Book Review: DIY MFA

I've never really considered going back to school to earn a Masters of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. The time. The expense. The distance. It all conspires against me. Yet, I truly do desire to learn more about the craft of writing and wish to improve whatever skills I have to this point. Thankfully, there are always books available to condense a subject down to manageable parts. Think of this book, DIY MFA, as the equivalent to a MFA for Dummies. Gabriela Pereira boils the craft and the accompanying counterparts down to a science.

She divides the book into three categories of activity necessary to become proficient at writing to the level of a Masters degree student. First, she teaches you to write with focus. I felt a bit distressed reading this section, because once again I wondered whether I should put more effort into planning and plotting. I'd say that's just not my style, but that feels like a cop-out. I certainly could make note cards planning each scene of my novel. I could draw up an outline. But, I will admit, I tend to work better when I simply begin with an idea, a character, a title, and just jump in with both feet to begin writing. Still, the writing lessons in this book are quite helpful. They focus on all the standard writing subjects: characters, plot, point-of-view, setting, and dialogue.

In the second section, Pereira urges writers to "read with purpose." I'm quite sure I already take this approach. I believe firmly that if you wish to write, you should immerse yourself in good reading. Yet, the level Pereira takes this to goes well beyond my habit of reading with a dissecting eye. She encourages writers to take on particular topics, genres, and authors for deeper study and to write up the results of what you learn. While my blog book reviews often highlight skills I admire in other writers, I haven't been driven to take apart passages and finely dissect them to discover how the author achieved success. This is something I should do more of, I'm sure.

The final section focuses on building community. I know that I would benefit from taking much of the lessons in this section to heart. I need to work harder at building community, identifying and finding readers, and creating a platform or a brand for my writing. I found lots of helpful advice in this section.

All in all, I benefited from this writing text. Although it cannot come close to the full experience of pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts at a school, the book does cover the basics you might find in a creative writing degree. It was easy to digest and full of inspiring information. I will be interested to see how this text compares to The Portable MFA in Creative Writing (the other MFA text I placed on my goal list in a previous post). Alas, reading is the easy part. The real challenge comes in putting the lessons to work and actually putting the pen to paper.