But it’s also true that the MFA in cre­ative writ­ing has sev­er­al benefits–at its best it gives the writer the space and in some cas­es, fund­ing, to write. 

They should allow their stu­dents great free­dom. Noth­ing the stu­dent does is wrong.

And so on. Hun­dreds of things, aren’t there?, to be found. 

Well-writ­ten poet­ry trans­forms the mun­dane into some­thing vivid and new. When writ­ten effec­tive­ly, this kind of poet­ry depicts expe­ri­ences we thought we under­stood and chal­lenges our con­ven­tions. “Chick­ens” reminds me of how well-writ­ten flash can do the same.

The impor­tant thing is to have a few peo­ple in your life that you can talk about your work with and dis­cuss the joys and frus­tra­tions of the writ­ing world, which most non-writ­ers just can’t under­stand because they don’t have the back­ground.

Flash fic­tion, the short sto­ry, and even the news brief–these forms allow writ­ers to tell impor­tant sto­ries quick­ly and pow­er­ful­ly.

Per­haps what frus­trates writ­ers more than any­thing else is being haunt­ed by the idea that they have to have a dai­ly writ­ing sched­ule.

As a cre­ative non­fic­tion writer, I often won­der how not to come off as a com­plete nar­cis­sist and the words “Who cares any­way?” for­ev­er plague me.

News from Mat­ter Press and its Jour­nal of Com­pressed Cre­ative Arts