Full Transcript for Wireside Chat: MA or MFA - A Look at SNHU's Graduate Creative Writing Programs

not terminal in the sense like usually you would want to continue on with a PhD or an MFA if you wanted to. That's not to say you can't teach with an MA. You can adjunct for sure. Full-time positions? You're going to need to have a lot of publications under your belt to be able to find a full-time position, but it is a possibility. It's just a little easier to do with a terminal degree like an MFA or a PhD. While you have a Master's in Arts, though, the other benefit of it is that you can tutor and adjunct in some places, often contractual, term over term. And of course there's other opportunities as well with an MA. I don't want folks to lose sight of that. A lot of people come into the MA, or any creative writing program for that matter, and say I'm going to be the next bestselling author or I'm going to teach young minds. And those are the two tracks that I'm going to pursue. Those are fine tracks to pursue, but there's a plethora of other career opportunities that you can pursue as well with a creative writing degree, because you learn a lot of human and hard skills in the degree that will be applicable to other careers. Critical thinking being the biggest one, of course, and collaboration, communication because of the workshop setting. You have other opportunities from the degree that you can really lean into when you are building out your resume, when you are writing letters for other job applications that may require, you know, you're looking for something in administrative role like myself, right? That says you need to have strong communication and collaboration skills. You can tap into that because of the degree that you have here. There are proofreading, editing gigs. There are opportunities to, you know, mentor, tutor, all kinds of other things beyond just writing the next best American novel or teaching full time. So I want to make sure that people don't lose sight of that. And I think that's where I'm going to stop for now, because I think it'd be a good opportunity now for Paul to jump in and kind of talk about the MFA before we take questions and stuff. But that kind of summarizes the material. While Paul's talking, I'll go through the chat and see if there are any questions specific to me and make sure that I'm answering them as well. So, Paul. Great. Thanks, Jacob. I'm going to try to share my screen, so hopefully this will work. Jacob, can you let me know if I'm actually sharing it? Yes, but it's not in presentation mode. I'm going to try to do that right now. Let's see, did that work? No. How about that? Yes. Okay, so I'm going to give a bit of a rundown on the MFA: Master of Fine Arts. As Jacob mentioned, you can teach with an MA. One of the ironies of our programs is that Jacob has an MFA and he's the Associate Dean of the MA program and I have an MA and I'm the Associate Dean of the MFA program. Seems like we got switched at birth or something. But the reason that I'm able to do this is because, number one, I do have the

MA and I've published six novels and collection of short stories. So I have publication credits. And as Jacob mentioned, that's something that's really important if you want to make a career in teaching creative writing, especially at the MFA level. So this, on this particular slide, you see everything that I'm going to cover in this brief presentation. The genres that the MFA covers, the word count and degree requirements. I'll also talk a little bit about application requirements, extracurriculars that we offer. Jacob talked about that a little bit. Why we have business courses in the MFA. What's the ePortfolio? Well, stick around and you'll find out! The certificate options we offer in the MFA, various career paths, some of which Jacob has also already talked about, and internship opportunities in MFA-607. So the genres that the... As Jacob mentioned, the MFA is a genre-specific program. It's an MFA basically in genre fiction or popular-culture fiction. The genres we cover are speculative fiction, which includes science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror. We cover romance fiction, and that's a genre that pretty much is distinguished by either a happy ever after ending or a happy for now ending. Of course, there are many different subgenres of romance. Regency romance is one. Very popular right now is romantasy, which is kind of a mix of fantasy and romance, but with the HEA or HFN requirement of romance still holding sway. We also offer young adult as one of our genre focuses. And that's a genre that's distinguished more or less by having a protagonist in the age range that you see there, 13 to 18. Anything a little bit over that can fall into the relatively young genre called new adult, which is more or less a marketing scheme to kind of capture readers who are a little bit older than young adult readers usually are. But to be honest with you, I think many readers of all ages read young adult and many readers of all ages read new adult. But nonetheless, they are marketing categories that you can, you know, that are useful to sell and target your book. And then we cover contemporary fiction, which in our program is, as it says there, basically everything else. The MFA has a word-count requirement. And that word-count requirement is a minimum. You will be completing a novel in the MFA. That's one of the things that sets our MFA program apart from a lot of other MFA programs. You will write and complete a novel. It has to be at least 50, 55,000 words in length, but it can be any length at all above that. There's no maximum length. The only requirement is, other than it being a minimum of 55,000 words, is that it be completed: a finished novel. Obviously, different genres have different requirements or norms when it comes to the length that is expected by publishers and agents and readers. For example, a romance novel is apt to be a lot shorter than an epic fantasy novel, right? An epic fantasy novel might weigh in at 120,000 words, no problem. Whereas 80, 90,000 words is probably what you would see, maybe even a little bit less in a romance novel. Other degree requirements we have in the MFA, you have to do an outline of your book, you have to give a pitch of your book. You have to write cover copy for your book, a query letter, a synopsis, produce a writer-centered resume. You have to submit a short story. You don't have to publish one, but you have to provide proof that you submitted a short story somewhere. And you have to write website copy for your professional website. You don't have to build a website. You just have to create the copy for it. As Jacob mentioned, the MFA offers a lot of extracurriculars. Word for Word is a joint production between the MFA and the BA/MA programs. Then there's Wireside Chat, which takes place on the second Monday of every month, like this one. In the final week of the term, there's an open-mic event that's called MFA/WIP-- that stands for Works in Progress--in which four students and one instructor read for five minutes from a work in progress, something that they're currently writing, that has not been published before. Students are able to sign up, and then I randomly choose the four readers. That's always a lot of fun. Every Tuesday I have open office hours called Tea with the Dean, and usually I pick a story, a short story, and we spend half an hour discussing it from a craft perspective. Very open to taking suggestions from students for the short story that we read. The MFA Writer's Community is a space in SNHU Connect that's reserved for MFA students and instructors. And it's kind of a clearinghouse for submission opportunities, for craft questions, maybe a way to organize beta readers, just like a community bulletin board sort of thing. Then, also in conjunction with Jacob's programs, twice a year we have a pitch weekend that's reserved for students who are in their final thesis courses, or students who have recently graduated from our programs, in which we bring in professional literary agents and give students an opportunity to pitch their books directly to their agents. This is an online virtual event, and every year we have a pretty good results from it in terms of agents asking to see partial or full manuscripts from our students. And we've had a few students who have signed with agents and even had their books... Well, most of them are still in the publishing pipeline. It takes a long time to get a book published via traditional publishing. Some have been published already. Why do we have business courses? Well, we have courses that are geared toward the traditional publishing process in which you submit to an, usually to an agent. The agent then submits the book on your behalf to a publishing house or editor, and your book is accepted and published that way. And as you all know, I'm sure, it's become much more popular and, you know, potentially lucrative even to go the self-publishing route, in which you do basically

everything yourself or you hire people to do it for you. So we try to give you a thorough grounding in both of those approaches to publishing so that you can take either path with confidence. When you graduate, you turn in a portfolio of your work that includes, in addition to your thesis novel, a repository of all of the various artifacts that you've produced in the program. And I mentioned some of those earlier: things like the synopsis, you know, your query letter, your cover copy, all that kind of stuff. We also offer two certificates, the Certificate of Professional Writing-- and you can see there that as part of that certificate, you develop professional copywriting skills, you learn key aspects of freelancing, you obtain experience on content generation and marketing principles--and then we have the Certificate in Online Teaching of Writing. And that basically prepares you to teach in writing courses such as we have here at SNHU and certainly qualifies you to run workshops of your own online, for example. And all of these things are, as Jacob said as well, they're kind of geared to helping give students the tools that they need to not just become successful writers but to become successful business people within the publishing and writing landscape. There are internship opportunities in MFA. In the online MFA, there's MFA 607, in which students can work for, as a... Get hands on experience in copy and content writing by working for various, you know, professional organizations, magazine, maybe intern at an agency. And SNHU's Handshake program also offers regularly different internship opportunities. A lot of them are writing related, and I'm going to stop sharing. One thing that I mentioned I was going to cover, which I didn't, is admissions to the MFA. Unlike a lot of other SNHU programs, the Online MFA requires you to apply to the program and be accepted. There are, excuse me, there are MFA evaluators who are responsible for reviewing the submissions that we receive and then deciding whether to accept or reject students. I also am in that role. For example, anybody that comes from the BA, I personally review their applications. If you, you know, if you are accepted into the program, we welcome you. If you're not accepted, that is a situation in which you might want to try to put in some time in the MA and then try to apply again. There's no limit to the amount of times you can apply. And I don't mean to suggest in any way that the MA is a lesser program than the MFA. Just very different, just different tracks. A lot of similarities like Jacob said. But I guess in terms of academics, the MA is the stepping stone to a PhD, whereas the MFA is a terminal degree. There's nothing beyond the MFA. Will the PowerPoint be shared with us? Yeah, I don't mind sharing it. I can figure out how to do that. I guess what I can do is, I'll put it in the chat here... Or, that probably wouldn't work. Anyway, I'll figure it out. I'll get it to everyone that's

attended. With that, I think I'm going to just throw it open to questions in the chat. Thank you so much for listening. Also, while we're gathering questions, I just wanted to make it known, to Paul's point about the MFA versus the MA and how the MA is less-- and I included information in the chat on this-- but I just want to stress it again. It's writing intensive, but it's less writing intensive than the MFA. You are not completing a novel in the MA. You're doing about 35,000 words, which is still quite a bit. And if that's short stories, you'll have quite a collection of short stories to submit to literary journals. For the nonfiction, it's the same: 35,000. For poetry, it's 20 poems. For screenwriting, it's three acts. So a script. Basically, if you are someone who does not have the time to dedicate to writing a novel because you have other obligations, but you want to pursue creative writing or to grow into it a little bit more, the MA can be that option for you as well. So it's less intense. It's intensive, but less intensive than the MFA. So it might fit your lifestyle a little bit better. If you're thinking about pursuing it, knowing specifically what your job might be, where other obligations, where it's like, okay, I want to grow into this a little bit more, but can I write a novel in this amount of time? If not, you know, pursuing the MA might be a good option. And then as you're pursuing the MFA, if you go, you know what? My life has changed a little bit, or I got a pretty good hold of this, maybe I will apply to the MFA and see if I can pursue that novel. That's an option for you as well. So as Paul said, it's neither to disregard or promote one or the other program. They both have their benefits, depending on you, the student, what would be best for you and would fit your lifestyle as well. Jacob, I'm going to grab a couple of questions out of here, if you don't mind. So one question here is what are some of the key factors that would lead someone to being accepted versus not accepted? Well, the first is going to be for the MFA. Whether you follow the application requirements or not. You're required to provide a personal statement responding to a prompt that is supplied, and you're asked to provide a 10-page writing sample. That could be a complete short story, could be a scene from your novel. I think it's always better if you're going to do something from the novel, to just start at the beginning and give us the beginning. Don't jump around in the novel and give us your climactic scene or anything like that. Just be simple. Don't overthink it. We want your submission manuscript to be relatively clean. You know, proofread it, copyedit it, revise it, make sure that your format is correct. We again, in the admission materials, you'll receive guidance about what kind of format we're looking for and things like that. And then another question following that. What do you look for? What stands out to you? I would say the most important thing that we look for is competence as a writer. It's not what your idea is. I mean, I don't want to say that we don't care about your idea, but that's not the primary thing that we're looking at when it comes to who we're going to admit to the MFA. We're looking for somebody who is already a competent writer. We're looking for somebody who we think, on the basis of their personal statement and the writing that we review, that they have the ability to write at the level that we expect in the MFA, even if they're not there yet. Are they showing that they have already taken to heart certain lessons about the craft of writing? You know, you can usually tell when you're reading a manuscript. Is this somebody who has learned something about writing already? That's the sort of thing that we're looking for. Research opportunities for the MFA. I would like to be able to teach teachers how to teach creative writing. Yeah, that's what the online certificate in... Or the certificate in the online teaching of writing covers exactly that. And you know, that is something, frankly, that the MA offers as well. You know, those are courses that can be taken in common, actually, between our two programs. And Jacob, here's a question for you. Yes, I think I probably just answered it. I've tried to answer them as I'm going along too. There are two. Two that I can say verbally. For those who are not following the chat, though, why pursue an MA or MFA after graduating with a BA? Short answer is to continue to build the habit of writing. Long answer is, you know, the BA is a great place to learn the elements of creative writing. That's where you get your basics. What is a plot? What is character? What is setting? What is dialogue? How do you write these things down? How do you create a piece out of these elements? The MA and MFA take what you've learned in the BA and kind of set you free where you're building onto them by creating much larger works, often independent of the coursework itself. You'll still meet with your classmates and stuff to perhaps have a discussion on dialogue or setting. But a lot of the writing in both of these programs comes outside of the classroom. You're writing while you're taking the class and then you're submitting just like milestones and final projects that you're familiar with. With the BA, you're doing the same thing. It's just that, you know, you have, it's, it's more the ball in your court, I would say, than the BA, where it's like these very small steps into building it. The MA and MFA are like, okay, just a heads up, next week you have 3,500 words due, so make sure you're doing them because this is the week to do it outside the classroom and stuff. So it helps you build those habits as a creative writer. You know, like many things in life, the more you habitually do them, the better you become at them. And so it's a good process to get under your belt so that once you earn the degree, you don't lose it and you just

kind of continue with it. It can be a little easier to continue to write after an MA and MFA. For the question about screenwriting, there are not a lot of MFA or, I'm sorry, PhD or MFA screenwriting programs out there, especially PhD. There might be a couple of MFA ones and stuff, but for the most part, like with our MA, you're writing a full-length script. So by the end of it, you would have something that you can submit out and see if there is anyone agentwise willing to pick it up for production. And the one thing I would say about that--a lot of our faculty will say this as well-- is that of course Hollywood is the dream, right? Getting a script made by A24, some huge production company is the dream. But there are other opportunities out there as well to pursue for a movie production that is not exclusive to Hollywood. So it's like any of the creative writing tracks. You'll want to kind of solicit and submit far and wide. So you will have that by the end of the MA with a screenwriting degree. Well, I say you will be if you are dedicated and you really focus on writing this script. I'm not guaranteeing it, because, you know, you do, again, like I said in the previous question, need to really commit to it. But that is something that you can, that you will have by the end of it. If you did get the, if you did the MA, would you still get the certifications that are offered in the MFA? What do you think? Paul that's kind of your question. Yeah, those certifications are only available to MFA students. So you would still...but you would still get the...if you were...if you completed the MA and then you went on to an MFA, you know, there's no conflict of interest there, Ebony, for that particular question. Pitch Weekend. It is available to fiction and nonfiction MA students. We have not had any agents for screenwriting or poetry in the past, and poetry is kind of, again, there are different pathways to publication that are slightly different. You know, usually you try to submit to chapbook contests and stuff for poetry or larger works like that, as opposed to seeking an agent first for representation for your poetry. So it's one of the reasons why we have not had many poetry agents. But our courses do talk about how to pursue publication and poetry, and our faculty are well versed in it as well, which will be able to offer you support and guidance. So, yes, for fiction and nonfiction, we do offer agent pitch sessions and stuff, but fiction especially. Screenwriting, we do not have any options open for this time. Here's a question. Can the novel for the MFA be something we are currently working on, or do we have to start it when we begin the graduate classes? And the answer is, yes, it can be something that you're currently working on. But the only thing is, when you come into the program, the heart of our program is the workshopping process in which you submit your work and have it critiqued by your peers and by your instructors. So if you come into the program with a novel that's all but completed and then start going through the workshop process, you might very naturally feel disinclined to accept any of the feedback that you receive, right? Especially if it means that you're going to have to revise substantial portions of your novel. You're too invested in it by that point for a workshop probably to be useful to you. So I think, by and large, people that work on, in the program, who work on novels that they've been working on prior to coming into the program, are those who are very open to making any changes that might be required. And by required, I don't mean like the instructor tells you what to do and you have to do it. I mean that you're open-minded to the possibility that the novel that you have in your hands is not the best it can be. And the craft knowledge that you learn in our program and in the workshops that we offer will tell you that, oh gosh, I can improve this book. And now I know how to do it. I didn't know before, but now I do. And then you do it. If you, if that's your mindset, then I think it's perfectly fine and could be very beneficial. There is a question about whether credits transfer if you move from an MA to an MFA. We do have a couple of crosswalk courses that are transferable. Yep. So you would not need to start from step one. And Jacob, do you see that? Looks like _____ is here and answering some questions on our behalf. Oh, thank you. Nice. Yes. So do both MA and MFA provide assistance with self-publishing, or is that only a feature of the MFA? I don't want to answer for you, Jacob, but I think it is something that MA covers too, isn't it? We talk about self-publication. We don't have an extensive how-to-self-publish track. I guess we offer resources and talk about the pros and cons and the benefits and issues with self-publication versus traditional publication or, you know, seeking representation by agent versus submitting short stories, building up a short-story collection, then soliciting for agent representation. Things along those lines are mentioned in the course. And our faculty are from a variety of backgrounds. We have some traditional published authors like... Well, trying to... I'm blanking on her name right now because I feel like I'm in the spotlight. Hang on a second. Amy Butcher. Sorry. Amy Butcher currently teaches Creative Nonfiction. She has Mother Trucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliness Road in America. She has been traditionally published, her book well reviewed and quite expansive and everything. But we also have faculty who have self-published their works as well, science fiction, fantasy and the likes through Amazon. So they will also have, you know, opportunities to discuss with you those particular pathways and stuff, if you choose to ask them. So. Yes, but we would love to with the MA eventually build that into a course of itself and stuff, but we have to... There's a lot of juggling parts involved with that that are well

beyond my pay grade, apparently. So I think Paul's, especially for the fiction track, might have a little bit more intensive background in self- publication, but it is discussed in all four genres in the MA. Jacob, here's a question asking what do the thesis classes in the MA consist of. Is it a story or is it more of a traditional thesis? Okay, so there are... Kind of like the BA... I'm not sure how many of you, because you know you can pursue specific concentrations, right? You can have a BA in Fiction, Creative Writing Fiction, a BA in Creative Writing Nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting. There's also the nonconcentration track, which some of you may have pursued, where you take a little bit of fiction, a little bit of nonfiction, a little bit of poetry, the introductory courses, and then you take the advanced creative writing degree course at the end as a culmination of those introductory courses. The MA is set up in a similar way, where you can pursue fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, or poetry. Or you can take a nonconcentrated degree path and take the fundamentals workshops, which are essentially the introductory workshops in the BA. Right? They're kind of in that same... They're not the same level. They're more intensive. But they're the first workshop that you take. So if you're nonconcentrated, you can say, for example, take fiction, take nonfiction, take screenwriting. And then after you take those fundamentals courses, move on to the advanced 690 course and finish the degree if you are taking a concentration. So say you are pursuing for the sake of right now-- and I want to make sure I'm very much inclusive of all four concentrations, right? But since Paul has an MFA that focuses on fiction, let's take fiction as an example here and all the other ones follow suit. If you are taking an MA in fiction, you will take in the workshop courses, that is, you'll take Fiction Fundamentals, which is the introductory course. That's where you start building up and learning, basically kind of going over all of the elements of writing that you learned in the BA again, learning some advanced techniques, figuring out what the heck do I want to do with this MA. Do I want to write a collection of short stories? Do I want to start a novel? Do I want to write a novella? What do I want to do with this as I'm pursuing this degree? That's what the fundamentals courses are for. Then you take fiction thesis writing. That's the second one. Or again, like if you're thinking BA, Intermediate workshop. Right, it's the intermediate workshop. Fiction thesis writing is, okay, now I'm putting my pen to the paper, my fingers to the keyboard, whatever, and I'm going to start writing this start of the novel, or I'm going to start writing this collection of short stories. And then you take the fiction completion course, which is the third of the writing workshops, that is. It's called Fiction Completion, but it's basically a continuation of what you took with fiction thesis writing. It's a... you can look at it as one course that's 20 weeks long or you can look at it as two separate courses that are 10 weeks long, especially if you're taking a break while you're writing it and stuff. But 559, which is the thesis completion course, is like the thesis writing course rolls right into it where when you're getting into the fiction thesis, the completion course, it's okay, take what you wrote in 549, build off of it, continue to build onto the novel, continue to write your short story collection, whatever the case may be, so that by the end of it you'll have 35,000 words. So that's kind of how. And again, I used fiction as an example here. Nonfiction is the same way. Fundamentals, thesis writing, thesis completion. Screenwriting: fundamentals, thesis writing, thesis completion. Poetry: fundamentals, thesis writing, thesis completion. That's kind of how the workshops work. They all just like the BA. Fold into each other. They scaffold, they complement each other. So you know, it's built in that structure. I hope that answers the question. A lot of great questions so far. Yeah, I'm going to try to try to get through a couple of questions quickly here. So here's a question that asks, are all courses asynchronous or would we work one on one with an advisor at any point? In the MFA, all the courses are asynchronous, at least right now. But there are a lot of opportunities to work one on one with your instructor. I know a lot of instructors have... I have my open office hours. Many instructors do something similar. They'll have Zoom chats that they make available to students. Most instructors, if you email them with a request for some kind of one on one meeting, will be open to that, you know, to a degree. It depends on what your instructor's workload is like, right? I mean these are all working writers themselves. They've got, you know, their own novels and projects to work on. So they may not always be able to get you as much one on one time as you would like. But I can pretty much guarantee that, you know, they do what they can, they do as much as they can and even a little bit more. So let's see... What degree would be best to pursue after a BA in Game Design and development? That's a very interesting question. I mean it really depends, right? Like, if you're thinking like, I'm going to take my BA in game design and development and I want to kind of, you know, pursue something in animation and in, you know, in the movie or TV or streaming world, then I think screenwriting would be a great choice. If you're thinking like, well, I'm going to use my worldbuilding skills and try to write a science fiction novel or a fantasy novel, then come into the MFA. Is there any way to engage with your peers aside from the discussion boards? Well, I mentioned in the MFA there is the Writer's Community, which is the space in SNHU Connect that's exclusively for MFA students and instructors. And you can certainly connect there. There's

a lot of unofficial MFA Discord spaces that are really welcoming to MFA students. And I know a lot of students connect with each other there in order to do, you know, workshopping, in order to do like writing sprints and, you know, gossip about their professors and perhaps even the dean. I don't know. Would previous publishing experience be beneficial or hindering when applying for the MFA program? And I feel like that's a question that would apply to the MA as well. I don't think it helps or hurts, to be perfectly honest with you. If, you know, especially if it's self-publishing experience. If it's traditional publishing experience, if you've had stuff published already, if you've worked in publishing, I mean, I feel like all of those things can be helpful to you. I don't think they're going to be hindering unless they lead you to believe that you already know everything there is to know. In which case, why are you applying for the program anyway? I think if you come in with the sense that I have this knowledge that I've gained from my experience, I hope to learn more, and I'm happy to share what I know with my fellow students, then I don't see as how it would be a hindrance at all. It could be a real benefit to you and to everyone else in the program. Yeah, I think the only thing that--and this kind of goes along with what Paul was saying--is the hindrance might be in some of the cases there, there are some courses where you might be developing your author's platform and you might already kind of have an author's platform out there, but the program is going to ask you to go a little further with what you already have out there. So if you feel like I got this down already and I'm not going to, I'm not going to improve on it in any way, it could be a hindrance because you want to take the opportunity in the MA or MFA to continue to build out and develop yourself as a writer. I have had several students go through the MA who have been self-published. In fact, I just had one who took 675 who had like 20, maybe 25 novels published. Self-published. Wow. Yeah. Not a hindrance. Just a good opportunity again to be in the program to kind of give yourself a committed deadline to completing a certain amount of words and stuff by the end of whatever term or whatever course you're taking. Some people need that, right? Especially early on. You're like, I need that commitment. I need to be told, here, write 3500 words by next week. And once you kind of get that habit down after you've earned the degree, you can kind of continue down that path. I think again, it's just like anything. An example unrelated to writing for me is a couple years ago I said, I'm going to go for a walk every day. And I started doing that, and I haven't stopped because I had a habit tracker that I would take, and then every time I did it, I'd fill out the little bubble. Went for my walk today. Went for my walk today. And now I've done it like 500 or 600 times at this point, because

it's just become habitual to a point where if I don't go for my walk, I get very grumpy. So kind of the same way with creative writing. It's like you build that habit, and then once you build that habit, you just continue to pursue it and build off of it and stuff like that. And that's what I think both of these degrees can offer you. Yeah, I mean, definitely, you know, in the MFA, you have to finish a novel. That's a huge commitment. It's not easy to do. And if you're relying on inspiration alone to get you there, you're probably not going to make it. What's essential is like, habit and developing habits about writing. And, you know, that's... I think that's a real benefit of the MA and the MFA is like, it helps you to develop those habits. Yes. And again, big differences because, Paul, like, if I'm not mistaken, I think I looked it up once, like novel length for the MFA. How many... I know it's word count, but how many pages? Is that, is it 250 to 350? I'm sorry, for the... Like, how long would your novel be pagewise? Yeah, pagewise for the MFA, I guess it would probably be like, I don't know. Let me do a quick calculation here. I looked it up just the other day, and I was surprised at the difference between the two programs. Again. Yeah, it's like it was close to 300 pages. Yeah, I would say it's like probably in the 200, 250, 300, somewhere in there. It's gonna vary a little bit, but yes, that's... Yeah. And so it's comparatively, with the MA, you're doing 35,000 words. That's about 140 double space pages. So again, you could write a novel. There are 140-page novels out there that exist and everything like that. The MFA will give you that opportunity to build out your world a little bit more, especially in the genres that Paul had mentioned earlier on. And I know, because I know that a lot of folks, perhaps even in this meeting right now, are really big into, you know, sci fi, fantasy, those particular genres where you do have to build the world. And usually those are much larger works and stuff. So the MFA can be really beneficial in that way. Whereas with the material, you know, 140 pages is a good, the primer, I think in Lord of the Rings, by 140 pages, maybe they start the journey. I don't know yet. So it is something to consider too, like, do I have the bandwidth for this right now? And again, that's why it's really nice where you can jump into the MA, start it off, and then say, okay, I got it, I can do this. I have an idea. I'm going to start applying to the MFA to see if I can get in there. That is an option for you as well, but just something to keep in mind, like how many pages pages do I want to write or am I willing to write in the time that I have? Yeah, thanks. Ashley says that her thesis was 232 pages. So there you go. All right. Here's a question from Ebony. Sorry if this was answered and I missed it, but can you teach with the MFA? Can you be an adjunct professor? The answer is yes. The MFA, because it's a terminal degree, qualifies you to teach at the university level. But is an MFA alone going to be sufficient to get you a job like that? The answer is probably not. What you're going to need in addition to that is a publication record, because everybody that's applying for that adjunct position is going to have an MFA. You have to set yourself apart from them. And the way to do that is by having a publication record of your own. 140 pages. Is that a novella? Are we allowed to write a novella? You are not allowed to write a novella. . I was, I was just responding to the-- I think that might have been an MA question. And if not, because I had said it was 140 double space pages. You cannot do a novella for the MFA, but you can do an novella for the MA because that fits within that. Yes, it fits within that word count criteria. And you'll also... You'll know that like in-- because again, these are asynchronous courses, right? You're not necessarily going to be taking the thesis completion course with the same students as a thesis writing course, especially if, say, you take a few months off and stuff, right? Because of that, our programs-- this is one of the revisions that we're working on right now--is when you go into the workshop setting, not like the more traditional Iowa Writers Workshop, where it's like you submit your work and then you stay silent and say nothing about it, what we're trying to get into the program now is when you submit the work, you let your peers know what it is that you're writing, and where whatever you're submitting for the preview fits within the larger body of work. Because that way, you know, you're not getting a bunch of peer feedback saying, I don't really understand this character. And you're pulling your hair out because you're like, well, the character is explained in chapter four. This is chapter three, right? You will have that opportunity to say, this is where it fits within my project right now. And this is kind of what I'm looking for, feedbackwise. I'm having trouble with setting. Can anyone give me some thoughts on that? And ideally, your peers will see that. Offer the feedback there first before offering feedback in other areas as well. How difficult is it to become a creative writing teacher with either degree? You have to-- unless this has changed, and I don't think it has--you have to teach English composition first, because English composition is kind of the foothold, foot in the door for a lot of other adjuncting opportunities, myself included. I went from-- and I guess I could have gone a little bit more into my journey so far and stuff, because I want to make it clear, like a lot of folks have that mindset, like, I am going to teach creative writing after I get my degree, and it's usually not that simple. I have had, I've known people who, of course they had a novel published and then they become an associate professor, right? And they're set and they're teaching and they taught for 15, 20 years at the same

institution. I've also known people who have gotten short story collections published by Gray Wolf Press, a very well renowned publisher, and only be able to adjunct at a state university, not be given that coveted, you know, tenure track position. There is nospecific one path for anyone. My path was I was pursuing a creative writing degree as an undergraduate. One day I was in the English department and I saw a help-wanted sign to become a writing consultant for the writing center at the university. I went to Grand Valley State University. I applied for that job. I became a writing consultant or a tutor, if you will, probably you've heard obviously of them as well. As a writing consultant tutor, a lot of my focus was on first-year writing, supporting students who were in this traditional setting, coming in freshman year, 18 years old, 19 years old, learning how to write at the college level. I gained experience as a writing consultant. I worked that way for three years. I leveraged that when I wrote. When I submitted my MFA, I said, this is what I'd like to pursue as a TA. I did not get that position. I actually became a GA, a graduate assistant, which was more involved with like setting up readings and stuff, which was also kind of cool because you got to pick up the writer at the airport and all that kind of stuff. But it wasn't teaching, which is what I had my heart set on. But because I earned that MFA in creative writing, I was able to leverage that along with, you know, tutoring at Smart Thinking at the community college in Florida, and said, I'd like to teach, I'd like to adjunct. And they said, hey, we have a position for first year composition, which is the most, I mean here at, at Grant or at Southern New Hampshire University, I don't know the specific number, but there are thousands of those courses that run every term because we have so many students who have to... It's a required course that you have to take in your BA as you're pursuing it, English 130 or 190 or both. So they need people there to teach those particular courses. That's going to usually be your foot in. And that was for me, that's what it was at the community college in Florida. And once I got that foot in, when the creative writing teacher was out sick or on maternity leave, then I got to teach the creative writing course as an adjunct, but a, you know, a filler and be able to build up my experiences here and there. And from that leveraged it into eventually teaching the fiction writing workshops here as an undergraduate before becoming an admin and not teaching anymore, which is, well, besides, you know, the TA course. But it's not, you know, creative writing or anything like that. So all that to say is don't set your heart on one specific pathway toward where you want to go. Keep all opportunities open and take whatever you can get and leverage it, leverage it, leverage it. In doing that, you can build your way up into eventually adjuncting or teaching creative writing. But don't immediately think this is... I'm going to go from A to B to C to... And I'm sure Paul would have a story completely unrelated to how I got to where I am today just to show how diverse and how random the universe can be. Honestly, with these things... Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing that was really helpful to me was networking, you know, being part of the writing community, giving back to a writing community, you know, and kind of building up some good karma that way so that people recommended me for things. That was very, very helpful. Are you able to teach English comp with the creative writing MFA or MA from SNHU? I would say so. Right. A lot of the times it's one thing that could really help you out is just pursuing or looking for tutoring opportunities as well, wherever they may be. I don't know if Smart Thinking is still... I think it's still around. I have not heard anything otherwise and stuff. But like looking for online tutoring opportunities or looking for local tutoring opportunities at your-- and again, it doesn't need to be college. It can be elementary, secondary education, library, library ESL especially. I know like, for example, here we have several programs, because we have a lot of Senegalese migrants and stuff who have moved to our community and stuff, and need to learn, you know, English as a second language and everything like that. So that's a good opportunity, right? Pursuing those can... Then you can then kind of leverage your way into teaching, you know, composition and other courses as well. So here's what might be our final question of the night, because we're getting up there. Why SNHU over another university's program? What sets it apart? You know, that's a fantastic question. I would hope that everyone that considered applying for the MA or the MFA here at SNHU would also look at other programs judge for yourself. You know, look at... First of all, you have to think about cost, financial aid, things like that. Look at who's teaching there. What kind of experience do they have? For example, you know, the MFA has quite a roster of experienced, qualified teachers in all of the genres that we offer, but we're especially strong when it comes to the subgenre of horror within speculative fiction. So if horror is your thing, you might look at our roster of instructors who teach in that genre and think, well, these people have won the Stoker Award. They obviously know what they're doing. So it would be worthwhile for me perhaps to learn the craft of writing horror from a Stoker winner. But, you know, ultimately, it has to be your decision. And, you know, I think our... the benefits of our program speak for themselves. And I think if you do, you know, your due diligence, you'll find that we stack up in terms of what we offer and who we have teaching here. Yeah, and just to kind of build off of that, just very briefly. Absolutely. Look, I'll look at other opportunities or look at other ones and see what there is out there. MA creative writing is a rarer find. There's a lot more MFA creative writing programs out there. The difference between them, of course, is that a lot of them are not online and may require you to move. I had to move. I am originally from Michigan. I had to move out to Idaho for my MFA. So are you able or willing to do that? If the answer is yes, then maybe look for other programs and see what there is out there. If the answer is hell no, I have a mortgage, I have kids, I have a job. I can't just pick all of this up and move two time zones over. Then an online degree might be the best path for you. And the other thing, of course, and I mentioned this earlier, is you can go at your own pace here. It's asynchronous. You do not need to say, oh, I can't do this tonight because I have to sit in a classroom from 6pm to 9pm 40 minutes away in a town three towns over from me, right? It's, oh, there is this event tonight. I can go to that, because then I'll be able to write tomorrow and make time for that tomorrow and stuff. So there are some great benefits to the Online MA and MFA programs here that other institutions do not offer and might fit your schedule better than some of the more traditional brick and mortar ones. And like I said, MA creative writing is kind of a rare, you know, find. And anyways, MFA is kind of the one that a lot of programs have and stuff. So that would be a good... The MA would be a good opportunity for those who especially have a lot of other commitments, want to continue to build onto their writing, but want to be able to carve out some of that time by having these committed to classes that they have to take term over term to complete the 35,000 words that you want to complete or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, sorry, you know, we don't want to, we don't want to pooh-pooh any other programs. If there are, of course, good programs out there, we think ours are good too. We hope that you consider them. But thank you so much for coming, and I hope all of this was helpful and I didn't meander too much. You can tell I'm getting tired. It's 9:00 here. Yeah. It's our bedtime. Yeah. Get up. So, yes, thank you all so much for coming. Thank you for your questions. I'm going to try to make the transcript available and the slide deck available. I invite you to email me if you have questions about the MFA that weren't answered. I'll be happy to answer them. And same for the MA. If you'd like to email me, Jay, I'll just put it in the chat, because I don't... Make sure you put the one in there. Jason Powers gets a lot of my emails. Oh, yeah, and I'll put mine in there, too. There we go. All right, good night, everybody. All right, thanks, everyone. Take care.