State Of Flash – The MFA Program

Glenn Shaheen
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In the MFA Program you eat a lot of cheese cubes.
In the MFA Program sometimes people get laid and sometimes people don’t get laid.
In the MFA Program a person might say congratulations to you and mean it.
In the MFA Program you meet aspiring writers with trust funds.
In the MFA Program a movie star might mention your school.
In the MFA Program a movie star mentioning your school will provide months of intense discussions not that you care.
In the MFA Program you scoff when people not in the MFA Program say they too are writers.
In the MFA Program everybody hopes to get laid in a variety of unlikely scenarios.
In the MFA Program you go to a writing conference and stay in a hotel above your means.
In the MFA Program you make a lot of close friends if you have the right kind of success.
In the MFA Program success will be a word.
In the MFA Program you learn to write a poem for a particular journal.
In the MFA Program nobody ever means congratulations.
In the MFA Program you say you have no time to write you are so busy you lucky duck.
In the MFA Program you sleep until noon and look at a lot of tumblr accounts about Komodo dragons wearing hats.
In the MFA Program you become a better writer by the standards of the MFA Program.
In the MFA Program you think about getting a second MFA.
In the MFA Program you live out PG-13 rated bourgeois fantasies.
In the MFA Program you say people should not engage with outlets ranking the MFA Program.
In the MFA Program you say people should not engage with outlets ranking the MFA Program on your blog and get a lot more hits.
In the MFA Program you set up Google alerts (hi Seth Abramson).
In the MFA Program you skip the reading by [insert Nobel laureate here] because Sleigh Bells is playing in town.
In the MFA Program you submit to hundreds of journals and subscribe to none.
In the MFA Program you state your sadness that nobody supports the writing world.
In the MFA Program you add all of your friends’ books to your Amazon wishlist.
In the MFA Program you get an MFA and maybe also get laid.

Glenn Shaheen, in addition to being editor of NANO Fiction, is the author of Predatory, forthcoming August 2011 from the University of Pittsburgh Press. He sometimes posts music videos he likes at http://glennshaheen.com.