When It Rains, etc. etc.

If you follow me on social media then you’ve probably seen the announcement that I’m taking over as director of the Camperdown MFA program at New Saint Andrews College. You can read the interview I did with them here. In a fun twist, both my offer of representation from a literary agent and the offer for this position came the same week, within a day of each other. It also happened to be MFA residency week, so I was already teaching creative writing classes and thinking about how much I enjoyed it. This is the type of situation that I wouldn’t be allowed to put into a novel because it would be deemed “too coincidental.”

While The Sinking City and The Winter King are my first two published novels, I’ve actually written seven completed novels, and consequently I have many strong opinions about how to get an idea out of your head and into a book-shaped form (and then how to revise and revise and revise until it waltzes around like a debutante ready for society).

(And, as it turns out, if you have strong enough opinions, at some point people say, “Well why don’t YOU just run the program? This is a valuable life lesson, either in keeping one’s mouth shut or being more vocal, depending on your ambitions.)

I’ve been studying the trajectory of the program from the start of Year One until the day you hand in your final assignments to make sure that we are equipping students with as many tools as possible to become successful career novelists, because that really is the goal of the program. An MFA degree isn’t for everyone, and I’d say it’s best suited to those rare and often slightly unhinged humans who are so passionate about writing that they’re willing to forgo other enjoyable pastimes like television and sleep in order to accomplish it. If that sounds like you, then read on.

Or, if that doesn’t sound like you, but it sounds like someone you know who might be interested in the program, then please forward this to them.

One of the reasons I enjoyed NSA’s MFA program so much—and why I’m excited to direct it—is that it’s holistic. We aren’t focused solely on the craft, although that is very important. Our goal is to graduate students who are firmly grounded theologically, and who understand that their theology must—and will—come out in their novels. We don’t want to graduate a writer who is like the modern man in Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, having “a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together in his head.” His novels may look and sound appealing, but there will be little substance to them, and they’ll leave the readers hungry (or confused).

When Christian novelists fall into ditches, they tend to pick one of two options. Either they are prudish, unwilling to acknowledge the true darkness in the world because they don’t really believe God would write a story with all that gunk in it and call it good. These writers affect a sterile or saccharine tone that tries to put a bonnet on Sméagol and flinches at the word magic. Their analysis of a novel comes down to how many swear words are in it and whether or not the family prays before they sit down to a meal, and stops short of considering whether it’s telling the truth about the world.

The other ditch is the one where a Christian writer sits down at his keyboard (or typewriter or notepad) and promptly forgets that he’s a Christian. These are the writers who put in gritty material because that’s what all the cool kids do. They believe that all the best stories are told by non-Christians, and they need to look like them and sound like them in order to be relevant. Their analysis of a novel comes down to whether or not it’s won the approval of the best and brightest aesthetes, and stops short of considering whether it’s telling the truth about the world.

The common problem with both ditches is a failure to consider whether God would call the story good (and how to know that in the first place). This is why NSA’s MFA program has classes in biblical theology as well as story architecture, in literary criticism and marketing insights.

The goal of this MFA program is to graduate students who have an excellent finished novel and an extremely high view of art. We want to tell stories that will make the world sit up and listen. We want our graduates to stand before kings, spinning tales that spark life into cold and weary souls.

If you’re considering applying for the MFA program, I’d encourage you to fill out the application form today. The initial deadline is mid-May, and applications that come in after that will only be considered if there is still space available.

Cheers,

Christine