by Helena Bell
The application season for Clarion West and other Clarion (UCSD) has begun. I’ve already seen posts on twitter from past alums encouraging people to apply and telling the world what wonderful, glorious experiences they had.
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell you not to apply. To not go. And here are my reasons:
Choose Your Own Nebula Speech Adventure (A Shameless Theft Homage of Tina Connolly’s Hard Choices).
MFA Programs and the efficacy or use thereof tend to come up in discussion periodically. For those of you interested, here is a run down of the types of programs and what to expect. I personally have an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and am currently looking into applying for a second MFA, this time in Fiction. I might be addicted to school. Or it might be that MFA programs really are just that awesome.
You become a writer by writing. You learn by damaging your ego, and giving more of yourself than you take. By a thousand revelations, by millions of words you improve.
Completely reliant on automation and artificial intelligence to manage their lives, desperate human beings learn to survive, bond, and unlock the power of their minds when a war destroys all the world’s power grids. “An Enthralling Page-Turner!”
Michelle Knudsen is the New York Times bestselling author of 50 books for kids & teens, including the Trelian (MG) and Evil Librarian (YA) trilogies and the picture book Library Lion (one of Time magazine’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time).
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