MFA

After much consideration (and much derision from one writing instructor), I have decided to apply to graduate school to receive my M.F.A. I spent about a month narrowing down the list of schools to apply to, with the help of resources such as these:

The Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs (2011-2012)
2011 MFA Rankings: The Top Fifty

I narrowed it down to 9 schools. Then I did even more research and replaced two of the original 9. And what do you know, the 2012 list is up at Poets & Writers. Perhaps it will change again in the future (thanks a lot P&W!), but for now I am applying to the following schools:

The University of Texas at Austin (but not the Michener Center)
The University of Georgia
Virginia Commonwealth University
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Oregon State University
Cornell University (might as well try one of the Ivy Leagues)
Eastern Washington University
North Carolina State University (they have an awesome radio station that I can perhaps volunteer to work at)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about M.F.A.s and whether they are necessary. But if I get accepted to any one of those above schools, I will (hopefully) have full funding. And its not a lot of money, but if someone basically wants to pay me to do what I love, I'll be happy to do so.

I know this is coming a little late (it was announced in October of last year), but I realize that with this blog I set out to capture the ups and downs of the writer's life and have so far seemed to focus only on the downs. Well, this is definitely an up! Two of my short stories placed #31 and #33 in the Writer's Digest Annual Short Story competition in the Literary/Mainstream category.

Now on to the next adventure! Trying to get another story finished by August 31st to enter it into the Glimmer Train's contest for the Short Story Award for New Writers.