My Rebel MFA Degree Update
It’s been about seven months since I conceived of and started working on my Rebel MFA Degree (read the origin story here!). I thought it was time to give you a proper update on how things are going, where things are going, and my general thoughts.
Let’s review a few touchpoints about this whole adventure first.
My goal is to stick to these three components for the Rebel MFA Degree:
Committed to pursuing the writing life [Write with focus]
Advanced graduate-level coursework in writing, language, and literature, as well as studies in a related field. [Write with focus, Read for purpose, Build community]
The final development of a book-length manuscript suitable for publication [Write with focus]
I’ve decided to build out an addition to my degree components list:
Ongoing fieldwork or apprenticeship of the writing life
So… how has it been going?
Commitment to pursuing the writing life
This year has proven to be one of the most prolific writing seasons of my life (albeit not with fiction). My word counter app tells me I’m about to hit 2.3 million words written this year. I’ve written and published 32+ articles, and developed and released monthly workbook content for my community members. Created curriculum for three different workshops and courses.
But those are just the “external” products of the work I’ve put in. What’s more important to me is my internal work. And where I see that most clearly is within my daily pages. Because every day, I show up to the page to write even when I don’t feel like it. Even when I’m spitting mad. Even when I’m so joyous, I can hardly sit in my chair. My daily pages are where I go to start and end my days.
And in terms of community — I have been completely blessed to be surrounded by writers all the time. Whether that’s in my own community or one of the communities I’m a member of — there’s not a single day that I’m not in conversation with a writer or two. It’s pretty badass!
All of this tells me I’m pretty damn committed to pursuing the writing life.
Advanced graduate-level coursework
This is my favvvvvvorite part! This aspect of the degree is the easiest for me to get behind because I would be signing up for classes with or without the impetus of a Rebel MFA Degree. I love learning that much. But I must admit that finding coursework that fits perfectly with this degree program has been so much fun.
So, in addition to the coursework I mention in my original article, I’ve also taken:
Autofiction Intensive [Catapult]
The Slow Novel Lab [Nina LaCour]
Four Films That Will Help You Write Your Novel [Writing Workshops]
The Modern Gothic: Making Haunted Fictions for the 21st Century [Writing Workshops]
Publishing in Literary Journals to Launch Your Career [Writing Workshops]
How to Write Fairy Tales & Use Folklore [Writing Workshops]
Story Arcana [Caroline Donahue]
Spellcraft: Write Like a Witch [Carterhaugh]
Witching the Word Masterclass [Danielle Dulsky]
The Sanctuary of Truth [Mark Matousek]
And here’s a shortlist of classes I’m signed up to take in the coming months and in 2023:
Writing about Ancestor Trouble [Maud Newton]
Writing the Horror Fiction Workshop [Catapult]
Story Meets Design: Creating a Graphic Novel [Catapult]
Finding Your Story Through Adaptation [Catapult]
Writing Grief & Surrender [Catapult]
Bones & Honey Writers’ Retreat [Danielle Dulsky]
Ahem. So yeah… I think I have graduate-level coursework on lock, don’t you?
The final development of a book-length manuscript suitable for publication [Write with focus]
Cover coming soon ;)
You know, when I decided to go down this Rebel MFA Degree road, I honestly wasn’t sure what I would have to show as far as words for the manuscript. But I’m pleasantly surprised that not only is my nonfiction book Forged in Fire: Writing Fiction to Heal coming out soon, but I’m also working on a full-length novel during NaNo. I also have had stirrings around the topic of my next nonfiction book, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Ongoing fieldwork or apprenticeship of the writing life
This was a component I felt was important to add because my experience in this area didn’t necessarily fit into the other three components, yet they are undoubtedly important to the development of my writing, the way I put work out in the world, and the “business” of being a writer and instructor of writing.
Myth-Tender Mastery Program [with Danielle Dulsky]
This has been such a unique and wonderful experience so far! If you’ve experienced any of Danielle’s writing containers, you know how potent and powerful her writing workshops can be. And this is like one of her workshops on steroids. It’s amazing, and while there is a focus on the magick element — the bigger focus is on how words shape our lives as witches. How stories hold spells. We are born from and with stories, and we die with them, too. Although it’s not spelled out in the curriculum or material, I feel like what Danielle is teaching us is something most writers will NEVER learn how to do — tend to the stories that preserve legacies. Tend to the stories that have been passed down from ancestor witch to ancestor witch.
I truly believe that word witches are tasked with the burden of keeping stories alive because they are how we make sense of the world. They’re how we’ll rebuild after the collapse. They’re how we understand where we’ve been, where we are, and where we need to go next.
Witches of the Word [with Danielle Dulsky]
You may have noticed that I’m obsessed with learning from Danielle Dulsky. She’s the most fascinating person I’ve ever met, and I would be remiss not to take every opportunity I can to learn from her wisdom. In her “Witches of the Word” coven, it’s less like a workshop or class and more like an open and generative community to utilize what we’ve learned as word witches. Each season has a themed project, like creating a set of poetry around a certain topic or creating your own verses born of personal revelations. What I love about this fieldwork is that it’s always available. I can’t even say that there isn’t enough field work to do because there are always prompts and exercises waiting for me in this coven.
Submitting work
As most of you know, I queried agents at the beginning of this year for my nonfiction book, Forged in Fire: Writing Fiction to Heal. I got a lot of really amazing feedback (including someone who told me that this book was needed in the world!), but they didn’t quite know what to “do with it.” (That’s code for — it’s too specific to find a marketable way to sell it easily). After all, the industry is less concerned with quality and more concerned with marketability. We know how this story ends, though (my book is coming out soon!).
But I also went out on a limb this year and submitted short stories to anthologies and pitched a chapter to a textbook about writing through trauma. (Spoiler alert: received a lot of rejections on stories, but my pitch was accepted for the textbook! You win some; you lose some).
Lastly, I submitted to attend a very intense and small writing workshop in Dublin, Ireland (still waiting to hear if I got in or not!).
Serializing
Part of my fieldwork this year has been spent researching and studying how modern authors are changing up the publishing landscape through unorthodox or new modalities. The biggest leap in the success I’ve seen is that of serializing fiction via newsletters (ie, Substack) or creator platforms (ie, Patreon). This is so interesting and has given me some perspective on how I may start utilizing these methods myself or bring the knowledge back to my community so they can utilize it.
Midterm Essay
I realized after writing about 3,000 more words of this article that I had more to say about this than I thought. For the sake of keeping this as much of an “update” as possible, I’ve decided everything else can go into a reflection piece. Almost as if it’s due for a midterm. (See, I’m going all-in with this whole degree thing 😉)
Conclusion
What started as an inkling of an idea has grown and expanded into so much more than I could have imagined when I started this. At first, it was something just for me. It solved a problem I had, but I didn’t think it was something others would be interested in. As it turns out, lots of people are interested. So much so that it’s taking on a life of its own in a sense. I don’t want to be too cagey, but I don’t want to spill the beans yet. Just know that there is more to this experiment than this update. There is way more to the world of Rebel MFA Degree than I thought was possible.
I hope you’re as ready for the ride as I am.
