https://www.openculture.com/2018/12/cia-helped-shaped-american-creative-writing-famous-iowa-writers-workshop.html

So one of the big things that gets parroted fairly often is 'show, don't tell.' It's good advice sometimes, but it is a useful tool in the right hands. Instead of just saying that a person or system is perpetuating racism, you need to substantiate the claim. It can muddy the water under certain circumstances, or make the conversation long and wordy in others. It discourages discussion on political theory, calling it too abstract or 'political.'

It's subtle strategies like that which make it hard to portray what can be (socialism) over what is all people have known (capitalist hellscape.)

Hey, better late than never to get empathy. Especially when every part of western imperialism is actively trying to suppress it.

In the US, grad school is considered even more extra/luxury than a four-year degree, so there are fewer opportunities for funding and the loans get steeper in cost. As someone else mentioned, there are fully-funded programs where you get paid tuition, rent, and a stipend without having to do anything. You get paid to get the education and maybe teach classes/act as an assistant. You see it in master's programs and a lot of the times in phd programs. And of course, there are scholarships and grants, though those are pretty competitive too.

I have a friend who got her master's in sociology and works as a researcher using the dreaded critical race theory! I'd say if you wanted to do a grad program at a research university, you might be able to avoid the conscience-killing work, albeit with less pay.

I think if I was offered a paid MFA program with teaching part-time, I would do the whole thing again, no question. It would be a hard decision if I was given a time machine and the opportunity to talk to the younger me, but I think I would still do what I did. For your partner though, I would say that you can still engage in writing communities without the heavy financial investment. There are plenty of groups, festivals, organizations, etc. that would be happy to share in the love of writing. The good stuff, like workshopping is basically mutual-aid for writers. You help other people become better writers and they do the same for you. They cover things you might miss, or offer perspectives that you might not have. My advice would be to find a leftist circle and see if they have a writers group. That way, you can filter out chud writers and write for an audience who would appreciate your work.

And hey, it's not our fault that education became a machine to churn out libs. I'm just glad we got folks like you to round out our skillsets!

Okay, I'll talk about this incel guy who got into the program.

(CW - racism- a few instances, just a heads-up)

I'll call him Brett for the story. He got into the program around the same time I did. He was a fairly athletic white straight guy.

If I were to gauge his politics, he'd be anti-trump lib or uncomfortable trump supporter who pretends to go with lib politics for the sake of avoiding criticism.

Anyway, he was very willing to experiment with different themes, which was ironic, given that his characters were all transparent author-inserts. Author self-inserts who were racist incels. He would routinely share bits of his writing for workshop and it was a day of dread talking about it in class the next day. One memory that sticks out is him not quite getting that a person cannot tell if someone is Mexican by looking at them. He described a woman working in a service job as such while the character would have no way to know that. His counter was that Mexican people exist. :galaxy-brain:

I'd heard from a friend in the program that Brett experimented with having a character use the N-word.

The thing is, artistic circles can be hesitant to curb free expression (:freeze-peach:), especially if it's a well-connected white guy. Especially in a space of academia. Don't let them fool you.

The professor handling this assignment tried a very cautious (cowardly) approach and gave a broad warning for the class that if you're going to make 'bold or controversial choices,' you need to be aware of potential criticism. I tried to take Brett's writing as misinformed, but in good faith and said that as a black writer myself, I've never submitted a piece of work using the N-word. That I was sure he could tell the story he wanted to tell without alienating so many people. He did a quiet nod, but that was about it.

Fortunately, Brett tried to workshop the piece in a different class (without changing it at all) in my friend's class. My friend had a different professor that read the work and planned a response before said friend even reached out. Students were expected to write feedback to the work on a forum. According to my friend (also black), the responses were generally supportive, or called Brett bold for trying something like this.

The next day, however, when it was Brett's turn for the workshop, the professor addressed the class.

I don't have the exact quote anymore, but according to my friend, it went like, "Brett, what you wrote was racist and I will not tolerate this in the class. You will not speak to defend this work. And the rest of you who said this writing was bold, you're wrong. It's poison and you should know better as graduate students."

And he sat there as the professor laid into him. It's not much, but I wish I could've been there to witness the take down.

Brett didn't seem to lose stride though. He didn't take anymore classes with that professor and he retired that specific work. But other highlights during his career included a rant-filled manifesto directed at women and a piece with obscure references to nazis.

He was reported to several members of faculty and staff once for plagiarizing a writer of color - "to deconstruct the work."

I won't miss the guy, but I only wish I was harsher in my interactions with him before I knew what he was about.

Bright side - a couple of friends and I founded an anti-racist organization on-campus to keep people in the know about goings-on in the class like this. After all, if it's a one-time occurrence (to your knowledge) the faculty is less pressured to take action.

Honestly, I didn't know until a few years before applying to the program. Authors/professional writers can have degrees, but it's not a prerequisite to get published by any means. I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but there are plenty of published authors who didn't specialize in creative writing. I will say that the degree helps if you're looking for careers in fields adjacent to creative writing, such as editing or publishing. I applied to my program because I enjoy teaching writing and felt I needed a certain structure to finish the book I'd been working on.

I'll edit in the more specific numbers when I get a chance.

It's about a guy who goes looking for his friend in a world that developed parallel to earth, but with magic.

The main character is gay and black, and a lot of the world is seen through that lens. The other world knows about earth, but not vice versa, so there are bits of exploitation the main character picks up on.

The world's setting has several things not commonly seen or mentioned in other fantasy-esque settings. City planning and public transit show up in the plot (magic trains).

The plot kind of deconstructs sacrifice, selflessness, and agency.

That's my side hustle. I'm just going to genderflip my bara novels and see who notices.

It's looking like the field is getting tainted by gig economy jobs. Freelancing was already a thing, but it's pretty bad now.

You can enter journalism from what friends have described. You just need an angle and an idea of how you can stand out.

I've applied for literature journals, so I'm crossing my fingers.

I'm looking into teaching where I got my undergrad and it's looking pretty doable. I enjoy doing workshops and talking about my writing interests. Getting paid for it would be a bonus.

And of course, perfect world, I luck out and get to live entirely off of my writing.

Oh, works that inspired me:

NK Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy - The author is a bit of a lib, but she did a lot to break into the modern speculative fiction genre as a woman of color.

Octavia Butler - so many good sci-fi pieces. Kindred is one of my favorite books of all time.

Ursula K. Le Guin - beautiful writing (also where the lathe of heaven jokes come from.)

I'll say writing comes with practice, and it's so different from what's taught in composition. Also, it's incredibly subjective. Can't say how many times someone 'complimented' me on embracing an 'urban voice' when I write a character that speaks slightly differently than I do in class.

For practical advice, I'd say check out a book or piece of work you personally enjoy and examine what it is you like about it. Is it the word choices? The way the narrator talks? The pacing? Try to develop what it is that makes you appreciate writing. That way, you start off working on talents you can recognize.

And I love using story to slip in theory. In my book, I have certain bits of worldbuilding as a matter of fact. There are almost no cars/carriages in the setting and the cities are planned to be accessible. Commerce still happens, but it's largely through worker-owned goods/services. I'm still fine-tuning the story before publication, but my working logic was, 'why do I need to reproduce a western capitalist understanding of the world when I literally don't have to?'

Just under 100k. Undergrad got carried over, but I'd consider myself lucky. I'm fortunate enough to be in a place where I could offset a lot of the costs.

I don't think you need a master's degree to become a writer. I think you need some of the basics handled before you get started though. It's important to know the terms and tools/mechanics to be able to write well. Or you could know those things so that you can decide if they work for you. A master's will help publishers and hirers give your work/resume a second look.

I don't know a specific syllabus to suggest, but there are plenty of youtube collections that cover things like plotting, character, worldbuilding, etc. You might even find a creative writing course at a community college. It's a lot cheaper, and it could give you the structure you need to get the ball rolling on a project. Barring that, I would suggest looking for writing groups or starting one in your community.

The best stuff I learned was from other writers.

Hopefully, I get to be a mod in c/writing and I would happily put up more info and informal classes.

Honestly, I hate the hero's journey as a guideline. It's helpful starting out, but it feels so limiting when you really want to tell stories outside of that framework. I think it requires extra work to keep it from being a power fantasy where the other characters only serve the protagonist/plot itself. I think part of it for me is personal in that I found a lot of spec fic/fantasy to be incredibly individualistic, where I wanted to know how the main character's actions affected others. What I write tends to still have a main viewpoint character, but I wanted to make sure the other characters had lives that existed outside of plot/protagonist's problems.

Going into the character writing, I would say your end product will be very different, regardless of who you start with, unless you're deliberately keeping the character similar to the person/inspiration. For me, sometimes I would start with "This character from _____, but not racist." or "This character, but more assertive and honest." I would work at it and then bigger divergences would happen. Other times, I look at a story or topic I want to explore and try to find someone who would have an interesting perspective on the events.

If you're writing a story about a team of explorers in space finding an artifact, you can have three characters with three different opinions on the artifact. Because they disagree, they stand out, and you can even start a conflict there. Maybe A thinks it's valuable to sell, B thinks it's something that should be studied, and C wants to leave it alone and go back on the ship.

Then you can explore the why. You don't have to limit yourself by having your character planned out from the beginning. You can go back and line things up when you're revising! Maybe A wants to sell it because he never wants to be a victim of space-capitalism again, or he wants to sell it to fund the revolution, while B wants to put the artifact in a museum to get academic clout. Once you find little tidbits you like, you can go on and add more characters and traits that fit.

Honestly, I haven't found too many good books on writing that I still refer to, and I've had few books like that assigned to me in any of my classes. There was one that had published authors answering questions, but I'll have to find it. When I do, I'll add it into the edit.

I hope my answer was helpful and not too wordy

And thank you for the congratulations :)

I'm totally down to do that! Could you message me the details on who/where to apply?

Writing is like pregnancy. Really fun and engaging at the beginning. Mildly uncomfortable and time consuming in the middle. Horribly painful at the end. And then you have to live with the thing you produced, waffling between pride and disappointment.

I spent two years banging out a 30-page game supplement because I absolutely hated the process of reviewing my work and making incremental changes. That's before wrangling the layout in Word and finding a friend or two who was willing to read it and swallowing their criticism. Wanting to get something to the point where you assume someone else might try and read it is a slog.

It's just a very emotionally exhausting process to go from "What a great cool new idea I have!" to "How the hell do I write dialogue that doesn't sound like it's coming out of the mouth of a 3-year-old?" to "Fuuuuuck, time to edit my 3rd draft again."

Nope! I was pretty financially illiterate at the time I applied and I took out federal loans. I was already paying student loans for my bachelor's and I figured I would use the workarounds to avoid paying that I used before.

Audre Lorde comes to mind first.