Intro: This post is inspired by one of my favorite writers, Gabriela Pereira, “instigator” of DIY MFA. Besides writing the column “Be Well, Write Well” for DIY MFA, I’ve also agreed to be a part of the team helping to promote the new DIY MFA book coming out this summer! I’m super-excited to read it. As a run-up to the book’s launch, Gabriela is sending out writing prompts once a week to her team. This week’s prompt? “Why are you DIY-ing your MFA?”I love this question, and don’t think I’ve ever answered it on this blog, so I was happy to use it for today’s post.

You can find out more about DIY MFA program and book here. It was recently voted one of the 101 best websites for writers by Writer’s Digest!

When I chose writing as a profession, I was already in my late twenties, with an undergraduate and graduate degree in a completely different field, and an established job as a music teacher. My adult life had already been set on a different track.

As I’ve previously spoken about here, I had been keeping a journal for many years, and used to play with short stories as a kid, but never considered myself a writer with a capital “W.” Once I began to play around more with writing and started to feel the pull, I started work on a book. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had no idea what I was doing. I needed help; I needed education.

But I wasn’t ready for an MFA program, not by a long shot. For one thing, I didn’t want to leave my job, even for a short time; for another, I had just finished paying for college and didn’t want to go into debt again. I had also just gotten married and bought a house with my husband. It wasn’t a good time to invest hundreds of thousands in higher education for something I’d just started dabbling in.

So I looked around for classes. My first was the Fiction I class at Gotham Writer’s Workshop. I live about two hours north of Manhattan, and the class was from 7-10 PM in Midtown. But it was summer vacation, and I thought the commute would be worth it. And it was; that class was one of the most exciting and rewarding I’ve ever taken, thanks to lucking out with an incredible teacher, Ross Angellela. (I also enjoyed the opportunity to explore the city before class; my best friend, who lived there at the time, took me to a different ethnic restaurant every week.)

In that class, I wrote two short stories, one mediocre, and one that the class and the teacher gave great praise. That second short story- the second one I’d ever competed- became the first one I’d ever get published, “Amish Girl.”

I enjoyed Gotham Fiction I so much that I signed up for Fiction II during the fall semester, a Saturday class that met from 10-1 in the same location. This class was not the learning experience I’d hoped for, however. The teacher was not encouraging, and in fact allowed students in workshop to bully other students. I wrote two more short stories, one of which I later adapted, but I left that class with a sour taste.

Those two classes were enough to get me started, though. I was doing other prep work in the meantime. I amassed a huge library of writing craft books and read them all cover-to-cover. I started this blog, or what would become this blog, the following summer. I began working on a writing practice, doing research along the way, and very slowly I got my bearings. I took a few more classes. My writing improved. I began to understand how the publishing and blogging worlds worked. Anything I wanted to know, I taught myself. It was a slow process, but I was eager for more.

At one point, I again considered an MFA program. There’s a liberal arts college fairly close to where I live with a three-summer MFA program, taught by a group of excellent writers. I was close to applying when I found out I was pregnant with my son. And while that program didn’t work out, the pregnancy and afterward turned out to be some of my most valuable writing time. It was then that I completed the first several drafts of Waist and began seriously pursuing publication.

I used to feel like I might be less of a writer without an MFA to back me up. But I recently realized that it shouldn’t matter. I may not have known much about writing at first, but I DID know a lot about teaching. I figured out how to teach myself, and I’m as grateful for that experience as I am for the learning itself. Great writing is a lifelong pursuit. As long as I keep looking for holes in my education, and figuring out how to fill those holes with fresh knowledge, I’ll be equipped for the journey.