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Online Writing Certificate > The Writer's Spotlight > Summer 2023

Summer Writer's Spotlight

In this Issue:

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Ask a Writer

Our writing advice column features questions from our community answered by Malena Watrous and other creative writing instructors.
 
A QUESTION ABOUT OPENINGS
How do you know what is the best opening or entry point into your novel (or memoir)? Do you write multiple openings and then see which feels like it catches attention the most?

- Giannina

Dear Giannina,

To answer this, I started by posing the question to a few novelists who teach in our program.

Sarah Stone responds:
 
Writing multiple beginnings is a chance to teach yourself more about your story and characters. Make bold changes in POV, voice, and opening moments. If one beginning feels more intriguing, play with it for a while. But don't worry about trying to polish it for readers or investing a lot of energy in getting it "right." You'll almost certainly be changing it up until the very last draft as you learn more and more about your book.

Deborah Johnson has this to say:
 
I usually start with what I think will be the opening—but it very rarely turns out to be the one that really sticks. Most often, I will be working deep into the book and all of a sudden it strikes me, "Now this is where this story REALLY begins." And I will move it up.

And I will add to what they both wrote: You can't know the true/best beginning to your story when you're writing the first draft, because the true/best beginning will bookend in a meaningful way with where the story ends, and you won't know precisely how it will end until you write your way to that ending. So I would say: make your best guess, write a beginning that contains momentum and tension, and follow it until you get to the end, at which point you can and should go back and see if that's still the best place to start or not. I think it's much easier to revise the beginning once you've completed a full draft than when you're still in the middle or figuring out your story—and both Sarah and Deborah articulated versions of that same idea.
 
A QUESTION ABOUT MFA PROGRAMS
I've been considering an MFA program for years now (I'm 40) but want to make sure I find the right fit and that I'm ready. I'm researching low-residency programs, trying to build a portfolio/application and also wondering what my next steps should be. I was curious what your thoughts and advice would be to someone considering it at 40? 
 
- Sarah

Dear Sarah,
 
Great question—and it's one I hear from quite a lot of students, so I am happy to have the chance to address it here. 
 
Most people get MFAs in creative writing because writing is their passion, the thing that makes them happiest, and they'd love nothing more than to immerse themselves for a couple of years in a world in which writing takes center stage. Typically, they also want help finishing a book (either a collection of stories or poems, a novel, or a memoir) and hope that the focused environment, lessons on craft and literature, and feedback of peers and instructors will help them to produce a better book than they could on their own. They also want the professional leg up that an MFA can give you, in the form of connections forged with peers and proffesors who might some day help by offering blurbs or hooking you up with resources and jobs, and the bonus of visits from agents or industry professionals who might even read student submissions and pick a few clients that way. And finally, most people who get an MFA eventually would like to teach writing at the college level themselves, and they know that a terminal degree (MFA or PhD) is typically required to get those teaching jobs that most of us find both stimulating and necessary as a financial complement to writing.
 
In an MFA program, you're likely to find your tribe, make great progress on a book, and form those kinds of connections that I mentioned above. That said, getting an MFA won't guarantee a thriving writing career. The odds of having a novel accepted for publication by a major commercial publisher are low, with or without that degree. Some people love workshopping for two years, while others don't. Some MFA programs are notoriously cut-throat, while others foster more of a sense of community. If having your work critiqued is hard for you, I'd think twice about applying for an MFA. Graduate students are not always the gentlest critics. These programs tend to be expensive, and typically financial aid is available only at the larger state schools that use grad students as teaching assistants in undergrad classes. It may or may not be feasible for you to uproot and move to a small town in the midwest or the south. There are some terrific low-residency MFAs where most work is done remotely, however, and being over 40 would not be unusual in one of these low-residency MFA programs. Most of the students who choose this option have busy lives, careers, and families, making it their only feasible choice. 
 
I suggest asking yourself the following questions: Do you have the time to devote two years to almost full-time writing work and study? Do you have the means to pay for an MFA program, and/or are you willing to move somewhere if you get financial aid but it's from a school not near where you currently live? Are you tired of taking one-off classes and looking to push yourself and your craft to the next level with a fully immersive experience? Do you aspire to teach writing at a university as part of your job? And finally: do you have a book-length project you're devoted to finishing (or a very good idea for one)? If the answer to most of those questions is yes, then I'd say: go for it! Do keep in mind that plenty of published authors never got MFAs. There's nothing you can't learn by reading and practicing your craft on your own and in writing groups and/or by taking classes, without enrolling in a full-time program. But if you're at the right stage in life and you can do it, an MFA program can be very rewarding.
 
Good luck! 
 

Do you have questions for our writing instructors? If so, feel free to submit them to [email protected] for possible inclusion in our next quarterly Spotlight.

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Student Writing News 

We are thrilled to celebrate new publications, awards, and other writing-related news from our student community.
 
  • Wendy Adair wrote in with this excellent news: "My book, The Broken Hallelujah, written through the OWC program, was awarded a 2023 Bronze medal for wartime fiction from the Independent Book Publishers Awards!
     
  • Diane Byington writes to share: "I don't have a cover yet, but I'm super excited to announce that Louise and Vincent will be published on August 15. It's a novel about the last days of Vincent van Gogh and offers an alternative approach to how he died that is consistent with recent research! But even more than Vincent, you're gonna love Louise. Stay tuned!"
     
  • Patricia Contaxis wrote to share that her essay, Little Gull, was just published in the journal Loch Ness Review.
     
  • Debbie Jacob wrote in to share this cool news: "It was hard to imagine anywhere beyond the Caribbean island of Trinidad during the Covid pandemic when we had completely closed borders and lockdowns for nearly two years. Totally confined to our homes—except for sanctioned trips to the grocery store and pharmacy—my only contact with the outside world came when I joined Rachel Howard's online class 'Finding the Universal in the Particular.' My plan was to work on a memoir about my experience of facing retirement with a pack of retired police dogs. But then I got an idea. After Rachel's class, I rewrote my book about the 70-year history of the Trinidad and Tobago canine police. It seemed there was no book more particular than that, and I wanted to apply what I learned in class to explore 'aboutness' in the book to give it a universal audience. Much to my surprise, McFarland, the first and only publisher I approached in the US, accepted that book, which currently goes under the working title of Crime Bites. It will be part of McFarland's Dogs in Our World series, hopefully by the end of this year. I am a professional journalist and writer. My other books have been published in England and the Caribbean. Rachel's course opened up a whole new world of publishing for me in the US. As I told Rachel, 'If I can find a way to give such a particular story a universal appeal, then anything is possible.' I now believe any book has that potential."
     
  • Kevin Loughlin, who took a class where students receive a daily prompt, wrote to share this: "I took The Creative Habit twice, back to back, last year and am proud to say that I never missed a single assignment, even optional ones, when we were on semester break. Your course accomplished its goal. I write something every day. Even if it is only a phrase I want to use or an idea for a story, I will jot it down on my phone. The Martha’s Vineyard Times published another one of my letters. You may recognize parts of it, as it has its genesis last year, as one of the assignments in your class." I loved hearing this from Kevin, and the piece he shared was beautiful.
     
  • Simi Monheit has a new story, "Broken Glass," published in Lilith!
     
  • Linda Moore's novel, Attribution, an art mystery thriller, won the National Indie Excellence Award for Literary Fiction! And then BookBub announced it had been selected as one of their $.99 deals, a promotion which can go a long way toward increasing readership. Way to go, Linda!
     
  • Juli Min just sold her debut novel, Shanghailanders, at auction with publishers buying rights on both sides of the Atlantic! Here's a great article that goes into more detail about the sale of this magnificent manuscript. Congratulations, Julie!
     
  • Elizabeth Mondry has a brand new essay published in Pangyrus.
     
  • Leanne Ogasawara had a terrific new short story published in the Michigan Quarterly Review, which you can read an excerpt of here.
     
  • Alyssa Lauren Stone had the cover piece in Shondaland recently. The essay started out as her Modern Love essay, developed in Melanie Bishop's class last July. It wasn't accepted at Modern Love but she kept working on it, and published a couple other short pieces, and then this one was accepted. This is a great lesson for all those aspiring writers who think a rejection from Modern Love is the end of the road.
     
  • Jill Blocker's debut novel, What was beautiful and good, will be published this fall in German, titled Was schön war und gut. She developed the historical fiction novel during "The Past Is Never Past: Writing History-Based Fiction," with instructor Deborah Johnson. The novel, which follows a young singer at the beginning of WWI, will be showcased at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. You can find more info on Jill’s website.
     
  • Jaclyn Westlake wrote in to share the thrilling news of her upcoming novel publication: "My debut novel, Dear Dotty, in which a twenty-something struggling to fit in with her over-accomplished family and land a career where no one uses words like 'synergy' follows advice from her dead great-aunt—a globetrotting, martini-swilling nudist—through a series of revelatory emails about pursuing long-buried dreams rather than society's idea of perfect will be published by Avon Books (an imprint of HarperCollins) in summer 2024! I'm currently drafting Book #2, coming summer 2025!"

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Instructor Writing News

Holly Brady, who teaches a workshop in self-publishing techniques, recently published the full-color book Mastering Classic Cocktails: Recipes and Techniques for the Home Bartender, by C. Townsend Brady. The book has been chosen as a Finalist in both Foreword Magazine Indie Awards and the Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Awards.





 
Peter Fish has a new essay, "The Most Famous California Novel You’ve Never Heard Of," published in Alta Journal.








Antoine Wilson's novel, Mouth to Mouth, has been nominated for the très chic Prix Fitzgerald in France, along with Joyce Carol Oates, Gabriel Byrne, and Quentin Tarantino.








Shann Ray's Montana Panoramic: Transparent in the Backlight was named an International Book Award Winner, and a Finalist for the High Plains Book Award. The book is a 405-page collaboration in poetry, prose, and photography.









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Feature: Reflection from Kimberly Young

Introduction from Malena Watrous

Kimberly Young was a student in my Novel 1 class many years ago, where I saw the first draft of the first chapter of her newly published novel, In The Event of Death, and immediately fell for her novel's premise and snappy prose. I had the pleasure of working with her on the completed manuscript as well, so I got to see how it all came together (brilliantly!) and was delighted when I found out that it had been accepted for publication.

Because we both live near Stanford, I was able to attend her book party, which was a joyous and fun event, full of her oldest and dearest friends and new fans. At this event, Kim gave a talk about what she'd learned in her Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing (OWC) classes that she applied to writing her first novel. I thought it was such a fabulous talk that I asked her if she'd be willing to share it with Spotlight readers, and the text follows. Congratulations, Kim!
 

How the OWC Helped Me Plot My First Novel

Immediately after my book, In the Event of Death, was published in February 2023, I gave a reading at Books Inc in Palo Alto. It was my first reading, and I'd been advised to read two or three short passages with a brief introduction to each section. It dawned on me that it might be illuminating to describe how lessons in the OWC helped me kick off my story and plot my novel.

As I explained to my audience members, one of the first things we learned was that our novel must have an "inciting incident." This event forces our protagonist out of his or her comfortable life through a one-way door into the unknown. For my protagonist, Liz Becker, the inciting incident is the Recession of 2008 that nearly shutters her business. Before the Recession, she and her partner, Gabbi, were successful event planners in Silicon Valley staging weddings in wine country, birthday extravaganzas, and splashy fundraising galas. But their phones stop ringing until a former client calls and asks Liz and Gabbi to produce a funeral for his recently deceased wife.

Planning a memorial with flowers, music, and food isn't that different from a wedding, right? The problem is, Liz has a "secret wound." She's had a crippling fear of death since losing her little sister in a childhood tragedy. As I learned in the OWC, the secret wound is a device that novelists use to add depth and complexity to a character's backstory. Liz has a husband and twin sons who depend on her income, so she must weigh her fears against the urgent need for financial stability. In short, the secret wound raises the stakes in a powerful way.

Another lesson in the OWC program focused on "world building." I shared with my audience that writing my first book had been a bit overwhelming as I juggled the needs to create characters, flesh out plot, build suspense, and craft dialogue. To simplify world building, I set my book in my hometown. "Write what you know" is sound advice and setting my book in the Bay Area allowed me to navigate my protagonist around town with confidence. (An added benefit is that local readers have enjoyed reading about their favorite cafes and parks, Stanford campus, and Silicon Valley.)

After reading a few passages related to the death of Liz's younger sister, I promised attendees that there were many lighter moments in my book to balance the dark chapters. One instructor in the OWC taught a class called, "I Laughed So Hard I Cried," where we explored the sometimes thin line between grief and comedy. This class sparked new ways for me to leverage humor to make the subject of death more palatable. 

As I've told many of my readers, Stanford's OWC program gave me the blueprints for building a novel. Equally important, my teachers and fellow writers gave me the feedback and encouragement that enabled me to survive the rocky road to publishing. I'm so grateful!



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