My DIY MFA was an entirely self-guided program with a curriculum that I developed myself. 2019 was a rough, crazy year for me that bled into a difficult 2020 (coupled with the global issues for 2020), so my 3 year program did not go as originally scheduled. Below you will find the curriculum I built for each semester of my DIY MFA program.
YEAR ONE
Fall 2018
Studies in Creative Nonfiction
I was originally torn between creative nonfiction and fiction writing, so I took a class my first semester in nonfiction writing to test the waters.
In a random Google search for creative nonfiction course materials, I stumbled upon Assay’s Syllabi Bank where I found the syllabus I used for this course.
“Creative Nonfiction.” | Melissa Frederick | CRW 7145 | Rosemont College
My poor husband had to grade my papers and listen to my presentations. I even made him read some of the essays in order to have critical feedback and follow-up questions. I ended up getting an A in the course, but it might have been because I was sleeping with the TA.
I also supplemented this course with another creative nonfiction course.
Writing Creative Nonfiction by Professor Tilar J. Mazzeo | This Great Courses course guided me as my lecture for the course.
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser | This is the go-to book for writing nonfiction. My aunt even had this book on her bookshelf when I went to visit a few years back. It caught my eye and stuck with me when it came time to develop my curriculum. I read this in conjunction with The Great Courses lectures.
The rest of this semester I sent knocking out a lot of books in my reading list and building notes for my manuscript outline.
Spring 2019
Essay Writing
I did one other creative nonfiction writing class. And while I enjoyed it and wrote a lot of personal essays in these two semesters, I ultimately realized after getting feedback from a professional editor that nonfiction, at least in this season of my career, is not my strong point and shouldn’t be my focus. Still, I don’t regret the time I spent on these courses.
Becoming a Great Essayist by Professor Jennifer Cognard-Black | This The Great Courses course was the backbone of my essay writing class.
I have a fascination with national parks and mountaineering, so I did a small sub-focus on traveling writing. Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Writing: Expert Advice from the World’s Leading Travel Publisher was the first book I read to learn about travel writing. I also read a memoir about the national parks and nature writing, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey. While I enjoyed Desert Solitaire, travel writing as a genre wasn’t my cup of tea. While I haven’t given up on the creative nonfiction route in the future (I have a Scrivener project filled with notes of each of our national park adventures), I dropped it from my MFA studies at this point to focus solely on fiction, the focus of my thesis.
Studies in Fiction Writing
I took two The Great Courses lectures as part of this course:
Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft by Professor Brooks Landon and Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes. Portions of the sentences class were hard to get through and others were pretty interesting. It was a mixed bag of a course.
I also supplemented the lectures with the following reading material:
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King | Every list out there about writing memoirs and craft novels has this book near the top of the list. Though I’ve never read a Stephen King novel, I still found this book useful and full of insight with inspiration to boot.
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White | Another one that hits every must-read list out there for aspiring authors. I took ample notes and will return when I reach the editing phase of my thesis, though I learned through some of my other course work that some of their preferences are outdated.
You can’t get through fiction writing without K.M. Weiland. I learned about her through her podcast and read the following three novels she wrote as part of my spring semester:
Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author’s Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development
Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story
Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success
I read one other fiction craft novel as part of this course: How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript by James Scott Bell. While I much preferred Weiland’s work, this is a quick read and still had some useful tips I hadn’t thought of.
Editing and Publishing
This course was a blend of two very different aspects of writing. I got a little ahead of myself and should have scheduled this a little later in my course material, but it didn’t hurt to know the publishing material ahead of time. After all, there’s no sense in spending three years writing a manuscript that ultimately you can’t sell.
English Grammar Boot Camp by Professor Anne Curzan | This was by far my favorite of The Great Courses lectures I did.
How to Publish Your Book by Professor Jane Friedman | The course guidebook for this class is saved on my hard drive for when I get closer to pitching my thesis to agents. Go ahead and read her book, The Business of Being a Writer, at the same time for this course (I found and read it later in my studies.)
Summer 2019
Branding and Social Media
Social media and marketing is my least favorite aspect of writing. But there’s being a writing and there’s being an author. A writer is someone who writes. An author is someone who does writing as a business. And the business side of writing includes branding yourself and your writing and the dread of my introverted soul: social media.
I read several books for this course:
Chritton, Susan. Personal Branding for Dummies. For Dummies, 2014.
Coleman, Ken. The Proximity Principle: The Proven Strategy that Will Lead to a Career You Love. Ramsey Press, 2019.
Friedman, Jane. The Business of Being a Writer. University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Wright, Christy. Business Boutique: A Woman’s Guide for Making Money Doing What She Loves. Ramsey Press, 2017.
Graduate Thesis Writing Workshop
The biggest – and perhaps scariest – part of doing a self-guided MFA was writing the actual thesis! By summer, I had tackled my 50+ book required reading list and put together an insane amount of notes and story ideas I brainstormed while reading. So in the summer of my first year, I started to build an outline. Now when I say outline, I don’t mean a sentence here or an index card there. I mean a 150,000 word plan of themes, symbols, quotes, snippets of dialogues, and breadcrumbs.
I read the following craft books while working on my outline in this workshop:
Craig, Christie. The Everything Guide to Writing a Romance Novel. Everything, 2008.
Maass, Donald. Writing the Breakout Novel: Insider Advice for Taking Your Fiction to the Next Level. Writer’s Digest Books, 2001.
Snyder, Blake. Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. Michael Wiese Productions, 2005.
YEAR TWO
Fall 2019
Form and Theory in Creative Writing
As I worked on my outline and my first draft, I wanted to study story structure, character arcs, and plotting. I read the following books as part of this course.
Maass, Donald. Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling. Writer’s Digest Books, 2012.
Maass, Donald. The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface. Writer’s Digest Books, 2016.
Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. Faber & Faber, 2007.
Graduate Thesis Writing Workshop
I spent another semester working on my extended outline.
Spring 2020 – Summer 2020 – Fall 2020
Graduate Thesis Writing Workshop
Life hit a bit of a rough patch there for a while, so my course load fell to a minimum, but I never gave up. Like the tortoise, I continued to read the final novels required on my reading list and worked on my extended outline and first draft of my novel.
I read another craft book during this time which helped me develop my index card beat sheet, which occupied the back of my office door for the next year and a half:
Brody, Jessica. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need. Ten Speed Press, 2018.
In December of 2020, I finished the first draft of my thesis, thanks in part to participating in NaNoWriMo in November of 2020. My back and shoulder blade did not appreciate the repetitive stress, but I hit the goal of 50,000 words in the month of November and finished strong in December, only seven hours past my revised self-imposed deadline.
YEAR THREE
Spring 2021, Summer 2021, Fall 2021
Editing, Revisions, and Critiques
While I’d written a handful of full manuscripts before starting this wild DIY MFA program, I’d never gone through the revision process before and the thought of giving a bunch of strangers my manuscript to read terrified me. So I spent a semester learning about critique groups and the revision process while building my writing community.
Levine, Becky. The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide: How to Give and Receive Feedback, Self-Edit, and Make Revisions. Writer’s Digest Books, 2010.
Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. Touchstone, 2000.
Finding critique partners was a little daunting for this introvert, especially during the COVID pandemic. I’d been to a few writer’s conferences in the past and reached out to writers I’d networked with there. I also worked with writers I’d met locally prior to the start of the pandemic, as well as an online group. While I didn’t use it myself, another critique partner I met through a different, private group recommended CritiqueMatch.
Since this was my first go at the revision process, my goal was to get as many different sets of eyes on my thesis as possible without completely overwhelming myself with manuscript swaps. A lot of critiquing is also reading, so I learned problems and issues with my own story as I went through other writers’ novels with a critical story mind.
Thesis
When I wasn’t critiquing, I was revising. For the second and third drafts, I worked on overall story revisions such as plot, character arcs, and character web. Several scenes were cut since they added nothing to the forward character arc or plot, and other scenes were added to fill in character growth and show motivations. My character web became more and more condensed as I merged different characters together and gave each character more purpose.
While working on my third draft, I started preparing my marketing materials – the elevator pitch, the query letter and the synopsis. I also workshopped these with my critique partners. For my next novel, I plan to start with these as an integral piece of the outlining/planning process, as I think it will help save me months of work in having to tweak the main plot points and plot/subplots flow. Starting with the query letter also hones a focus for character motivations right from the start.
The final draft in the fall of 2021 was line edits. After completing my final draft in November of 2021, I finished my final semester of my DIY MFA by querying to agents.