Five clues you're ready for a master's in creative writing . . .

Kidnapped, Great Expectations
Jane Eyre, Les Miserables--
been there; done that.

Thanks to my undergraduate degree in English, I'm a fairly literate person in Western Literature studies. Because of teaching English in lower high school grades and middle school for ten years, I've also read lots of good-for-you YA and many of the required classics for young adults.

I've read for pleasure (Lawrence Sanders' McNally mystery series) and also for pain (went through a box of tissues reading Cold Mountain, and it still haunts me today.)

Baby Dionysus fresh from the calf of Zeus

Reading is great for writers--a necessity--like water for fish. But it doesn't make a writer. Well, at least this writer didn't spring from the leg of Zeus, bestseller in hand. When I first started writing creatively at age 47, I knew about themes and symbolism from literature studies, but not about scenes and character arcs. I had to take baby steps when learning to write. I had to learn the hard way--by doing.

Within a year of embarking on this midlife writing venture, I published my first short story. Then several others followed. I entered a gazillion contests. I ordered at least a dozen books called "Writing Novels for Dummies," and "Everything You Need to Know to Write a Novel."

I took one-day workshops, extended online workshops in fiction and mystery writing, and attended a few conferences. I joined writers' groups--online and in person. By 2009, I had bled every possible free or low-cost resource to learn the art and craft of creative writing that I could. But I hadn't published a novel. That's when I thought that some formal study might be in order, and I enrolled in Wilkes University's Low-residency Master of Arts in Creative Writing program.

How do know when you're ready to pay big bucks to learn to write?

1. When you've filled a six-foot bookcase with 3-inch binders overflowing with handouts you got from Internet writing sites, and it's time to buy another bookcase (and more binders).
2. When you no longer derive any substantive value from your writing groups--online or otherwise. If you apply yourself to your writing, you're bound to improve. As a result, in two years, I outgrew my writing groups and needed to ply my skills in a more competitive arena to get better. I never got to be a better tennis player by challenging weaker opponents. The same holds true for one's writing.
3. When you need to belong to a serious community of writers. I met a few terrifically dedicated writers, but quickly wearied of the many amateur writers in online workshops who make all kinds of excuses for not turning in their work or reading yours (and they paid for the class).
4. When you need some kickass criticism from people who really know what they're doing because they are published authors with advanced degrees themselves, who teach and are evaluated in professional settings.
5. When your husband doesn't want to read your work, and you don't want to spend any more money paying a so-called professional editor to vet your manuscripts.

If you're considering doing advanced study in creative writing, you might want to get ahold of Lori A May's new book called The Low-Residency MFA handbook, coming out in January, to find a program that fits your needs.

For those of you who pursued a graduate writing degree, what led you to enroll?

Stop back for upcoming posts entitled "Five Clues you're NOT ready for a master's in creative writing" as well as some informal assessment of the virtues of the low-residency MA, from this graduate's perspective.