I started graduate school this week in a masters program in creative writing. I’m taking three classes for a total of nine credits, which is considered a full load. No teaching assistant ship for first-year students so it’s all schoolwork. Which is fine. My classes are:

Narrative Craft and Theory: The Researched Story
Feminist Critical Theory: Cultural Diversity/Multiculturalism/Globalization-Gendered Debates
The Writer and the Current Literary Scene

This is potentially going to be a long post so I’ll hide the rest of it. Read on if you’re interested in the reading list and course work for these classes.

Narrative Craft and Theory: The Researched Story

This class meets twice a week for an hour and fifteen minutes. The professor has written an historical novel which takes place in Alaska during WWII. The general jist of the class is to help students learn how to effectively incorporate research into our stories. The first third of the course will be spent looking at published stories and the other two-thirds will be reading and critiquing each others’ work. We are required to give feedback on each published story (100+ words) as well as write a creative piece based on a prompt given by the professor (500+ words) and participate in online and classroom discussion. The final project is to write a “longer” story (undefined, but maybe 6-8K words?) that relies on historical data, and goes through at least three drafts/revisions during the semester. Other creative writing courses emphasize production; this one emphasizes craft.

There are no texts as the majority of reading will be student work. The six readings are:
* TC Boyle’s “Chicxulub”
* Jim Shepard’s “Love and Hydrogen”
* Andrea Barrett’s “The Behavior of the Hawkweeds”
* Peter Ho Davies’s “Silver Screen”
* Michael Chabon’s “The Hofzinzer Club”
* Andrea Barrett’s “Servants of the Map”

My initial sense is that this class is going to rock. We already discussed TC Boyle’s story which ruffled some feathers. The writing is superb but there’s a question as to whether Boyle is playing fair with the reader. I say no, but the writing is so exceptionally strong, most is forgiven.

This week’s story, “Love and Hydrogen” by Jim Shepard is incredible. One of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. It’s about a homosexual couple who live and work on the Hindenburg, and it’s fantastic. There’s also the question as to whether this story qualified as an alternate history. I plan to bring this up…

I’m already fairly certain what story I’m going to use as my research project; regular readers of this space may recognize it. It’s called “The Wendigo Killers” and it’s been kicking my ass for about two years now. It takes place in the early 1900′s in the wilderness north of Winnipeg where a native shaman is put on trial for murder. I’ve tried the run up on this story several times and failed. The biggest hang-up has been the historical research. I don’t have any idea what Winnipeg was like, how newspapers worked, how stories were filed, photos taken, etc. I’m a more confident writer now so this seems like the right time to tackle this one. It helps that the core story is both fascinating and true.

This is the most curious of the three classes in that there is almost no fiction reading. All of my undergrad English classes were either all fiction, or fiction mixed with some biographies, essays, creative non-fiction, etc. This course draws from a number of disciplines—sociology, anthropology, economics, political science—and most readings are only a few years old.

If one lacks the ability to think critically, one had better not enroll in this class. In the introductory lecture alone, students were challenged on definitions of culture, diversity, multiculturalism, feminism, personal identity and many others.

The first reading is called “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” by Susan Moller Okin that tackles a number of big questions for liberal democracies that pledge to be tolerant to immigrant citizens. But what happens when respecting another culture’s practices results the oppression of some of its members, particularly women? What happens when a culture imports practices like polygamy, or that physical violence against women is commonplace? What’s a liberal democracy to do? Pick which cultural practices are “acceptable” and ban the rest? Who decides what’s an acceptable practice? How would such bans be enforced?

And that’s just the first reading. My initial sense is that this class is going to rock. There are too many readings to list here and again, no texts. The class meets once a week in a three-hour seminar format. This is a literature class, not a writing one, so there are a few projects and students are required to lead discussions but nothing too out of the ordinary.

This is another writing class and by far the most organic of the three. The professor is an Irish poet of some repute and quite an interesting character. The class meets once a week in a three-hour seminar and, from what it seems, will be entirely off the cuff. The syllabus has the course title and professor’s information followed by the course texts. The middle third of the page is one continuous block paragraph that outlines the general expectations (a few papers, some creative work, a list of works) and ends with a grading summary and the statement “We shall drink cider and eat cakes with rings in them on Halloween.” The class schedule lists the readings and activities for weeks one through five, followed by the line “and so forth till Heaven’s Gate.”

The texts for this course are:

* JM Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
* Samuel Beckett, Mercier and Camier
* Jean Vallentine, Door in the Mountain (poems)
* Czeslaw Milosz, Second Space (poems)
* Thomas Kinsella, Collected Poems
* Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise
* Stan Persky, Autobiography of a Tattoo
* Declan Kibred, et al FourFront (Irish short stories)
* Issue #1 of “An Sionnach,” an Irish literary journal

I wasn’t sure what I’d think of this course as I don’t read much cutting edge literature (I typically read classics) but I’m about 1/3rd through the Coetzee and I’m really enjoying it. It’s not for everyone; if you don’t believe me read some of the Amazon reviews. It’s plotless but not pointless. Much of it points to the artificiality of writing and circular nature of seemingly sound philosophy. I have a feeling if you come to it with expectations, you’ll likely leave disappointed. I came expectation-free and have found it surprisingly engaging. My initial sense is that this class is going to rock.

I’ve also come to a realization: the big difference between undergrad and graduate school is that the latter is all up to you. As an undergrad, I eventually learned to read, think, and respond. Once I figured that out, there was little left to learn. Graduate school is about pushing yourself. Push, bend, twist, flatten, roll, and resculpt everything before you. It’s less about having right answers and more about coming up with interesting questions, questions that probably don’t have answers.

I emailed spec fic writer Alex Irvine awhile back for advice as he’s a creative writing professor at U of Maine. He said that if I want to spend my time doing little but writing, reading, and thinking, then a good graduate program was the best place to do it.

As of today, that’s the plan.