Butler University MFA

AWP 2013 RECAP: WRITE LIKE A MOFO

Dear Butler University MFA program, Booth, Hilene Flanzbaum, Rob Stapleton, and Andy Levy, Thank you. Thank you for sending me to AWP 2013. As an expression of my deep gratitude, I offer this wee token of my affection and appreciation for you and your commitment to your staff and students. So. Let’s recap. AWP isContinue reading “AWP 2013 RECAP: WRITE LIKE A MOFO”

Stretch, Run and Cheer the Murakami and Tudor Way: “If Only Virginia Woolf Had Done Yoga”

Stop thinking about others as competition. It’s hard sometimes to ignore what others are doing, but nobody’s path is the same.

Post-MFA Writers Facebook, Hobbify and Goof Off

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.

Got My MFA. Now What?

I did it because I didn’t just want to be someone with an MFA, I wanted to be someone with a shelf of books and short stories and screenplays with my name on them.

The fact is you will be much grumpier if you don’t write than if you do. You’ll feel better after you’ve written.

Writers Write, Submit and Make Nice with Rejection

Sure, you’re going to submit work before you’re ready, but that is okay. Keep submitting work. New work. Re-revised work. Whatever. Work on it, make it the best you can, have more than one piece going out, and GO.

Post-MFA Survival Guide Part 1: Read Lit Mags

It does make me want to get a little smacky-smacky when I hear writers say, in whispered tones, “I don’t really read literary magazines.” Well, that’s a problem. The fact is there is a lit mag for everyone—slipstream, genre-based, anything and everything.

Rejection’s Easy. What’s a Writer to Do With Acceptance?

After precisely fifteen minutes of eye-dabbing Sally Field gratitude, my inner Woody Allen got to work sabotaging my joy and minimizing my accomplishment. It’s not the New York Times, that SOB said in my head.