'MFA Lore' is One Year Old and Taking Over!
A career's worth of creative writing advice, one post at a time
Hello Everybody!
One year ago this week, I announced the creation of MFA Lore as a section of Aimee Liu’s Legacy&Lore. Since then, the Lore of creative writing and publishing has overshadowed the Legacy side of things.
One reason is that so many of you are writers who’ve responded enthusiastically to my weekly MFA Lore posts. I know some of you as former students and fellow authors and Substackers. But many of you were new to me, and I’ve loved receiving your questions and learning about your work.
At the same time, my ghostwriting has sidelined the focus on Asian-American Legacy that was going into my memoir. I haven’t completely packed it away, and I do have some new Legacy interviews and posts in the works. But my ghost gig, a research-based work of nonfiction to be released by a major NY house, has provided a stream of unexpected publishing and collaboration intel. I think many of you welcome this “news you can use,” so I’m glad MFA Lore gives me a place to share it.
And finally, Goddard College, where I taught MFA students for 15 years, is shutting down this summer— a loss that has driven home just how much I love and learn from teaching. This Stack has given me a wonderful way to keep that MFA spark alive by sharing here the tricks, tips, and insights that my students and I most value. It gives me great joy to offer you a window into the MFA experience, which has meant so much to me.
All that to say that as MFA Lore reaches its first birthday, it’s taken top billing! This publication is now officially Aimee Liu's MFA Lore , with a special section for East-West Legacy.
To celebrate, I’d like to offer you this Birthday Special:
With your annual paid subscription, you’ll receive full access to a long career’s worth of MFA-level insights, advice, and hard-earned lessons in craft, publishing, collaboration, and 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, or other prose project, MFA Lore is for you.
Periodically, I invite paid subscribers to submit Write On! questions so that I can tailor my writing advice to your particular concerns. To be clear, this is not meant to be an editorial service. I can’t offer direct feedback on your writing, but I do want MFA Lore to be a forum for general writing and publishing issues that bedevil you.
And as our community grows, I will add more Writers in Conversation posts like those above, to introduce you to some of the fabulous writers (including my astonishing former students!), editors, and agents I’ve met since my first memoir, Solitaire, was published waaaaay back in 1979!
I’d love to learn more about your writing and interests! Please take this survey?
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 ignited my writing life and improved my work in too many ways to count. My goal in 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.
Some thank-you’s are in order!
This birthday card wouldn’t be complete without thanking you wonderful subscribers who’ve supported this venture from the start, including some I only know through Substack. I am ever grateful for your trust, comments, questions, and suggestions.
Many of you also write your own stellar Stacks, so I’d like to take this opportunity to urge everyone in this community to check out these fabulous publications: CMOON , Lily Pond , Half-Caste Woman , Projectkin Community Forum ,
, Summer Sundays , Liminal with Jennifer Steil OC BookBlogger , Pen on Fire , Motley Stories , Dispatch from the Keyframe, Mess & Noise , [VINTAGE MORELS] adventures with home cooks , andLiving in 3D: Divorce, Dementia and Destiny .If I’ve missed anyone’s publication, please let me know, so I can recommend you!
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for listening! And, as I used to sign off every letter to my MFA students,
Write on!
Aimee
So much appreciation for your teaching through MFA Lore, and for making the craft of creative writing accessible to people like me who's never gotten an MFA degree. Your gentle voice of encouragement and wise advice make it less intimidating for me to dip my toes into creative writing. I'm honored that you mentioned my Substack. A big tragedy has derailed my writing practice, but I hope to regain inspiration again in the near future. And your Substack will certainly give me the inspiration I need to write on!
Huge congratulations! Great blog, and great advice, and great perseverance to keep it going. I recommend it to others all the time.