A Year of MFA Lore for 30% off

Celebrate MFA Lore's Third Anniversary

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

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Hello Loreates!

Three years ago this month, I launched MFA Lore to share the wealth that I’ve gleaned over more than four decades of writing and ghostwriting bestsellers and teaching creative writing as an MFA professor. Since then, this community has grown and grown! I’ve added regular writing prompts, Writer in the World posts, and bimonthly salons for paid subscribers, as well as video conversations with industry pros in my Well Published, Live! series. I’ve also been thrilled with our robust Take 5 Program for Premium Loreates, which meets as an MFA-level writing workshop every month.

To celebrate, I’d like to offer you this Anniversary Special:

With an annual paid subscription for just $35, you’ll receive:

• Full access to weekly MFA-level insights, advice, and hard-earned lessons in literary craft, publishing, collaboration, and the writing life.

• Invitations to meet me in our bimonthly Loreate Zoom salons.

• My new roundup newsletter with links to archived posts on one crucial topic each month, like landing an agent, structuring your story, or working with a Big 5 publisher. Each roundup is like a targeted course on a key aspect of the writing life.

I am a prose writer, so my posts focus on fiction and creative nonfiction. If you’re working on a novel, memoir, short stories, personal essays, or other prose project, MFA Lore is for you.

Here’s a sample of the essays and interviews you can find here*:

Confronting the Primal Core of Literature and Life

Well Published, Live! with Award-Winning Fiction Author Rachel Khong on Writing About Race, Science, and the Future

Which of These Keys Will Unlock Your Story's Meaning?

Writing Prompt: HELD

Why the MFA focus?

I know there’s some dispute about the value of graduate degrees for writers who “just want to write.” I shared that hesitation for years, publishing more than three novels and four nonfiction books before getting my own MFA in The Bennington Writing Seminars. But the knowledge, insight, and community I gained at Bennington reignited my writing life and improved my work in more ways than I can count. My goal here at MFA Lore is not to motivate you to get an MFA (unless you’re so inclined, of course) but to give you a taste of the wisdom I’ve absorbed while studying and teaching at the MFA level.

It was my good fortune to join the faculty of Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program immediately after I graduated from Bennington. Each month, I sent my students packed editorial letters with writing advice and general conversation about literature. Here’s a snippet from one of those exchanges:

Our narrator, presumably, is a girl nobody respects and who would rather die than ask for anybody’s respect.  Why?  What makes her tick?  How does her clockwork get rearranged in the course of this day?  What does she learn that she never knew?  What preconceptions get overturned?  What price does she have to pay?  How will this day change her life?  You need to have all this in mind as you rewrite.  MAKE EVERY LINE MATTER.  MAKE EVERY ACTION CHANGE SOMEONE.  MAKE EVERY CHANGE CAUSE AN EFFECT IN SOMEONE ELSE.  THINK STIMULUS, RESPONSE.  AND SURPRISE.

What was good for my students, I suspect, just might be helpful to you. That’s why MFA Lore unpacks and distills wisdom like this and sends it each week directly to your inbox. And if you want even more of the MFA experience, complete with written feedback on your work and a monthly workshop, please consider MFA Lore’s Take-5 program!

Join the Loreates’ Corner!

This anniversary card wouldn’t be complete without thanking the many Substackers who’ve helped me build this network. I’m particularly grateful to the following Stacks, and I urge you to check them out:

Bookish , Your Motley Stories , Living in 3D , Heavy Meta , Kate’s Substack , Writing Family Histories , Julene Tegerstrand, Ph.D. , Lily Pond , Liang de Beer , Amy Martin , Half-Caste Woman , Projectkin Community Forum , Ancestory , Summer Sundays , Liminal with Jennifer Steil OC BookBlogger , Pen on Fire , Motley Stories , Dispatch from the Keyframe, Listening Inside and Out , Pie'd Piper

If I’ve missed anyone’s publication, please let me know, so I can recommend you in my weekly Loreates’ Corner!

Thank you so much for reading and subscribing!

As I sign off every letter to my MFA students,

Write on!

Aimee

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