A Creative Writing Phd is academic exercise.
And now that I’ve been external examiner for around ten of them, I see the whole elaborate process as mostly a preparation for the final oral exam.
If you don’t want to go through a long, intellectually and psychically taxing academic exercise — four or five years of exam prep — you shouldn’t begin a Creative Writing PhD.
The upside of this, if you think it is the right thing, is that you have four or five years of concentrated time examining — we can’t get away from that word — your own writing in the context of whatever it is you’ve chosen as your research question, your essay title. And you get to do this, hopefully, with the engaged and wholehearted support and help of two supervisors (one for your Creative work, one for your Critical). They will guide you in thinking through what exactly it is you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what wider meaning that might or might not have.
A PhD should, in most definitions, be ‘a contribution to knowledge’. It will certainly be a contribution to your self-knowledge.
Within a secular society, a PhD is about the most exacting self-examination a person can go through. You’ll probably, at points, end up quite depressed and demoralised. You’ll no longer be bullshitting. Because you’ll be asking yourself deep and perplexing questions about your value, your meaning, your justifications.
Not unlike writing a novel, you might say.
Yes, but a novel that has to carry along with it the burden of a second book — perhaps 30,000 or 40,000 words of critical writing that’s at PhD level.
You’re not only writing a book, you’re writing a book about a book. A book about your own book. A book, perhaps, about your writing of your own book.
Again, if this doesn’t sound appealing, then save yourself the trouble.
Who would ever want to do this?
In my experience, most prospective Creative Writing PhD candidates are keen to continue their studies after completing an MA or an MFA. They’ve enjoyed being in a university environment. They’ve seen their writing improve, and their ability to analyse what they and other writers do. They want to continue in that direction.
Here are three common reasons why people want to take a CW PhD —
They hope to secure funding to help buy time to complete a novel
They wish to complete a longer project with a sympathetic mentor
They feel they need a professional qualification to get an academic job
Of these, only the last is close to realistic.
Let’s take them one by one.
It’s not that no CW PhD students get funding. However, when judging panels are deciding who should get their limited bursaries and fellowships, they incline towards PhD proposals that can demonstrate a clear public benefit. Impact. For example, creating an online digital archive of unpublished materials by a socially excluded group — and putting on an exhibition to help launch this. Sending in a proposal to a Doctoral Training Partnership that essentially says, ‘I’d like to write this novel, because I think it’ll be really great, and interesting, and people will really enjoy reading it’ — that’s very rarely going to compete.
You are more likely to secure money to help you write your novel directly from an arts funding body such as Arts Council England, or its equivalent where you are.
As for professional mentorship, that’s available outside the university system. If what you want most of all is intense focussed feedback, month by month, chapter by chapter, on a work of fiction, I believe you’d be better off either paying a professional author or editor to mentor you.
Either that or, perhaps the best thing of all, joining or setting up a committed, passionate writers’ workshop group.
It might look as if establishing this would be a lot of effort, but it would be a lot of effort instead of writing 30,000 words of critical prose that probably isn’t going to get published, and will inevitably pull a huge amount of your energy and attention away from the important thing — your novel.
Lastly, there’s taking a PhD for the doctorate itself. There is good justification for this. Some university departments will include a PhD in their requirements for appointment to higher level academic posts. They may even want their Associate Lecturers to be so qualified. However, for Creative Writing — which usually exists within an English or Humanities or Creative Arts department — there’s a recognition that publication record, and public profile, and teaching and administrative experience, is as important as a PhD. Probably more so.
I don’t have a PhD.
How come I get to hand out doctorates? Or tell candidates they have to rewrite their whole thesis?
Because I’m an academic, with a teaching post within the UK university system, and because PhD supervisors think I’ll do a good job as external examiner.
But beyond that, because I’ve written the kind of books I have — including some literary criticism — and I’m seen by fellow academics as a writer who understands enough about, say, Jacques Lacan or Mikhail Bakhtin to be able to participate in the strange, exacting, thrilling, privileged conversation that is a PhD viva.
There’s a lot more to say, about the difference between creative writing and PhD writing, but I’ll leave that for tomorrow.
Have you ever told a PhD candidate to rewrite their whole thesis? Asking for the sake of my mental health...
This is SO accurate - thank you Toby! I've done a CW PhD, examined two, and helped with dozens, and I'm definitely adding this link to my Itch of Writing posts about PhDs, because it puts things so clearly. I'll look forward to tomorrow's post.