IMF 60300 MFA Goes to Work: Creative Writing in Careers

Instructor

Gene Pfeiffer

Class Type

Craft

Course Description

Instructor: Gene Pfeiffer

Class Type: Craft

Course Description:

When you have your MFA degree in hand, what will you do next? Very few of us have the luxury to sit at our desks and write full time. Most of us have to find work or continue working. At the same time, we need to keep the momentum that the MFA structure has given us in our own creative work.

This course focuses on how the skills you have been developing in the MFA program translate to the workplace. These are skills and capacities that today's employers are looking for across industries, skills that include writing and content creation, imagination and creative process (the latter of which includes a range of skills such as comfort with uncertainty, listening/observing, curiosity, idea-generation).

We will survey classic job and career opportunities available to MFA in Writing graduates: teaching, editing/publishing, freelance writing, marketing communications and business communications. In our journal work, we will do some of the work teachers, editors and freelancers do. In the teaching portion of the class, we will create syllabi and lesson plans that we can then take into our search for teaching work. In the creative communications portion of the class, we will function as a “creative agency,” doing creative briefs, ads, video scripts and content marketing.

As a learning community of adults, some of us are seasoned in some professions, while some of us are starting out, and many of us are looking to change careers, or kickstart a side gig. Our weekly discussions will be a place for conversation and questions, sharing our expertise to help each other as we branch into new directions.

At the same time, within the structure of this class, we will continue to do our own personal creative writing – flash fiction or nonfiction or poetry. We’ll strategize for how to stay connected with our writing communities, as well as how to keep momentum in self-prompting, self-editing, and sending out our own creative work.