now that you've decided to go the DIY MFA route, it's time to get down to specifics. There are a few types of customized MFAs. Which is right for you?
Weekly Writing Exercise: Old Photographs
Pick up an antique photograph at a flea market or junk store and sit with it for a while....
Rewriting the Script: Creating a Customized MFA Program
A customized MFA is tailored to you, your life, your abilities and your aspirations. It takes into account every facet of your life: your time, your money, your brain's ability to focus, your interests, your reading and writing styles – everything.
Weekly Writing Exercise: Brain Dump
It doesn’t have to be good writing. In fact, it shouldn’t be good writing.
Just Sit: How to Begin and End Your Writing Session
Just sit. And stay sitting. This is harder than it sounds.
Weekly Writing Exercise: First Lines
Visit a library or bookstore and choose a book by an author you’ve never read, a book about which you know nothing. Crack it open and copy down the first sentence, then close it and put it back on the…