Eighteen years ago, when I first took a writing course through
my local adult education program, I noticed that most of the published writers I
admired seemed to have MFAs. That’s a Master of Fine Arts – the art of creative
writing, to be specific. I read all the anthologies: The O. Henry Prize Stories,
Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays. Or perhaps more accurately, I
read all the anthology contributor sections. I’d start reading a story or an
essay, maybe a paragraph or two, then I’d stop the charade and flip to the back
of the book, to the section with the contributors’ bios. Oh, eventually I’d get
back to the writing, but first I’d work thorough that contributor section,
scanning for writers who weren’t English professors, who didn’t have MFAs. I
needed to find those exceptions, the ones who proved I could eventually get
published, since I lacked an MFA myself.
My husband and I were planning to have kids soon, so I’d calculate how long it
would be before I could apply to an MFA program. Once we had a kid in
kindergarten? Or after the second (hypothetical) kid was in school too? What I
really wanted, almost as much as I wanted the kids, was to be published, and I
was convinced that an MFA was the only way to get there.
Well. The kids turned up in time and kept me busy. By the year the oldest was
four and his sister one, we decided to homeschool, so the whole kindergarten/MFA
scenario disappeared along with the need for a lunch box. Any MFA plans were
postponed indefinitely. And then even more indefinitely, if it’s possible to
extend the indefinite, with the arrival of our third child, almost ten years
after the first.
Still, I kept writing: lots when my oldest was a napping baby; less by the time
his sister stopped napping altogether. I went out one night each week to write
in a café. I took adult education courses every few years: Creative Nonfiction,
a prose style workshop. I formed a few different writing groups with people from
those classes over the years – we’d meet once a month to eat expensive cheese
and give feedback on our projects.
This went on for years. For seventeen years, to be precise. Then a year or so
ago, I heard the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestseller Eat, Pray,
Love, interviewed on the podcast Writers on Writing. The interviewer described
how Gilbert had “fashioned her own MFA” in creative writing. Instead of spending
her time in a classroom, she had . . .
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Patricia Zaballos is a homeschooling mother of three who lives in Northern
California. Once upon a time, she was an elementary school teacher, which has
been as much hindrance as help in her life a homeschooler. For many years, she
has facilitated writing workshops for homeschoolers and is currently writing a
book on nurturing the voices of homeschooled writers. You can read more of her
writing on her blog Wonder Farm: www.patriciazaballos.com.
