From The Desk: Creative Writing

From The Desk: Creative Writing

First of all, I would like to introduce myself a bit. I’m Earl Guevarra and I’m a student in my senior year at the FLE department. I’m really fascinated by books and writing; I’m known among my friends either as an avid gamer or as a regular scribbler (For those who don’t know, I always have an extra notebook where I scribble all sorts of things!)

Now that it’s my final year here at Middle East Tech, people have started to ask me what I plan to do: I always tell them that I’ll take up my Master’s Degree in Creative Writing…and quite a good number of people have asked me the details of the course.

Instead of doing it in the traditional “essay” form, I’ll do it in a so-called “frequently asked questions” format where I’ll try to answer the questions that may come up:

1. What is creative writing?

Creative writing is basically any form of writing that has gone down through the so-called “writing process” that is not intended for academic, technical, and/or journalistic purposes. This covers everything from the shorter realms of flash fiction, haiku to the long forms of literature such as the novel, among others.

It is considered to be a separate field of the English department, along with technical communication, literature and linguistics; in short, creative writing is the attempt to bridge academic training and artistic pursuit for prospective writers all over the world.

2. What types of master’s degrees are there for the said field?

There are two types of degrees: Master in Arts (MA) and Master of Fine Arts (MFA). In the MA version of the degree, creative writing as seen as a specialization that follows a more rigidly structured degree plan (similar to a MA in Linguistics or Literature), while in the MFA version of the degree, creative writing is seen as an extension of the fine arts (opera, theater, music, etc.) and is more loosely structured.

MFA degrees are slightly more expensive than MA degrees due to the way they are structured and as for financial assistance, there are a lot of ways to be able to cover the cost of education.

At the end of the day, students are required either to create an anthology of poems, a novel, or a collection of non-fiction work (ranging from 50-150 pages; poetry much lesser). More on this in the following paragraphs.

3. How do people apply for a degree?

Creative writing is offered all over the world both in English and in the respective vernacular of each country; however, I have yet to see even a single Bachelor’s Degree for the said discipline here in Turkey. Mostly, people take the course in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and the Philippines, among others.

That being said, the policies of each university change; however, most will require you to submit a portfolio or a manuscript of your unpublished works.

Here is an example taken from a college in the United States: (http://arts.columbia.edu/admissions/creative-materials/writing-mfa)

Fiction: No more than 25 double-spaced pages–one or several stories, a portion of a novel, or a combination. If submitting a novel excerpt, please attach a brief plot synopsis.

Nonfiction: No more than thirty double-spaced pages of nonfiction of literary quality–one or a combination of works of memoir, personal essay, opinion, reportage, biography, and/or criticism. Academic papers are acceptable though not encouraged; the faculty committee will evaluate them on the basis of literary skill rather than scholarly excellence per se.

Poetry: No more than ten single-spaced pages of poetry, with no more than one poem per page.

They will base your application on merit as well as your potential to grow as a writer.

And oh, by the way, they will not require your GRE/GMAT scores (they are optional) for applying to a degree! Having a good TOEFL/IELTS score will help too!

4. What are the things that are touched upon in a creative writing program?

Mostly, programs are done in workshop format and there are always field sessions in most of the programs that I have checked so far. The field session will be one or more of the following: community service, meetings with established writers, seminars, etc.

As for the main sessions, one will learn the techniques of writing poetry, fiction, plays, literary criticism and journalism and as mentioned above, there is a project that takes the place of a thesis. Here is another example, this time taken from a program in the Philippines: (http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/academics/continuing/cla/master-fine-arts-creative-writing.asp)

The writing of imaginative literature of substantial length, along with an essay describing the creative process. The thesis may be any of the following:

a 100-page novel;

2 novellas (50 pages each);

5 short stories (total of 100 pages);

30 poems;

5 essays (total of 100 pages);

3 one-act plays;

1 full-act play and performance;

or a 100-page non-fiction narrative.

As seen, creative writing is mostly about process and development; the product is an important part of the goal, but it is not everything, as I will tackle in the next item:

5. What are the careers that are associated with creative writing?

There are lots of careers for creative writers outside of the academia. These include being a playwright, screenwriter, journalist, copywriter, book writing (isn’t it that obvious?), speech writer…among tons of choices that can be pursued once you have finished the program!

It is important to know that a MA/MFA is generally the terminal degree for the field: Although a few universities have started to open up PhD courses, many of them still consider a MA/MFA as equivalent to say, a PhD in Literature or Linguistics (in other words, you don’t have to take a doctoral degree to teach Creative Writing in the university!)

…

Personally, I would like to take up Creative Writing so that I will be able to learn more about the art of writing non-fiction. I want to be able to pen a book someday, and if anyone wants to know about my wildest dream (far-fetched, but why not): I want to be able to write a script for a video game or an animated movie!

I hope that this gave you a good bird’s eye view about Creative Writing in general and I hope that you have enjoyed reading this piece!

Wishing you all the best of luck!

Earl “Rave28” Guevarra, senior student

PS: If anyone is interested in seeing my writing portfolio, here it is: https://clippings.me/ravecg28