Midland’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Enables Students to Make Their Dreams Come True

Midland Lutheran College has opened enrollment for its new online Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. This exciting new step has led one alumnus to reflect upon her experience at Midland and its contribution to the attainment of her lifelong dream of becoming a writer.

While an English major at Midland will study literature, a creative writing major at Midland will study how to write literature. Margaret Cowan McGrath studied literature, graduating from Midland with a BA in English. Her dream, however, was to write romance novels -- a dream that began for her at around the age of 12.

Both reading and writing fiction invites one to participate in a fictive dream. In reading fiction, one gives oneself to the dream of the writer. The writer, however, yields to the fictive dream in a different way, described by John Gardner in On Becoming a Novelist:

In the writing state -- the state of inspiration -- the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols (p. 120).

Now working on her fourth romance novel, McGrath describes her novels' appeal to readers:  "When you read genre fiction, there are certain expectations that you know will be met. The rest of the book is the willingness to be taken on a ride." McGrath compares this tension between the known and unknown to knitting. "The repetitive hand action with knitting frees up your mind at a different level."

Long before Midland's inception of its Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, McGrath graduated from Midland with a degree in English, History and Secondary Education in 1993. She then worked in computer programming and human resources.

McGrath came closer to writing romance novels in graduate school at Columbia University in New York City, where she wrote a master's thesis on the evolution of romance novels from 1981 to 2001. In this thesis, she explained that romance novels reveal what women want in men. "In the recent romance novels," she explained, "men are very different. They are making active compromises."

When McGrath and her husband, Mark, moved from N.Y. to Neb., the change in location and the addition of a baby led to a shift in what she wanted to do. At this point, she took up writing. 

McGrath took an online writing class with romance novelist Leigh Michaels, which led McGrath to writing, in her own words, "a bad book, and then another bad book but a little better." The publisher who read the second book told her the heroine was not strong enough.
So McGrath tried again. While this process may seem tedious to a non-writer, McGrath enjoyed it regardless of the outcome. "I understood things as I wrote, and I was able to apply it to the next book," she remarked.

For McGrath, characters evolve through the process of writing the book. For her fourth novel, writing the hero's part was easier than the heroine's. "The reader needs to fall in love with him [the hero], so all I had to do was fall in love with the character I created," she explained.

As she explores each major character, she questions the possibilities for the character. Is the heroine stoic or platonic? The answer may not be clear, but it comes when the writer puts the cloak of stoicism on the character and moves the character in stoic action.

McGrath's third novel is still with a publisher. While she waits for a response she is in the throes of her fourth novel, one that she realizes is working, in part, because the heroine is stronger. Also, she added, "The world that I created started to come true more clearly."

In John Gardner's terms, McGrath's fictive dream has sprung fully alive.

Midland Lutheran College now offers an online Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Learn about this online opportunity and more by visiting Midland on the Web.