Revisiting Movable Type: Issue no. 4 Featured Writer Courtney Maum
Creating (and maintaining) a literary community without an MFA—Courtney Maum
So many things have changed in publishing. There have been positive changes that came out of the #BlackLivesMatter and #PublishingPaidMe movement and there have been difficult changes—mergers, layoffs, paper shortages—during the pandemic.
But one thing that hasn’t changed is that aspiring writers must be active and genuinely enthusiastic literary citizens to get anywhere in this industry. You really must support the industry that you want to support you! From buying books from independent bookstores and reviewing them online, to subscribing to literary magazines and newsletters and following your favorite literary stars on social media, it is relatively simple and rewarding to join the literary community with or without an MFA.
Here are some ideas.
There are a lot of reasons writers don’t attend an MFA program: they’re categorically opposed to them; they can’t afford them (financially and/or emotionally); they don’t know that they exist. I was in this latter case. I lived in France for most of my twenties, and by the time I moved back to America and woke up to the fact that most authors had MFA programs in their bios, I felt too old, too married, and too financially unstable to pursue an MFA. I was, however, longing for a literary community, and it wasn’t initially clear how I could find one outside of an MFA program. I was living in a really rural part of Massachusetts with very few people—much less writing people—around. A serendipitous part-time job offer in New York City gave me the chance to try to find my kinfolk. In order to get as much out of my time in a metropolis as possible, I decided to attend a reading series for each of the four nights that I would be in New York, and to introduce myself—in person—to one stranger at each reading. I did this for four months straight, and although the positive outcomes I experienced were aided by my extraversion, I’m nevertheless convinced that there are solid, actionable, and affordable things you can do to build a literary community without an MFA. Some of these suggestions are free, others require an investment. For the paid options (attending summer conferences or an online writing class), remember to save receipts for tax time so you can deduct these costs as a business expense.
Attend too many reading series.
You know the musical expression “playing by ear”? At reading series, you can train your ear to help your writing. Take it from someone who survived a writer’s twenty two-minute “autofiction” revelation about a particular type of oral servicing he once received on a couch: once you hear someone bomb in front of a microphone, you will do anything—everything—to avoid terrible writing. In-jokes, tangents, potentially offensive content, narrative indulgences—attend a lot of reading series and you will be only too happy to remove these malignancies from your work.
Volunteer as a reader for a literary magazine.
Being a reader for literary magazines allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of what people are writing—and not writing—about, and it can be very useful for your creative writing process to be a gatekeeper for a while. Understanding what makes you want to accept or reject a story will inevitably inform the choices you’re making in your own work. Are you trying too hard to be funny? Do you go on tangents? Do your characters do nothing but stare out the window drinking tea? There is just as much to be learned from reading flawed writing as there is from reading polished work, plus you’ll come away with a new respect for the form rejection letter after you’ve been exposed to a bog of misspelled, uniquely formatted submissions from misanthropes and misogynists who are only too proud to tell you that they couldn’t be bothered with your submission guidelines because this attached thirty- five-thousand-word novella about a man without a girlfriend absolutely needs to be in your poetry journal. NOW.
Attend a summer writing program.
The cons of these are that they can be prohibitively expensive (it’s nearly four grand to attend the ten-day Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference without a scholarship), competitive to get into, and alcohol fuels a great deal of the socializing, but the pros are that you can get nearly a semester’s worth of contacts and inspiration in as little as a week. Poets & Writers has a solid database of writing conferences that you can navigate by event type, location, even f inancial aid deadlines.
Although there isn’t a writing conference where alcohol is specifically prohibited (yet), the writer Vonetta Young said that the VONA conference (for writers of color) doesn’t provide any conference-sponsored alcohol, and writers Caitlin Horrocks and Tara Lindis-Corbell both said the same thing of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Librarian and inn manager Jesica Sweedler DeHart says that food takes center stage at the Orcas Island Literary Festival where most of the events are hosted by a tea or coffee company.
If you need extra support around alcohol, look for programs that have recovery meetings that are relatively easy to get to and attend. “Going somewhere with a strong recovery presence,” suggests the writer Hallie Goodman, “can help you connect with other writers who are feeling a little alienlike as they see all of their peers get sloshed.”
Take an online writing class.
Since the advent of digital technology, there might not be a better boon for writers than the online writing class. Though the classes are online, the students and the teachers are real people, busy ones like you. And with the rising popularity of online writing classes, the standards set for teachers are very (very!) high: as I write, the likes of Arif Anwar, Yahdon Israel, and Leigh Stein are all teaching online, and the talent in the student pool is equally impressive.
Even if you’re not meeting in person, online classes offer emerging writers important social benefits: you might make a friend you can go on to workshop with privately; if you have a positive relationship with your teacher, you can ask them for a recommendation letter at some point in the future. Learning to take—and give—feedback from your peers will also help you gain the technical skills you’ll need to be more self-reliant when you are revising your own work. In addition to expanding your personal writing network, online classes can bolster your creativity and imagination, too. Would you try a screenwriting class in an MFA program if you were accepted there for poetry? Maybe not. But with their affordability, convenience, and lower stakes environment for experimentation, you can try out translation, travel writing, memoir, erotica, and many other genres you might not have had the time—or even the permission—to try in an MFA.
Join (or start) a writing group.
If you haven’t had any success finding an existing writing group through the common channels (your local library, bookstore, or good old word of mouth), it might be time to start one of your own. You can post flyers in actual brick-and-mortar places, or use social gathering sites like Meetup to gauge interest in your group. Remember that your group doesn’t have to be stylistically homogenous; it will serve you as a writer if your comembers have varied life experiences and are working in different genres than you.
Attend AWP.
It’s not cheap to get to and it usually takes place in the godforsaken month of February, but AWP (which stands for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs [which should actually be abbreviated as AWWP, but... artistic license?]) is an annual conference attended by thousands and thousands of publishing professionals and writers. A conference as large as this one can feel panic-attack-level overwhelming at times, but there’s no better one-stop shopping for all your career needs. At the many parties and off-site readings offered throughout the five-day conference, you can hear new work and socialize with like-minded artists; at the book fair, you can spend hours talking with conference and writing-program managers about the different opportunities they offer; you can network for job opportunities in academia and publishing; you can browse everything from quirky chapbooks to door-stopper bestsellers, and enjoy conversations with the editors, publicists, and interns who brought those books to life. If you’re feeling up for it, you can even pitch projects to an editor, and you can flick something grody at the editor from [name of literary magazine redacted] who has rejected every piece you’ve ever sent. A word to the wise: AWP lists discount codes on its website for hotel and airline fare. Make sure to use these discounts when you book!
Join a book club if you’re not already in one.
Learning to read other people’s work, to question it, and to praise it in a clear and concise manner are skills essential to any writer, as is the proper handling of oneself around copious amounts of white wine. Read. Duh, right? Not so fast. If you want to be an active member of the literary community, you have to read beyond the kind of work you normally gravitate toward, in both genre and style. Every fall there are lists about the top ten or twenty books out that year: earmark BuzzFeed’s most-anticipated novels, read the National Book Award poetry finalists, set yourself a goal. Subscribe to literary magazines (and read them), and visit the areas of your local library that you usually avoid. Challenge yourself to leave well-thought-out reviews of these books on social-cataloging sites like Goodreads, so that you learn to speak respectfully about other people’s work. In an MFA program, you would be thoughtfully critiquing other people’s writing on the regular, so don’t slack on this skill set.
A quick tip about book reviews, especially online: Do not leave negative reviews of authors whom you might one day want to beseech or befriend. Early in your career, you might not know who these people are yet, so book-review with caution. As a general rule of thumb, if you have negative thoughts about somebody’s creative output, it’s best to let them die a silent death inside your mind.
Volunteer at a literary festival
If you can’t be invited by them, join ’em. Literary festivals are always in need of volunteers, and they’re one of the best ways to stay connected to the writing world. If you offer up your services, make sure to choose a committee that actually suits your career interests: event planning will give you an idea of how panels are organized (with a sneak peak at the kind of topics you can one day hope to talk about yourself), public relations will give you experience writing press releases and interfacing with the media, and hospitality can put you in the same orbit as the authors you admire.
If your volunteer time is limited, festivals, arts organizations, and literary magazines always need extra help during their end-of the-year fund-raisers.
If you do all these things, or even half of them, while also keeping up a regular writing practice, you’re going to find your book people, and they’re going to find you. If you still find yourself yearning for a more codified community after all these efforts, start researching part-time and/ or low-residency MFA programs. More affordable, less competitive, and more flexible with scheduling than their full-time counterparts, part-time MFA programs will only need you on campus two to three times a week (usually at times that are convenient for nine-to-fivers), and low-res programs offer long-distance education with site-specific meetups one or two times a year.
ABOUT COURTNEY MAUM
Bio: Along with her latest novel, ALAN OPTS OUT, Courtney is the author of five previous books, including the romantic comedy TOUCH (A New York Times Editors’ Choice) and the memoir THE YEAR OF THE HORSES, chosen by the Today show as one of the best reads for mental health awareness. Creator of the groundbreaking publishing guidebook BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL and the bestselling Substack newsletter by the same name, Maum is an educator and writing coach hellbent on preserving the joy of art-making in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands. In addition to her advocacy work for writers at The Author’s Guild, Courtney runs a workshop in New Mexico where she combines twenty years of experience in advertising with a deep love of craft to help writers boost their confidence and industry know-how. Learn more and sign up for her writing classes at CourtneyMaum.com
Visit Courtney’s Bookshop.org page for reading recommendations by genre.
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All good suggestions.
I was lucky enough to attend a few workshops at the University of Iowa offered through their summer writing program. For someone who worked a corporate job and barely knew anyone who read fiction and knew not a single writer, it was a wonderful experience to be with like-minded people for a week. Sadly, that program has been discontinued.
I attended a low-residency MFA program as a middle-aged student finally able to afford it without incurring debt. I've never understood the animosity toward MFA programs. Perhaps if one is viewing it as a career move, the results could be disappointing. It's not an MBA or a law degree or something with tangible "market" value. But spending time with other writers learning to read more closely and pay careful attention to the work of others (and one's own work) is time well spent.
But as this essay shows, there are plenty of ways to get involved outside of an MFA program. Kudos to Courtney for introducing herself to strangers. It made introverted me nervous simply reading about. My goal is usually to see how many strangers I can avoid instead of meet.