Why in the world would someone my age go back to school for a graduate degree? At 62, I’ll be starting a three-year MFA program in the School of Letters at the University of the South, more commonly known as Sewanee.
The reason I’m going back to grad school is to learn how to write better fiction. Although I’ve been writing for a living my entire career and have had several non-fiction books published (including the tiny Hell Yes book), my real dream is to publish a novel. Or novels.
Since 2010, I’ve spent weekends and vacations writing novels. The first one was amateurish and the subsequent four have been better, although not as good as I’d like. But I’ve been writing in a vacuum, without any instruction or feedback. I’m shy about letting anyone see my fiction writing. I don’t even let my husband Steve read it.
A concrete step towards a dream
This is an opportunity to get over myself. The Sewanee MFA will require sharing my work in writing workshops and other forums — being challenged, getting feedback, developing new skills and trying new approaches to creating fiction.
I’ve spent years fumbling around in the dark on my own trying to figure out how to write novels. Finally, it occurred to me that going back to grad school to focus on learning to write better fiction was a concrete step I could take. This could make all the difference to my longtime dream of being a published novelist.
I imagined myself at a crossroads: I could keep doing what I’ve been doing, and I’d probably continue to gradually improve. Or I could take this leap, and maybe move to a level I’d never reach on my own.
Six-week immersion
For me, one of the most exciting aspects of going back to school for a graduate degree is the summer residency at Sewanee. Every summer for three years, I’ll spend six weeks living on campus, immersed in writing fiction. That sounds like an unbelievable luxury to me.
For the past six months, we’ve been prepping everyone at my agency Tribe to keep things moving with less involvement from me. And for just as long, our guest room has been accumulating all the stuff I keep ordering to pack for Sewanee.
I’ll be home in Atlanta on weekends but from Monday through Friday, I’ll be living and breathing fiction. (Also, living in a dorm, but more on that in another post.)
One click away from not knowing
One morning back in October I was going through my inbox, deleting the usual barrage of junk mail and phishing schemes. I was on the verge of deleting a marketing email from the Oxford American.
But just before I clicked the little trash can, I noticed the words Sewanee School of Letters. I hit the red Learn More button that took me to the MFA webpage, and suddenly the blurry vision I’ve had of my desired future clicked into focus. Going back to school for a graduate degree was an immediate hell yes for me. Doing it at Sewanee felt like something I’d always planned to do, but just didn’t know it yet.
The Sewanee writing community
Sewanee has a long literary tradition, and their writing community casts a long shadow. The Sewanee Review and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference have loomed large in my imagination since I was growing up in North Carolina. This morning, when I pulled the New York Times Book Review out of the stack of newsprint on our coffee table, the cover was the new novel by Justin Taylor, the director of the Sewanee MFA program and so far my only contact there. (Except for the nurse reviewing my vaccination records who needed to know if I’d had a measles shot as an infant.)
For someone who has always been very private about writing fiction, the notion of joining a community of writers holds a special power. I’m a little afraid of exposing myself, but mostly excited about being surrounded by kindred spirits.
Is going back to school for a graduate degree at 62 a little scary? Absolutely. And I can’t wait.
