What I learned in Pocket MFA

Today I met in the final Zoom session of a 10-week writing workshop program called Pocket MFA. It’s a new organization, founded by poet Joshua Roark, and I was in only the second cohort. Their goal is to provide writers an accessible, supportive version of the rigorous core of an MFA in Creative Writing. And they did. I was in a class of four writers and one teacher or “mentor.” We were trained in a specific method of giving feedback to a peer’s work:

1) Readers share moments of meaning from the work, vivid bits, parts that hit us in the heart, etc. Recall specific words if possible. (That’s like what we did at Columbia College in the Story Workshop program.)

2) The author of the piece asks questions of the readers. “Does this character come across like a villain?” “Did you understand the timeline, or were you confused?” etc. This is different from a lot of workshops, where I’m told that normally the author doesn’t get to talk at all. (I think at Columbia College, the author didn’t talk, but the feedback could only come in the form of recall or a question, so we undergraduate writers didn’t feel we were being picked on by others. In both cases, strict parameters around feedback helped keep us writers charged up and excited to go back to our writing — as is the goal.)

3) Neutral questions from readers to author. Don’t couch an opinion in the question! “How old is the character here, and did this happen before that, or was it the other way around?” “Do you want this to hit the reader emotionally or intellectually?” This is a great communication tool for more personal conversations too. The author can answer the questions and the discussion can go on, but to me, the point is that those questions should be answered in the writing; they indicate that for that reader, something went missing. But asking a neutral question is worlds better than saying, “This doesn’t make sense,” or “this felt stilted.”

4) Opinions can be given with the author’s permission.

We did that for six sessions.

I came away after my first feedback session knowing that I wanted to shrink my book’s timeline and end it sooner than I’d thought I would. Somehow I was able to see that by shrinking it, I could also expand the earlier sections. Then I could put in more of the types of scenes that my peers liked: formative childhood experiences, good and bad, told in a voice of childhood through the filter of today’s adult insights. I was gratified to hear that my “voice of childhood” was landing the way I intended, and that I should lean into it even more. I will minimize “interpretation” and trust my readers to do that themselves.

I was also inspired to shorten my total timeline by reading Western Lane, by Chetna Maroo. It’s a novel of an eleven-year-old girl whose mother has died, and it takes place only over the course of one single year. Yet it felt complete and satisfying. It gave me mental permission to consider shortening mine. Then came the feedback from my peers.

And that in turn led me to rewrite the end of the book. I have several consecutive scenes now, and the final one ends with “The End.” And I know what comes before them… so now “all” I have to do is fill in the missing scenes. I have the beginning, and I do have lots of middle scenes. So I intend to finish this second draft by sometime this fall. 

Anyway, to my writer friends, I recommend the Pocket MFA program. At least with my cohort, Creative Nonfiction, they did a great job. Our teacher/mentor, Briana Gwin, was efficient, professional, positive, super smart, and supportive. 

Another fun thing about this was that when I went to the AWP conference (writers conference) here in Seattle in March of this year, I entered a drawing by putting my business card in a jar at the Pocket MFA table. I thought I was entering to win a free book. And I won! But it wasn’t a book — it was free tuition in this brand new program. I had to submit a writing sample and be interviewed, but that was it.

I was skeptical — it seemed too good to be true — but my phone conversation with Josh made it clear that he just wanted to fill out a spot or two while building the program. I questioned him. “No hidden fees?” No. “Not taking any publishing rights to student writing?” What? No way.

So I took the opportunity that was offered, and I’m so glad I did!