Trusting the Process: Working from MFA Thesis to Full-Length Manuscript
At the beginning of my thesis year, my MFA advisor stressed that my thesis did not have to be a book. The requirement was a hundred pages or so of my collected work in the program. It did not have to be a full, cohesive project ready to send out to agents and publishers on the day of graduation.
I nodded as she explained this. Inside, I thought, I want it to be a book though! The MFA provided years dedicated to writing. I had left a corporate career I hated, moved to another state, and suddenly had precious afternoons to write on my balcony. I didn’t want my MFA to end, but since it had to, I wanted it to end with a book.
But I didn’t have a clear sense of what that book would be. I had written a lot of material, but I’d come into grad school having previously lived in a bubble and without much workshop experience. I spent a lot of my MFA workshops learning how people responded to my work and what I had to say.
When I turned in my thesis at the end of my third year, it was clear I didn’t have a full manuscript. What I had was a document containing the best essays I’d written so far. Some of them were pretty good, some had been over-labored, and some hadn’t fully emerged yet, though those were also the most interesting. More importantly, the essays weren’t in communion with each other. Some of them treaded the same material, contradicted each other, or had wildly different styles. The beginning and ending essays had never met. There wasn’t a clear throughline.
“It might take time,” my advisor said on the process of molding my thesis to something worthy of a readers and a cover. “Maybe a long time.”
She was right, of course, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
I took some time off then spent the first few months of my post-MFA life looking for shortcuts to literary success. I scoured my favorite writers’ bios and sent work to the places they’d been published and the residencies they’d attended. It was something easy I could do while searching for employment. I refreshed my email a lot. I got rejected across the board.
Finally, I had to reckon with the fact that the only thing that mattered was the writing. My MFA had been a period of growth, but there was more work to be done. And what I really wanted to do was finish the book.
Once I secured solid employment, I developed a writing routine in the mornings before work. I looked at my thesis with fresh eyes and honestly asked what it needed. I charted the personal stories and lines of inquiry, slowly adding, taking apart, rearranging, rewriting, and nixing what didn’t belong. I set my own deadlines and evaluated my own progress. Sometimes my torn-up fragments filled me with loathing. A writer friend assured me I should trust in my ability to revise.
In the process, I found some real perks to being done with the MFA. I no longer have a voice in my head that caters my writing to workshop. I can write fifty-page essays and half-page essays. I can work through personal material I’d been avoiding without the pressure of hearing ten opinions the next week. Once I leaned into this, I found the freedom I needed to write new work and push the work I’d already done out of my comfort zone.
Now it’s been a year since I turned in my thesis. I still haven’t finished my manuscript. I definitely haven’t signed with an agent, landed a book deal, or won any prizes. What I have done is cobble together jobs and carve out a routine. I tore apart my thesis and pieced it into something almost whole. I wrote a lot of shit I later threw away and some shit that became crucial. I racked up a hundred rejections and took a break from submitting altogether. Maybe you’re in a similar place, having to remind yourself over and over to trust the process, to focus on the work that matters. We’ll be here, sitting down to untangle our projects a little every day.
