2/27/2023 0 Comments Masterwriter jobs reviews![]() ![]() Three remaining sections-Commitment, Community and Confidence-follow suit with sections that weave together many anecdotes from different writers’ lives and Dos and Don’ts and/or Challenge sections. This reviewer would have her skip it altogether and let her practical advice provide the lay of the land. This is where Gelfand leads her audience astray from her otherwise pragmatic approach to a writer’s life. That said, she leads readers into a cul-de-sac with a section on the cultivation of written work through dreams: its brevity leaves the reader with more questions than answers and would better be covered by an entire chapter, if not a entire book. This section, as well as her tendency to exemplify more poets and fiction writers, decries her tendency to lean towards creative work rather than newspaper or nonfiction writers. ![]() One section in particular goes out on a creative limb and addresses the use of dreams to compose original work. In the first of her four sections, “Craft,” Gelfand weaves together anecdotes with lessons on workshops, advice from editors, Dos and Don’ts, workshops and retreats, time management, and editing. It’s important to note that what Gelfand is presenting is not a strategy or a formula, just four practices writers should focus in order to “win.” The strategies smack of a verisimilitude that resonates with the practical realities of the writing life-the slights, the shams, the blatant nepotism, the flagrant jealousies among other unpleasant but very real aspects of the field, not to mention all the best parts of that community, which she speaks to in the section on Community. The foci of her presentation in on four Cs: Craft, Commitment, Community, and Confidence. It’s a big sweep of the writing community she speaks to, and her vision for writers seemingly bypasses all doubts. Not that she doesn’t want MFA graduates to consider her offerings here, for she says she speaks to them as well. ![]() In her book You Can Be a Winning Writer: The Four C’s Approach of Successful Authors, Gelfand outlines a road, which may prove to be no less burdensome, but unlike the support of certain ivory tower institutions, pointedly carves a place for the road in the world around the writer. Writer, lecturer, and past President of the Women’s National Book Association, Joan Gelfand, along with a bucket of contributing writers from across a wide swath of American writing life, suggests that No, no MFA is really required and Yes, you want to be a “winning” writer. One primary question surges and resurgence in the writing world: do you need to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in order to become successful as a writer? What does it mean to be success as a writer today anyway? Does it mean being a “winning” writer? ![]() Does one need a master writer to truly learn from? Is there a formula or rules to good writing? Does a “good” poem have requirements? Is “story” dead? Is narrative suspect? The list of questions easily turn into litany. It is something taught or is it an innate gift? Can a writer be externally motivated or does it require an intrinsically motivated student to make the magic happen? When it comes to pedagogy, the stakes are raised for all kinds of reasons. The road to success in today’s writing life-replete with the snarky social media, finicky readerships, cautious publishers, magazines falling as quickly as they rise, among other pratfalls-is uncharted and murky, so who would not want some direction along the way? Writing education has long been a contentious subject. ![]()
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