If you want to write a novel, you’re going to have to square your big idea with a big practical problem: it’s going to take you a lot of time. And even if you’re hacking time this month with a 50,000-word, 30-day sprint (👀Chill Subs’ lovely Novel Writers Network)–life will keep coming at you with responsibilities. After November is over, for many writers, something has to give. All too often, it’s the novel project that gets abandoned.
This is where the year-long novel program shines: it can protect a novel-in-progress from the demands of real life. These programs, like all writing programs, are an investment in structure, accountability, and inspiration. But the year-long program goes a step further by becoming a legitimate source of hope for the draft, because they can give a manuscript a shot at becoming a published book. Most year-long novel programs offer 1:1 mentorship, in-depth workshopping, tight-knit cohorts, and publishing industry expertise and networking. They are led by published novelists with significant teaching experience, open to around a dozen students, and will address an entire novel manuscript–whether that’s from idea to full first draft or from first draft to querying.
(You can catch up on all the previous columns here!)
Erin Weiss is the Senior Director of Education at GrubStreet, the Boston-based literary arts center, where she designs hundreds of programs for writers each year. She holds an Ed.M. in Learning and Teaching from Harvard and, unfortunately for her own drafts but fortunately for you, spends way more time thinking about what makes for great writing education than she does actually writing.
Life won’t stop because you’ve enrolled in a program, but the commitment changes the terms of the wager. You don’t have to decide every day whether to do life or the novel, because you’ve already committed to the novel for the year, and you have to figure out how to make life work around it.
Like all things time-intensive, these are money-intensive too. Pricing depends a lot on meeting frequency and perks, but average tuition is around $5,000. If that number alone makes you immediately dissociate, consider that most programs offer scholarships, payment plans, or both. Consider the cost of an MFA. And consider the cost of hundreds of hours of teaching and prep time, thousands of pages of editing, and guest speaking from authors and publishing industry insiders. Year-long novel writing programs have a lot more in common with MFA programs than they do with accountability groups, and many of them have impressive track records of getting novels from the classroom to the bookshelf.
Keep reading:
Below the paywall, Erin shares what she's seen from years of heading up education at GrubStreet +
8 questions to ask before you apply
insider tips on what application readers are actually looking for
& a roundup of 10 year-long novel programs: price, scholarships, deadlines, publishing outcomes, drawbacks, and who each one is best for. (psst: a few of those deadlines are coming up fast!)
