Citation

Pereira, Gabriela. DIY MFA: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community. Writer’s Digest Books, 2016.

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Iterate to improve your writing habits.

DIY MFA teaches to identify your personal best practices in your writing life. This can be done by iteration, a concept borrowed from lean entrepreneurship.

The process for iteration is as follows:

1. Choose one variable (don't test multiple variables) to introduce into your current writing routine.
2. Choose a concrete, specific, and measurable output (usually, time when revising and outlining and word count when writing the first draft).
3. Perform a writing session introducing the variable.
4. Track the output + how you felt during session.
5. Perform 12 writing sessions testing 12 data points within three weeks.
6. Evaluate and analyze by asking the following: What’s working? What’s not working? What has been effective for my writing? What can I improve? Look for overall trends and general patterns.
7. Use the results of the evaluation to improve your current writing routine.

You can become a great writer even without an MFA

The target market of MFA programs are people:

• who write literary fiction, creative fiction, or poetry;
• thrive in a formal academic environment;
• rich enough to afford the tuition;
• and who has a lot of time to make the most of it.

Not everyone fits the criteria above, therefore, not everyone needs an MFA. Fortunately, those who don't fit the MFA criteria can still be great writers by perfecting their craft and producing great books.

In addition, pursuing a writing life outside an MFA allows a writer to enjoy two benefits that are so difficult to achieve in an MFA:

• You are able to fit your writing into your real life.
• You take things at your own pace, which builds internal motivation.

Three elements of a writing life

To get better as a writer, you only need to focus on three things:

1. Write with focus. Explore at first but get clarity on your goals and pursue concrete projects to finish.
2. Read with purpose. Maintain a reading list, which you read to understand the author's craft and find something in it that you can use in your own writing.
3. Build your community.

Ideally, maintain a time allocation of 50% writing, 25% reading, and 25% community-building. But keep this allocation flexible depending on your projects.

Two rules to follow:

1. No single element can ever disappear altogether.
2. Evaluate your time allocation every 1-2 weeks to maintain its relevance.

Highlights processed progress

Chapter 1: Discover the DIY MFA Mindset (Processed)

Chapter 2: Customize Your Learning (Processed)

Chapter 3: Set Goals and Start Strong (Processed)

Chapter 4: Motivate Yourself (Processed)

Chapter 5: Fail Better (Processed)

Chapter 6: Generate Ideas on Demand

1. Myth: Creativity is an exclusive club, and you can't be a part of it. Truth: Anyone can be creative, but they have to work for it.
2. Myth: Creativity is innate—you either have it or you don't. Truth: No one is born creative. You become creative through small, simple steps.
3. Myth: Creativity is driven by chaos, so there's no way to control it. Truth: Creativity is a process with logical, repeatable steps. To recreate your successes, you need to be methodical even when you allow playfulness into your process.
4. Myth: Creativity is all about getting that one "big idea." Truth: Although it has some luck into it, a writing career is fostered from years of hard work and taking action.
5. Myth: Creativity means polishing an idea until it's perfect. Truth: Learn from small failures until it finally works.

Creativity is logical and straightforward. You can turn it on or off.

Four stages of creativity (IDEA)

1. I = Inspiration
2. D = Development
3. E = Evaluation
4. A = Action

The more often you go through this cycle, the more skilled you are in generating new ideas.

Inspiration

• You can sidestep inspiration by using brainstorming techniques and writing prompts.
• Leave some things to chance (e.g., choose a random exercise or prompt, flip a coin or roll a dice to make decisions).
• Engage the five senses. You will find thousands of stories around you if you only pay attention.
• Silence your inner critic. Laugh at it by keeping a mascot of it.
• Break out of your comfort zone. Notice when a habit has become too comfortable and is no longer useful. Practice the ten percent rule.
• Create an idea bank: a safe space where you store project ideas until they are activated. Schedule a regular time to review your idea bank.
• Create an oracle: a place to go for inspiration:
  • Collect writing prompts or book of prompts.
  • Collect images, mementos, and anything else that will spark a story.
  • Use a word box filled with slips of paper with random words.

Development

• Imitation
  • You can even copy yourself!
  • Choose an author whose voice or style you admire, and then copy a paragraph of one of her stories longhand. Get a sense of how the words feel as you write them on the page. Try to get into the author's mind-set. What was it like to be this author? What was it like to write these words?
  • You can also try to imitate the voice or style of a writer you admire by applying that style to your own words or stories.
  • When you have learned the rules of an author's style and have recreated his voice, you can break those rules and craft your own voice.
• Improvisation
  • "Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself."
  • Start making the process all your own.
• Incubation
  • Take a break from a project to give you the necessary perspective and distance to gain new insights and eventually make a breakthrough.
  • Practice productive procrastination.
  • Unplug from media for a period of time.
  • Do something completely different: active, repetitive, and restorative.
• Evaluation
  • Ooch your way into a book-length project.
  • Make smaller sampler projects to test if you like the idea behind the book.
  • Start by writing a short story. Do not summarize your entire book. Take a deep dive into one particular aspect of the larger story. Focus on creating a standalone piece with a beginning, middle, and end.
  • Use the short story to build your platform, boost your writer's resume, and connect with readers.
  • Give your story to a few readers and ask for feedback.
  • Use the feedback to improve your overall project.
  • Decide whether you want to stick with the book project.
  • Make sure your story is marketable. Know what is new in your genre. Read comps to determine whether your book has legs.
  • View your book as one incremental step in your career as a writer.
  • Extract an outline from your draft to show you what you've written and what still remains. See redundancies and gaps. Use the outline to plan, test an idea, take inventory, and revise.
• Action
  • Occasionally step back and look at your project as a whole.
  • The IDEA cycle only becomes complete when a reader is finally reading your book.

Chapter 7: Outline your book like a boss

Most writers fall somewhere between plotter and plantser.

You can flip-flop between the two depending on your project and where you are in your process.

Use an outline but adjust it as your story develops.

• Do not use a long-list outline.
• Instead, use modular outline techniques.

Scene cards

• Create scene cards.
• 1 card = 1 scene
• A scene card contains the following:
  • Title for the scene - short and catchy; helps remember the scene
  • Major players - treat crowds as a unit
  • The action - 2-3 sentences
  • The purpose - scenes should either contribute to the plot or help develop a character, or both.
• Write scene cards for scenes you have already written and those you have yet to write.
• How to use them
  • Play with the order of your book.
  • Jump between different scenes.
  • Change directions.
  • Eliminate irrelevant scenes.

Mind maps

• Write the title or topic at the center of the page.
• Draw branches to subtopics.
• Draw branches from subtopics.
• Use thought bubbles for ideas and speech bubbles for quotes.
• Doodle or sketch the ideas you are mapping.
• Caveat: Mind maps do not lend themselves to narratives. Best for prescriptive nonfiction.
• Novelists and memoirists can use it for world-building or keeping track of different groups of characters.

Story sketch

• Captures the overall essence of your study.
• Include a story sketch at the beginning of your submission to help critique partners.
• How to write one:
  • Write the flap copy (elevator pitch) for your story. Provide just enough information to entice readers.
  • List your five most important characters and provide a brief description for each one.
  • Give a short description of the story's world and narration.
  • Choose a theme song or soundtrack for your story.
  • Sum up your story in a fortune cookie saying.

Story map

• Imagine the story map as a subway system:
  • Subway line = subplot or story thread
  • Dots (subway stops) = individual scenes
  • Black dots (local stops) = scenes for only one storyline
  • White dots (express stops) = scenes where two or more plot threads intersect
• Benefits:
  • You could tease apart the different threads and test each one for pacing, buildup, and tension
  • Can isolate the main plot or a subplot and examine it separately.
  • Ensures that conflict, which drives your story, is at the center of your outline.
• How to write one:
  • Write out your scenes. Use your scene cards.
  • Figure out the plot threads, thematic elements, or images you want to track in your story map.
  • For each plot thread, determine the dramatic question: the question or conflict that drives the story.
    • Main plot thread = Major Dramatic Question (MDQ)
    • Subplots = Lesser Dramatic Questions (LDQs)
    • These questions boil down each plotline to one central conflict

Mood boards

• Use this to convey the mood of your story.

How to use outlines

1. Use it as a diagnostic tool while you write your first draft.
2. Extract an outline from a finished draft.
3. Extract outlines from books you read and get an in-depth look at their story and structure

Chapter 18: Be a Reader First

Read classics to put your writing into context.

Read broadly across different genres and topics.

Three objectives when reading:

1. Read books that teach you the craft and help improve your writing.
2. Read to deduce strategies you can use in your own writing projects.
3. Respond to books by taking notes and analyzing them.

Choose books that are both fun to read and improve your mind.

Read the first 10 pages of a book. If you want to give it the benefit of the doubt, read the first 10 percent. But if a book doesn't work for you after that, do not hesitate to drop it down even if it is a classic. Life is so short.

Invest your money and shelf space to just a few necessary books:

• A = Anthology of short-form literature
• B = Book of prompts
• C = Craft reference

Short-form literature is a piece you can consume in about an hour.

Here are the benefits of short-form literature:

• It is easy to see the story arc and how the different elements fit together.
• You can study the small craft (grammar, syntax, word choice, and punctuation) and big craft (character development and story structure) and see how micro level elements affect the macro level.
• It is easy to spot character transformation.
• Stories are focused and to the point.
• You can learn economy of words.

Use book of prompts that arrange exercises according to technique and target particular aspects of the writing craft. This kind of book will help you work on a specific technique or element of writing separately before applying it to your project.

Practice outside the context of your project. Master the skill then apply it to your work.

The petri dish technique

How to do the petri dish technique:

1. Find the specific problem.
2. Look for an exercise that focuses on the technique that solves your problem.
3. Practice for one solid week for 15 to 20 minutes a day.
   1. Do not change variables.
   2. Only change the context of the prompt (apply it to different characters or circumstances).
   3. Once you complete a prompt, date it then file it. Do not reread it.
   4. Take a week off.
4. Review your prompts. Look at the progress from the first to the last exercise. Have you improved?
5. If you are confident, apply the practice to your existing work.

Reading list

Create a reading list that is unique to your interests and writing projects.

Your two main objectives when reading are:

1. Improve your current writing project.
2. Challenge you to read broadly and understand literature as a whole.

Four Cs of a reading list

1. Competitive titles
2. Contextual titles
3. Contemporary books
4. Classics

Competitive titles

• Directly competes with your book
• Same genre and category as your work
• Covers similar themes and subject matter
• Use comp titles to find authors with readers who will also be your readers.

Contextual Books

• Puts your project into context.
• Not same genre or readers but same theme or subject matter
• Books that use a particular storytelling technique, even if it delves on a different subject matter.
• Track the earliest book that used the technique.

Contemporary Books

• Read a few books in your genre published in the past three years.
• Aspire to be aware of new trends to know where your genre or niche is going.
• Study how they are launched or marketed.
• Find at least one book written by an author considered a founder of your genre.

Classics

• Read classical short-form literature.

Make a list of 12 books with at least 2 books in each category.

Read through your list within one year, which means read one book per month.

Evaluate your list every month

Chapter 19: Read Like a Writer

There are three levels of reading.

On level one, focus on what the author is saying. Often, you learn this unconsciously by reading the work naturally. Doing so, answers questions like:

• Who are the characters?
• What's happening in the story?
• When and where does the story take place?

The two levels that follow is "close reading," meant to help you improve as a writer by studying other people's works.

On the second level, you focus on why the author is saying what they are saying. You try to interpret what is being said. Ask questions like:

• Why does the author tell this story?
• What is the deeper meaning?
• Is the author trying to convince us of something? If so, what is it?

On the third level, you take note of parts of the material that jumps into you and focus on studying how the author executed it. You may need to reread a few pages that led to the part that triggered your response to figure out how to author accomplished it. You could then ask:

• How did the author make you feel that way?
• What specific words or phrases spark those particular emotions?
• What is the author's purpose?
• How did the author shape and craft their words to accomplish certain goals and elicit certain responses?

The purpose of the third level of writing is to imitate the technique in your own writing.

Most of your reading will happen in the first level. Only go deeper when you need to study a technique worth-imitating.

Chapter 20: Build Your Expertise

Related

• Writing variables to test

Literature notes

Prompts