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Some writers think MFA's are artsy-craftsy factories while others see writing school as a ticket out of their day-job routine.

Our special guest this week is Donald Ray Pollock, one of the most inspiring examples for part-time writers looking for an MFA. Pollock worked in a paper mill for 30 years before attending Ohio University's MFA program. He emerged with a book of rough-and-tumble short-stories about his Ohio hometown called Knockemstiff.

Today, he explains how an MFA changed his life in part of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You've said that writing workshops helped your writing. How did workshops help you? Any advice for my readers who are considering joining an creative writing MFA program? 

Donald Ray Pollock:
I think the MFA program at Ohio State probably shaved a year off the writing of Knockemstiff.  I put maybe ten of the stories through workshops that first year and a half. Continue reading...

So I’d get back comments from 12-15 people on each one, people who were fantastic readers.  Now, I have to admit that I was a bit paranoid about incorporating too many suggestions into the work, and sometimes I only changed a few words. 

I guess I’d read too many criticisms about “workshop” stories and how the MFA programs are comparable to a factory system.  Still, I have to say that at Ohio State, nobody (the professors) tried to pressure you to conform to their personal ideals about what makes a good story. 

Too, I think the program was a benefit to me because I’d never been around any writers or people who really, really cared about that sort of thing.  Now, I believe that you can get too much of that, and it can hurt you to be too “insulated” from the rest of the world, but it has been nice to experience for three years. 

I mean, don’t spend unnecessary years in school just so you can avoid real life.  After I started trying to learn how to write, it seemed that every new book of fiction I opened was written by someone who’d been through a MFA program, and so I became convinced that you needed to go to grad school to become a “real” writer (or get published!).  

Though I no longer believe you need a MFA to be a writer, getting three years of support to practice the craft is damn nice.  But if you have a little discipline and just read a lot of good stuff and sit your ass in the chair everyday and try to put words on paper, then you’re pretty much doing what you need to do already.