I've been considering enrolling in one of those creative writing masters provided by UK universities. Does anyone have experience taking one of these? Was it worth your time? Was it worth the money? Did you learn anything useful?The one I'm interested in specifically is a 2 year course by the University of Hull. I'm seriously desperate and at my rope's end need to figure out what to do with my life and literature is my passion.
>>25466101They say never study what you love. That being said, I don't have any advice for you. Pretty much everybody is terrified of the future right now.
>>25466133Why is everyone terrified of the future?
>>25466134unstable job marketunaffordable housing marketraising cost of livingstagnate wagesglobal warmingwealth hoarding by the 1%loneliness epidemicetc, etc.
>>25466158Oh I thought you meant the coming AI super virus with a 99% lethality.
they're a waste of time. If you can sit down and write 10 pages a week, every week, and read one novel a month, every month, you'll be better off.
>>25466167yeah, that too
>>25466191I've been reading a lot, I just feel like maybe I'm not penetrating the essence of what makes good prose. And I've been struggling to write consistently, I thought the deadlines, structure and feedback of a course could be helpful for that.
>>25466201>I've been reading a lot, I just feel like maybe I'm not penetrating the essence of what makes good proseIt's my understanding that such programs are not interested in teaching good proseThey teach you to write ironically, to go against traditional story telling, that sincerity is bad, to write "experimental prose"Like WTF
>>25466213That sounds funny, can you elaborate a bit on your experiences?
It’s probably gonna be shit.If you consider that guys like Murnane and DFW did work as creative writing teachers: Probably none of their students ended up a noteworthy (or even published) author, but at least it must have been interesting to be taught by them.Nowadays from all we hear, diversity yadda yadda, cultural marxism, one wouldn’t expect anything worthwhile to be going on in Creative Writing programmes.I took one creative writing course myself an uni around ~15 years ago. It was decent fun and gave perhaps motivation to write something, but I would not say that I learned anything really. I spent most of the time shitting on the other participant’s texts with the instructor. Actually he ended up inviting me to read at some event he organized, so it was almost gonna kickstart my literary career. Only I had moved to a different county so as to no longer be eligible for the reading. Unlucky.>at my rope's end need to figure out what to do with my lifeUnironically consider getting into anything AI prompting related, I have a theory that natural language writing skills are actually valuable here.
>>25466158all of this is avoidable if you leave your house
>>25466224Do you have a finished story or stories?Paste it into ClaudeAsk if the writer has studied creative writing or has an MFA in creative writing and see what it says
>>25466101Mostly going to be people talking out of their asses on here, and has been so far. I also don't have any experience, but I've heard what sound like reasonable complaints about creative writing programs, mostly as some extension of them being writing-by-committee. The pressure to write consistently, like you mentioned wanting, is one positive thing I've heard, but there are other avenues you can use for that; my tactic is to write stuff for a literary open mic that happens regularly near me, and you could just as well search for magazines up your alley and push yourself to submit regularly.Do you actually want to make a career out of writing? Or do you just to improve as a writer? What do you really want out of it?This is an article (i.e. blog post, i.e. list of complaints) you might find interesting:>https://www.discordiareview.com/p/how-to-fix-creative-writing-educationand they've got a bunch of posts on writing in general (or complaints about their local scene or MFAs or whatever) that are pretty good.>https://www.discordiareview.com/p/your-poetry-sucks-the-heel-manifesto>https://www.discordiareview.com/p/bulldoze-the-mfa-programs
>>25466255those are all happening outside of my housemy house is my safe space from the worldps. it's an apartment
>>25466101It's only worth it if you study under someone who knows their shit. Look into who heads up the writing program at your local university. See what they've accomplished, read some of what they've written, and judge for yourself if you think they have anything to offer you.
