Do you need to have an MFA to be a good writer?

Do you need to have an MFA to be a good writer?

If you don't have connections that an MFA will provide, how on earth would you get published?

you need an MFA to be an official writer of literary fiction (tm)

if you just want to write and be published, take Stephen King's advice of reading and writing for four hours a day and eventually you'll get good enough to make it

reading + writing =/= getting published

As in read for 4 hours, and write for 4 hours? Or read and write for a combined total of 4 hours?

the first one

Hmm, seems like a pretty lazy routine then...

It definately helps

From what I've seen it isn't the connections that matter. Its more knowing the kind of language and cultural scene publishers will be drawn towards

Get an MFA is you are good at networking. This is the crux of all humanities degrees by the way, networking is 60% of the work.

You should be getting a fucking MFA if you want to write anyways. It leads to a good fallback job of teaching college if you fail at writing anything meaningful.

Lol implying you can just waltz into an academic career

Lecturing or teaching positions, with tenure, are harder than getting published

To be a good writer? Hell no. To get published in your lifetime and not starve while maintaining the "literary lifestyle"? Probably.

If you want to do it on hard mode you can always get a part time programming job while dedicating all your free time to reading/writing tho. Maybe you'll be the superstar that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and topped the Amazon self-published charts :^)

People, you can just self-publish anything you write nowadays on Amazon, anyway.

The old days of a few publishing houses controlling everything are gone.

not the same thing at all

It's not difficult to get a lecturing or assistant-ish job after an MFA.
Only you are talking about tenure and professorship.

You idiot.

very few writers have an mfa.

I'm published, and I don't have one.

Having an MFA is the equivalent of having a single good writing credit, that's all.

It's the same thing if you're writing books people are actually going to read, like science fiction / fantasy or young adult novels.

But, you're right, it's not the same thing if you want to publish some pretentious literary bullshit in purple prose about a woman going through a middle aged crisis and win a Pulitzer

why are you here

He's clearly slipped the /sffg/ containment thread

i like the pics of cartoons sucking squid dicks

oh shut up, why even give advice when you know nothing? Most courses will explicitly and repeatedly tell applicants that this is no way no how a route to being published

Getting published is simple. You have to write something publishable. The issue is, most people can't. So they invent a version of the publishing industry where white cis men/SJW's/Jews/other are conspiring to keep them obscure. The reality is they can't write. Look at the critique threads here. 99.99% of people, even people who are relatively well read and actively want to write, cannot write a couple of good sentences. Thats whats so hard about getting published.

just write for yourelf.

Yeah....I found it pretty easy getting published, once I learned to write well.

It took like twenty years to get to that point but...still...

Also they should go to the library and stroll through the fiction section and realize how few of the books up there even how few of the Pulitzer/Nobel etc winning books up there they recognize or want to read.

Do people still publish poetry?

in a magazine three people read. you dont get paid.