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…
Bathtubs, Desks and Coffee Shops: Shaping Your Writing Space
"What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?" ~ Toni Morrison
Weekly Writing Exercise: Write What You See
Wherever you are, look around and spend five or ten minutes writing down everything you notice. Is there a cracked bowl on the kitchen counter waiting to be mended? A stack of firewood beside the stove? Is the dog sleeping…
Swoopers and Bashers: Editing While You Write
Are you a swooper, or a basher? "Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a…
Weekly Writing Exercise: Random Words
For many people who tend toward confessional writing, drawing from their own experiences and emotions, there’s a pressure to make everything just right, to perfectly translate their life so that readers can experience the same sensations, the same feelings they…
