🚀 go-pugleaf

Larry Westdahl asks some serious questions about applying to graduate writing
programs. I can't answer them, but I have a question in return:

Why go to grad school for training as a writer?

The only benefit of taking fiction-writing courses (including my own) is to
get some tips on craft (like how wide the margins should be) AND a source of
external pressure that keeps the novice grinding away. Once the writer gains
enough self-confidence to be internally motived (an advance is a good
source), the writing process becomes self-sustaining because the writer has
to be self-sustaining.

Take this, however, as admittedly philistine advice. The university writing
programs that I'm aware of tend to be run by people with not much literary
ability...or else they're moonlighting because their good writing doesn't
earn enough to sustain them.

Academe has sheltered a lot of good writers (not to mention the cheerful
hacks like me). But it does tend to academicize those writers, imposing a set
of values that may or may not suit a given writer. Literature as an art would
do better if it could draw on writers from wildly diverse backgrounds with
wildly divergent agendas.

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Crawford Kilian   Communications Department   Capilano College
North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
Usenet: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca
Internet: ckilian@first.etc.bc.ca