The Road Less Traveled

WARNING: I do not have an MFA, teach creative writing, or live in New York City. For these reasons alone, you should probably ignore any career advice I offer. Best turn the page to another story, quickly.

Still here? Then I should also note that I’m a novelist, with five published novels so far, and have been a full-time writer for eight of the past twelve years. That may seem like an unbelievable plot twist, but I’m here to inform you that it’s possible to make it as a writer without an MFA. As application season draws near, and you’re debating whether or not to attend grad school, you should know that going without an MFA has serious downsides—but so does taking out big loans for an arts degree in today’s economy. Obstacles abound on either side of this choice.

I never set out to be an exception to any rules. At first I didn’t even realize there were rules to being a writer. Like so many others, I was convinced I would be published in my early twenties. Yet as my twenties passed and the rejection letters and failed manuscripts piled up, I worried I’d made a fatal error. I realized a little late that MFA programs, once rare, had become commonplace and that a Standard Road for Writers had been blazed: college, MFA, publication, teaching job. I had unknowingly ventured down a less trodden path rife with thorny underbrush, snakes, and occasional mudslides. An MFA had not been an option for me. I graduated college in 1996 with double the average amount of student loan debt. My father’s business had gone under during my junior year; my parents declared bankruptcy and our family lost our house, so I was lucky to even graduate. Given this frightening financial insecurity, I couldn’t consider going into further debt so some writing professor could teach me about irony. While I knew that MFA scholarships existed,