Columbia University MFA faculty – literary surgeons
In my two short years in Columbia University’s MFA program, my professors have performed miracles.
My sentences learned to breathe and expand.
My prose slowed down, fatigued from 13 years of journalistic haste.
Inauthentic phrases and cliches have been almost completely excised.
If they slip through, an alarm goes off in my head.
Scenes, which had only paid a periodic visit to my paragraphs, are now
welcomed and embraced.
Three-dimensional characters have been given voice through dialogue -
not just stepping up to the microphone where they have a quick say.
They are now able to speak freely.
Imagery, which could never appear in newspaper writing, are now free
to populate my prose.
Above all, the voice of my soul, not one imposed by the university, but my own
God-given one, has been able to climb out of hiding, stand tall and take form.
How wonderful to hear that your writing has found its soul. To unmask that powerful voice of yours must be so freeing, and I can’t wait to hear how far it takes you.
But I must disagree that imagery can appear in newspaper writing, and does more and more. The push for narrative storytelling has allowed, if not encouraged, journalists to describe our world with all the tools we have..Check out the Washington Post’s “In an Instant, a Junkyard of Humanity,” a first-person account of the bombing of the Iraqi Parliament on April 12.
Sigh. But maybe I am young and still falling for journalism. You helped guide this passion.
Miss being your student
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