As you may have caught in the first, second, and third installments of the Eliza Tudor Survival Guide to bridge the worlds of MFA-candidate and MFA-wielding god/goddess, Lit Mags fuel a writer, writers submit, and writers keep (anyone?) writing. Step 4 is brief, so it shares a post with step 5 (out of 7—you’ll love 6 and 7).
4. CONNECT
Join Facebook even if it scares the living hell out of you. Keep in touch with your lit gang. Make some new lit and non-lit friends. Let people into your writing life. It makes it less lonely.
5. CREATE (outside of writing)
Rediscover, in this post-MFA world what else you like to do besides writing. I got a little stale during my MFA years—there just wasn’t time for everything. This is the PERFECT time to say hello again to hobbies.
There’s a great Louis Armstrong quote about making a life. I’m paraphrasing here in a big way, but make your life your work and it will make your writing better. And this is exactly the time to do it. You’ve finished your MFA, you have a project to work on, you’re figuring out how to be a self-employed writer (even if it isn’t your only job or your only other-other job). Figure out some new obsessions. Revisit some old ones. Goof off a little bit. It will bring freshness to your work.
Eliza Tudor is a writer in Silicon Valley. She received her MFA from Butler University. Her work has most recently been published in PANK and Hobart and is scheduled to appear in Annalemma Issue 8.
Beth Bates 