After spending most of her life earning a Ph.D in History, Erika Dreifus figured out that she was meant to be a writer. Without wasting another minute, she jumped into a creative writing workshops, and created a new life for herself. All her work paid off. Besides maintaining a bustling writing community and a busy blog for creative writing-minded folks, Dreifus has taught writing for the last five years. She now teaches writing at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and the Low-Residency MFA Program for creative writing at Lesley University.
Throughout her teaching career, Dreifus has focused on writing programs for unconventional students like working professionals or off-campus students. Today, Dreifus will explain these unique classrooms in my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
Do you think unconventional writing programs are growing in popularity? What is your advice for these fledgling writers who are trying to balance careers and families with writing?
Erika Dreifus:
Good questions. If we consider low-residency MFA programs in Creative Writing as "unconventional," then, yes, I'd certainly say that such programs are growing in popularity. I noted this in an article for Poets & Writers last year.
I recalled how much smaller the pool of low-residency programs was as recently as 2001, when I was applying. There are now about 30 such programs, and it seems that new ones continue to appear.
They seem to be thriving. To some extent, as the total enrollments in these programs continue to grow, they're becoming increasingly "conventional."
I think that it's an enormous challenge to balance a "day job" and/or a family with writing. And I consider stay-at-home moms to be working full-time, too, even if they aren't financially compensated for their work. Few people work harder than my friends and family members who are also moms.
At the same time, many parents I know are also some of the best multi-taskers I know. If anyone can "balance" competing commitments, they can.
One point that's often made about low-residency programs is that they appeal to precisely this group: writers with other important responsibilities and commitments. The "low-residency" format, as its name suggests, allows the writer to maintain his/her home and professional life with short breaks for on-campus residencies.
And learning how to balance the work required by an MFA program with everything else going on in one's life is good practice for life as a working writer, too.
» Five Easy Questions: Erika Dreifus, Part Two from ThePublishingSpot
After spending most of her life earning a Ph.D in History, Erika Dreifus figured out that she was meant to be a writer. Without wasting another minute, she jumped into a creative writing workshops, and created a new life... [Read More]
Tracked on: April 18, 2006 10:22 PM | Permalink to Trackback