This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 62: Do I Need A Writing Degree?

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And today I’m going to address the surprising number one question that I get asked by writers just like you.

But first, two things. Number one, I would like to think at Elise Jane Tabor for her sponsorship of this episode. Thank you, Elise. Number two, there are two new reviews of the Write Now podcast in iTunes and I just wanted to share those with you.

The first is from Ben Ravenwood who says, “The best, five stars. As my wife would say, this is the best thing since sliced bread. I love listening to this podcast as I walk in the morning. It gets me thinking about my writing projects and motivated to make writing a priority in my life. It helps me to understand that successful writers are people just like me and I can do what they do. Sarah, you are an angel of inspiration.” Ben, thank you so much for your kind words. That meant a lot to me.

The second one is from iTunes listener, Taytay Taylor, who says, “I can’t believe, I didn’t know about this podcast. Five stars. I love going to work each day and listening to your advice and hearing from people accomplishing an assortment of dreams as I peck away on the computer. It gets me pumped to race home and work on my novel. Very informational, entertaining, and inspiring. Thanks for all you put into this.” Thank you so much, Taytay Taylor. You are wonderful. I appreciate your words and I’m wishing you the absolute best of luck as you work on your novel.

I’m sitting here at my desk this morning. That’s right. I’m recording in the morning for once, so we’re going to see how this goes. And I have a cup of coffee and I have a view out my window of trees and tiny little sparrows who for some reason want to get in my house. I don’t know. This is like a new development. There’s this little flock of sparrows that lives in the forsythia bush outside my window. And lately, they’ve taken two sitting on the window ledge and like banging their little heads against the window like they want in. I don’t know if I should be delighted or terrified, but it’s kind of both, so anyway.

So I’m enjoying this view and I just wanted to say, thank you for letting me into your day. Thank you for opening your ears and listening to my words and for connecting with me today. This is just such a treat. I always look forward to recording and I’m so glad I have the opportunity to talk to you.

Also, quick update. As you may or may not know, I am currently working on a new writing project. That’s right. I have put my novel on hold for just this month and I am working on writing, recording, producing, editing all of this stuff for an audio drama podcast. So an audio drama is a fictional podcast, sort of like an old timey radio drama, but without the old timey.

It’s called Girl in Space and it is the audio diary of a girl in space. Right now, it is slated to come out in September 2017. And if you want to learn more about it, you can go out to girlinspacepodcast.com. I’ve been having a lot of fun/challenge doing this project. And I’ve talked about it a couple times on this show and I finished writing episode three last night and I was like, okay. So I’m back in the … we have peaks and valleys as writers. And like sometimes you hate what you write and you’re like, oh my gosh, why am I even bothering? This is terrible. In which case you should go and listen to episode 61 of the Write Now podcast, which is called Self Writing and Self Talk. I think you could benefit from that.

But today, I’m in one of the peaks instead of the valleys. I’m in a place where I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is actually really good and I’m excited about it and I’m discovering things as I go along and it’s just kind of been a joy. And so I’m really excited about it. I wanted to share it with you. I’ll share all the links and stuff when it’s launched and make sure that you know where to find it, if it’s something that interests you.

So for me, this is kind of a big deal because, so I ghost write for a living and I write things online, but I’ve never published my own piece of fiction before. All of my book ghost writing, all of the articles that I write, everything that I write for Forbes is non-fiction. And so Girl in Space is going to be my Oh boy, my first fictional publication, so to speak, even though it’s coming out as an audio drama instead of a book. So I don’t know if you can tell, I’m kind of nervous about it, but I’m also tremendously excited. So we’ll just see how that goes. Wish me luck, I guess, is what I’m saying.

Okay. So let’s dig into the meat and potatoes or potatoes and potatoes if you’re a vegetarian of today’s episode. So I get a lot of questions from listeners, just like you. And some of those questions I’ve answered in previous of the show, but there’s one question that I get a lot, surprisingly, and I don’t know why it surprised me. I keep thinking that most of the questions I get are going to be like technical writing related. So, Oh, how do I develop themes or what makes for a good character or what does a good character arc look like? But the question that I get asked the most is do I need a writing degree? So we’re going to talk about that today.

What kind of tipped the scales for me doing this episode was an email that I received from podcast listener Keifer. And I’m going to go ahead and read an excerpt from his email. Keifer wrote, “Hi there, Sarah. I am a young ish writer that received a bachelor’s in philosophy and was going to pursue a doctoral degree in that when I realized that I’d been chasing this thing that was someone else’s dream and it was no longer mine. I finished up that degree and I’ve fallen in love all over again with writing. Particularly, I write poetry. I’ve been taking classes and building a fairly strong portfolio. I’ve even sent some poems out and I have a chat book that I want to shop this fall. I also have a blog for my poems and essays.

Anyway, I sort of fell into this goal to pursue an MFA in poetry. My partner and I talked about this some the other day, with respect to a section in Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, where she talks about MFA programs as being unnecessary and often young writers go into them looking for a guarantee or a sense of validation. This talk has me doing some soul searching as the deadline is looming August 1st.

So I worry that I do need a sense of validation. I know that I’m conventionally intelligent and then I can do the work, but there is something about the official nature of a program and the rigor and guidance of it that seems validating, as if spending two years will turn me into something bulletproof or at least something nearing that.

Further, I think there’s an element of peer pressure. Many of the magazines and journals that I read and want to be involved with have blurbs where so-and-so received their MFA from blankety blank. It’s pretty ubiquitous. Even disregarding the fear of just generally feeling invalid as a poet, I worry that I will appear invalid within the community, without those letters after my name. I even had a fear that by not going I’m punking out and that I will have egg on my face and that this story that I’ve had for my plan for myself will look ridiculous. I will look weak and cowardly for not going.

And I have another fear. That without that guidance, I won’t be able to put together a full length project that coalesces, like I won’t be able to dedicate the time and concentrated effort to make it, or I will write and write and none of the parts will fit together and make a book that is coherent.

I know that you are a busy stranger and that this is silly, but I’m hoping that maybe you could give me advice on MFA programs and questions about validity and small presses and how to deal with some of these fears. I haven’t decided what I will do, but I’m leaning toward taking at least a year or two off and seeing how I feel. I can already feel some of these fears becoming more manageable and smaller just by putting them down in text and out there to someone else. But I’d still love to hear your input or advice. Thanks in advance and love from Fort Wayne.” Keifer.

I have to say, when I first read this email, I was slightly overwhelmed. I was like, Oh my gosh, I love to help people, but I can’t make this decision for you, but I think that Keifer knew that, and I think in a sense, he had already made his decision and it was just looking for feedback or maybe a little validation, to use his own word, that he had made a good choice.

His email also brought back all of these questions that I had asked myself at that phase in my life. I graduated from college with my undergraduate degree a couple of years before the great recession, but jobs were already sort of becoming very scarce. So a lot of my good friends were looking at graduate programs because all we knew at that point in our lives was academia. And so of course, if jobs are scarce, you turn to more academia. And I think a lot of people went after those MFA and master’s degree and PhD programs because they didn’t know what else to do. I’m not saying that’s true of all of them. Several of them had very clear goals that, yes, I’m going to get my doctorate and I’m going to become a professor at so-and-so university, but I was not one of those people.

I had applied to several doctorate programs, as well as several MFA programs, in a sort of dartboard attempt to prolong the inevitable. I was scared to move beyond what I didn’t know. And honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t have a goal with a capital G. I didn’t have a five-year plan. I graduated from college feeling confused and lost, like I’m sure so many of you or maybe your children or your parents have felt, or maybe you even felt this way graduating from high school. I know I did.

I didn’t even think about going to college. I just went because I had received a scholarship, which I realize now seems extremely privileged and I feel like I need to apologize for that, but I was a stupid 18 year old and I didn’t understand the world and I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t even know that I was allowed to want things out of life. I just felt like a little car on an automated track. And I knew that my guidance counselors had told me if you want a good job, then you need to go to college so go to college college. So I went to college. I didn’t know at that time that I would be amassing a large amount of student debt, despite my scholarship, but that’s another story for another day.

So I applied after graduating college to all of these MFA and doctorate programs. The doctorate programs were in Victorian studies because part of me wanted to be a professor. The MFA programs were so that I could continue creating poetry and short fiction. And I applied to several low residency programs, which means that it’s sort of like a correspondent school model where you take classes from afar and then get together on campus once or twice.

And then I happened to have a talk with a professor whom I deeply admired and respected. And it was a chance meeting. I was in a building maybe a couple of days before graduation. We’re talking like right up at the finish line here. And I ran into Professor Yuling and he said, “Sarah, what are you doing with your life?” Or words to that effect. And I said, “I’m going to become a professor like you.” And he kind of looked at me and he said, “Sarah, let me tell you a couple things.” He proceeds to tell me that tenure as a professor was increasingly difficult to obtain, that university teaching jobs were increasingly wrapped up in bureaucratic frustrations and nonsense, and that as a non-tenured professor, I would be treated like garbage and be paid minimum wage for the work I was doing.

I don’t know now if that was true, if it was biased, anything like that, what I do know is that I took his advice. I turned down the acceptance I had received for the PhD program and I turned down the acceptance I had received for the MFA program because I had gotten into both and I don’t know which one I was even going to choose. I was leaning toward the MFA, to be honest, because my heart has always been in the creative world, even though I love teaching.

But one thing I had not thought about, that I am very sure that college graduates nowadays are extremely cognizant of, is that that MFA program was going to cost me something like $50,000 to $100,000 dollars. And because it was an MFA program, a master in fine arts, they did not give out scholarships. I told myself that if this was something I really wanted, I could reapply, go back later on when I had more experience and here I am over a decade and I still haven’t gone back to school for another degree.

This is partially just because I’m so busy writing, which I was going to get the degrees so that I could become a writer, but I ended up being able to write without the advanced degree, which we’re going to talk about a little bit in this episode.

Currently, I am getting paid to write for a living and while I think it would be fun and interesting to go back for an MFA, I can’t say right now, at this point in my life, that it would be worth the $50,000 to $100,000 dollar price tag. Like I’m making money writing, but I’m not making that much money writing. From a practical standpoint, the return on the investment would simply not be worth it for me at this point, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s true for you.

So let’s dig in a little bit to the question. Do I need a writing degree? Because as I told Keifer, I understand, I understand the fears and I understand the need for validation. Currently, two of my siblings have advanced degrees. My sister has her doctorate and my brother has a master’s degree. And sometimes yes, I feel a little lacking when we’re all together. And sometimes yes, I look at those letters after some of my friend’s names, PhD, MFA, and I feel left out. I feel lesser sometimes, but for me, that lesser feeling doesn’t come from the need to have studied more or worked in a more complex regimen of writing exercises. It comes a little bit for me from vanity and that’s kind of hard for me to admit. My friends and I all joke that I am a huge narcissist, which maybe it’s true, but boy, would it be validating? Would it sooth my vain instincts to have a prestigious degree? To say, “Hello, I am Dr. Sarah” or “Yes, I graduated from so-and-so program.” Yes. I know what I’m talking about.

And I don’t want to brush aside the need for validation and I don’t want to brush aside the fears or the questions, the questions that am I doing this right? Do I have the right credentials? Am I screwing up my future? Am I letting go of this academic world that I know and falling backwards into this work world? Am I taking a risk that I’m afraid to take? Will my work speak for itself without an MFA or a doctorate degree? Will my work speak for itself without a bachelor’s degree? What will my work say? Do I have permission to be a writer?

Just like Keifer, I remember feeling sort of a second hand indignation or a second hand insultedness When I read that passage in Big Magic where Liz Gilbert talks about not needing an MFA, where she says that it’s unnecessary and even vain. How dare anyone invalidate my avenue of validation, even though I didn’t have an MFA or a PhD in writing. It was still something that I valued. It was still something that my future self or my past self wanted.

And while I can’t answer the question for you, do I need a bachelor’s degree in writing to be a writer? Do I need an MFA to be a good writer? Do I need a PhD to teach writing? I can’t answer those questions for you, but I can help lead you to the answer that’s right for you. I’ve put together a worksheet that you can download at sarahwerner.com and essentially it walks you through these questions. So if you want, you can go there, download, fill it out, see your own answers in front of you and move forward making the decision that’s right for you because that’s just the thing, as with so many other things, and I know this is a frustrating answer. There is no one answer.

So I’m going to ask you a series of questions and these questions will take into account different factors and these factors are all equal. At least until you prioritize them. These factors include things like time, money, lifestyle, goals, desires, feelings, and value. And we’ll talk about these as we work through these questions. I’m going to start with the hardest one. Are you ready?

What is your goal as a writer? You can read it down for yourself. You can write it down on the worksheet, but put some time into it. Set aside 10 or 15 minutes and really think it through. What is your goal as a writer? Try to keep it somewhat realistic, but don’t be afraid to be honest with what you actually want. It can be I want to self publish my novel, or I want to a more famous novelist than James Patterson, or I want to get an article published in so-and-so magazine, or I want to become the next Poet Laureate of the United States, or I don’t really care how popular or quote unquote successful I am in the writing world as long as I’m getting paid to write. What is your goal as a writer? And it’s okay if you don’t know what it is right away. I’ve talked to a lot of writers who just say, I want to write every day and that’s perfectly legitimate.

The second question I want to ask you is what are you already equipped with? These are very open-ended questions and so there’s a ton of different ways that you can answer them. Maybe you have a MFA already. And you’re wondering if you want a second MFA in another subject, or maybe you want a doctoral degree if your goal is to be a professor. Maybe you’re equipped with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Maybe you’re equipped with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Maybe you have a high school diploma. Maybe you have a GED. Maybe you’ve been reading and writing since you were three years old or as long as you can remember. Maybe you had a really great teacher in grade school, middle school, high school who really hammered home the elements of style and grammar and writing. Maybe you love books. Maybe you have an enormous creative capacity. Maybe you have ideas for books coming out your ears.

What are you already equipped with? Do you feel like you understand the basics? Have you read, for instance, Stephen King’s, On Writing, Anne Lamott’s, Bird by Bird. Write down what you’re already equipped with.

All right. The next question is what do you still need? So go back and look at what you wrote down for your goal. Is the stuff in question number two that you’re already equipped with enough to help you reach that goal that you wrote down in number one. If it’s not, on number three, write down what it is you still need. Maybe you need a couple of years more practice writing every day. Maybe if your goal is to become a professor, maybe you legitimately need that doctorate. Maybe you need to brush up on your spelling or your grammar. Maybe you just need to work reading into your daily routine, or maybe you’ve got that all down. Maybe you’ve even written your book and it’s sitting in a drawer somewhere and you need the confidence to start querying or to self-publish. What is it that you know that you need? What is it you’re still missing?

All right. Now we’re going to switch gears just a little bit. Question number four is what sort of lifestyle do you want to live? Again, these are really big questions so take the time to really think about what sort of lifestyle you want. This was something I had never considered, and maybe I was very naive. Maybe I was stupid. Maybe this is just normal.

But one of my mentors in my early thirties asked me what kind of lifestyle I wanted to live. I was feeling lost at the time. I didn’t know what kind of prices to set for my writing services. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just felt very confused. And he asked me, “Well, what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? Do you want to work 80 hours a week? Do you want to write creatively every night? Do you want to be able to take care of your family? Do you want to spend free time with your family? Are you okay going into debt? Are you okay living paycheck to paycheck? Do you want to have the comfort of a nest egg or some savings in your savings account? Do you want to be able to enjoy free time with your family, by yourself, with your spouse, with friends? And do you understand the sacrifices that each of these lifestyles requires?

One thing he had me do was write down how much money I would need to make each month to pay my bills. And that’s everything. That’s water bills. That’s your car payments, your mortgage or your rent, your student loans, if you have any. I did. And then to that number, add in how much you need each month to live the lifestyle that you want, how much you want to be putting away in your savings, maybe something you’re dreaming of, buying a boat or at lakeside cabin, or just paying off your student loans. Take a minute to really imagine the way that you want to live as a writer.

Number five. This worksheet is presuming that you don’t already have the degree and so write down your feelings how not having this degree makes you feel. For me, not having my MFA or my doctorate in writing sometimes makes me feel a little bit inadequate, a little humble, a little embarrassed, maybe even a little ashamed. For you, maybe you feel some of those feelings. Maybe you feel absolutely fine without having a writing degree, but maybe you feel inadequate. Maybe you feel amazing. However, it makes you feel to not have the degree that you’re thinking about getting, go ahead and write that down.

Okay. The next two questions are about time and money. Number six. What is the cost of the program that you’re looking at? For me, the MFA I was considering was somewhere between $50,000 and a $100,000 dollars. So number six is pretty easy. If you’re considering a couple different programs or if you’re not really sure, write down the range. So it’s like, Oh, okay. If I want my MFA, it’s this much. If I want my doctorate in creative writing, it’s this much. Just have an idea of the chunk of change that it will take to complete the degree.

Number seven is time. What’s the time commitment that it will take? There are all sorts of different degree program types. So if you’re looking at your MFA, there are programs where you go in every day and you sit with your classmates. They’re also low residency programs, which I mentioned earlier, where you largely do your work at home and then you go out once or twice a year to meet with the group. Maybe the program you’re looking at lets you work nights and weekends on your class materials so that you can hold down your job.

What’s the time commitment for this degree and does it, and the cost that you wrote down in number six, align with the lifestyle that you wrote down a number four? So if you wrote down that you want to have time to spend with your kids or time to spend with your family or friends, if you just really value free time, does the degree program enable you to live the lifestyle that you want, whether during or after?

One final question. And this is where we talk about value. You’ve worked your way through the worksheet. You have an idea of what you want out of life, how you want to live, what you want to do and accomplish as a writer. You have an idea of where your strengths are already as a writer. You know what you’re equipped with currently. And as in question number three, what you still need. Will the writing degree that you’re looking at, whether it’s bachelor, masters, PhD, when you consider your goals, what you’re already equipped with, what you still need, the time, the cost, your lifestyle that you want to live and how you feel about where you are without the degree.

Number eight encourages you to consider, is it worth it? What is the value that this degree will bring to me? Will it help me meet my goals? Will it help me live the lifestyle I want to live? Will it help fill in the gaps of my knowledge? When you look at question number six, is that investment of money worth it? Will you earn it back? For me, to be honest, that was the deal breaker. I was going to get my MFA in short fiction. And something told me that I was not going to earn back $50,000 to $100,000 dollars writing short fiction.

But like I said, all of these different factors, time, money, lifestyle, goals, feelings, value. Those don’t have the same weight for everyone. Maybe for you, money is not an issue. Maybe for you, the feeling of inadequacy and shame from not having a degree is eating you up and you have the money to invest in a program, or maybe you just really genuinely need help work shopping your ideas. Maybe you really need the value that a program can provide. Maybe your answer to number three, what you still need, calls for a degree.

So answer the questions that I’ve lined up in today’s show, or if you want the easy way to do it, you can download and fill out the worksheet that I’ve provided at the show notes for today’s episode at sarahwerner.com, episode number 62. Do some serious and guided thinking.

I want to go back and address one more word from Keifer’s email. He mentioned the word bulletproof. As in once I have my MFA, I will be a certified writer. I will be bulletproof and I really, really hope this is not discouraging, but you’re not ever going to be bulletproof. Even writers with doctorates and MFA’s, multiple degrees even, they still face rejection. They still feel vulnerable when they read their work aloud. They still feel afraid of not being good enough. They still have to wash the dishes and mow the lawn and fold the laundry. They can still get sick. They still struggle with writing.

I used to work in a marketing agency and one of the things we would tell clients is there is no silver bullet. It’s a really lovely and comforting thought to think that there is something magical that can shield you from the hardships of life if you can just attain it or find out what it is. It’s really easy for us, as human beings, to think if only I just had X or Y or Z, then my life would be perfect. Then my life would be better. Then all my problems would be solved. There’s no silver bullets. There’s no magic wands. Aside from the ones that we write about in our books.

There’s just us getting through life together. And this is why it’s so important for us to be encouraging and supportive to each other because it doesn’t get any easier. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth it. That doesn’t mean that we can’t find joy and beauty in writing because I think that we do and it makes it so worth it. In fact, maybe it makes it even more worth it. Part of what makes things beautiful and inspiring is that fact that sometimes we have to struggle to get there.

I am putting in a ton of hard work, figurative blood, sweat, and tears, maybe literal tears, on the current project that I’m working on, but I am so proud of what I’m creating. I’m creating something new and exciting and I think it’s going to bring joy to a lot of people and that’s so worth it. I feel like could have summed up this episode with a very simple word at the beginning and that word is no, you do not need a writing degree to become a writer. It is not a prerequisite.

That being said, a writing degree might be extremely valuable and useful to you. So go through the worksheet. Give it some thought. And no matter what, keep writing, keep seeking, keep learning, keep reading, keep remembering that you write because you love to write, because you love to create, because your heart is bursting with emotions that you want to share with the world or because your brain is bursting with ideas. If you write, you’re a writer and whether or not you decide to pursue the degree, I wish you all of the joy in the world in writing.

I love creating this podcast and I am deeply grateful for the people who enable me to continue creating it. Special thanks go out to Keifer for submitting his question today and also to my wonderful, wonderful Patreon patrons. Patreon is a third party donation platform that lets you pledge whatever you think this podcast is worth to you when you listen to it. A dollar per episode, $2 per episode. What have you. I never charge people for more than four episodes a month. And in fact, I struggle to create four episodes a month. If you are a constant listener, you might notice that sometimes I don’t always get my episodes out there on time and I apologize for that.

But I would love to send out special thanks to official word champion, Elise Jane Tabor. Official cool cats, Sean Locke and Rebecca Werner. Official bookworms, Matthew Paulson, Gary Medina and Lilith Black. Official rad dude, the Sioux Empire podcast and official caffeine enablers, Barbara Miller, Harrison Werner, Colleen Cotolessa, and War Writer. Thank you all so, so much for your generous support of this show. You are helping other writers to pursue their dreams and keep on writing. So thank you.

Phew. I feel like we went through a lot today. I don’t know. I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback for this episode. I would love to know if you pursued a graduate degree in writing, if you pursued an undergraduate degree in writing, if you’re thinking about doing that, what helped you decide. If I forgot to mention any important factors in today’s considerations, I’d love to know. You can contact me in a couple of ways.

First and foremost, you can go out to my website, sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Navigate over to the contact button and send me an email that way. There’s a little form you can fill out. It goes directly to my email and I read every single response that I get, even if I’m not able to answer right away or at all. You can also email me directly at hello@sarahwerner.com or you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat. I’m on all of the social media.

So reach out. I love to hear from you. If you want to support the show, tell someone about it. That’s seriously one of the best ways that podcasts can spread is if you know someone els, who’s a writer and you want to share the show with them, let them know it exists. Tell them to go out to iTunes and subscribe, download, whatever works best for them. Maybe help them a little bit if they’re not a regular podcast listener. Or if you want, like I said before, I always appreciates new Patreon supporters. And you can do that by going out to patreon.com and searching for the Write Now podcast. Or you can go to sarahwerner.com/patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And that will take you to my Patreon page.

Out of all of the thanks that I’ve sent out today, I want to especially thank you for listening. You are the reason that I’m creating this show. I wouldn’t be doing this without you. So thank you so much for listening. And with that, this has been episode 62 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner and you are a writer.