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Nine Reasons Why A Creative Writing Degree Is Freaking Sweet

7th Feb 2010 in Writing

So maybe you’re a writer, and maybe you’ve been thinking: ‘Hey, my writing could be more intellectual/less intellectual/more commercial/less commercial if I got a degree in Creative Writing – and all the lit mags love those degree kids!’

As a recent Creative Writing MLitt graduate, I present to you my list of Nine Reasons Why A Creative Writing Degree Is Freaking Sweet.

1. I have some extra letters after my name. Obviously I don’t use actually sign things ‘Kirsty Logan, BA Hons, MLitt’, because I’m not a total wanker. But it’s nice to know I could.
2. After my undergrad degree I spent several years working crappy minimum-wage customer-service jobs and saving money. Every time I thought about the money, I thought about the painful existential angst I suffered from dealing with The General Population all day. Now I have spent all that money on tuition fees, so I need never be reminded again.
3. My girlfriend does not want to live outside the city, and I can’t afford to live in the city. Therefore we can’t live together, and I will never have to know how it feels to bicker over whose turn it is to buy toilet paper.
4. Being both A Writer and A Student (and A Waitress to pay for the first two) leaves no time for household chores, so I never have to pull hairs out of the shower drain.
5. My contact with other university writing programmes has resulted in the publication of much of my writing which would otherwise be in the shredder – for example, a series of haiku written by an automatic generator based on a letter I wrote to my tonsils before I had them removed.
6. Spending much of my time with other writing students has led me to write things like experimental haiku based on letters to my tonsils. I am convinced that if I were not an Mlitt student, I would never have written such things.
7. Attending dozens of Reading Parties, where I listened to other writers read stories about communing with Mother Bear or the journey of a sperm through the vaginal canal or the joys of hot beverages (“o cup of tea, how I love thee”), has given me enviable poker face skills.
8. The ‘I have to study’ excuse can be used to get out of most unwanted social and work commitments, but with a creative writing degree any fiction reading can be classed as university work. This is why I did not feel guilty about skipping my cousin’s graduation party to stay at home and read an X-Files novelisation.
9. Furthermore, anything that contains a narrative – or even words – can be useful to your development as a writer. This means never feeling guilty about spending the day watching The Ricki Lake Show, listening to nostalgic 90s rap, or reading alien abduction magazines. It’s all learning.

In conclusion: if you quite like the idea of being a shiftless, city-wandering, window-gazing, minimum-waged, library-lurking, takes-themselves-far-too-seriously, takes-nothing-seriously-except-a-bunch-of-words-on-a-page, pretentious dreaming overthinking waster of a writer, then fuck it. Do the degree.