New MFA Week: Notes from A Distant Correspondent: ‘Misty Eyed’

Sangeeta Mall graduated from Pitt’s fiction program last spring, a year early and, quite amazingly, in just three semesters. From the first getting-to-know-you e-mail anyone got from Sangeeta, it was clear she was not the typical MFA student. Beyond being married, with two children, an MBA, and a successful business background, Sangeeta was earnestly dedicated to her craft in a way few of us insecure MFAs own up to. Oh, and also: Sangeeta came to Pittsburgh from Bombay, leaving behind the aforementioned children and husband for months at a time and thus putting our own respective moves (e.g., 300 miles across Pennsylvania, in my case) to shame. Despite being far from home, Sangeeta was always as hospitable to her fellow students outside of class as she was supportive in the workshop, and her perspective–whether on a story or on the essentials of what we, as writing students, were doing–was always useful as a means of reminding yourself why you were pursuing the MFA in the first place. I asked Sangeeta for some of her thoughts on the MFA experience, and from her palatial estate in Bombay, India, she generously agreed.

Hi MFAers

The three semesters that I spent at Pitt seem like a dream from which I wish I hadn’t had to awake. I’m back in Bombay now, working on my novel, which I had turned in as my final manuscript to get my degree.

It is impossible to enumerate all my experiences in this piece. I’ll probably need to write a whole book, something I intend doing sometime in the future. So here’s the A-list of things that were positive or negative for me at Pitt. Of course the former will be much longer.

The most valuable takeaway for me from my MFA was that I learnt how to write a novel, and I mean learnt. There’s an ongoing debate about the necessity of doing an MFA, since you can always write if you know how, but Pitt proved that formal inputs can contribute immensely to honing one’s talents. When I wrote the first draft of my novel, I thought it was the most perfect thing to have emerged in the twenty first century, until Fiona [Cheong, fiction instructor] and Chuck [Kinder, fiction instructor and head of Pitt's writing program] very gently pointed out the hundred things that were wrong with it. As a result I could write a very creditable second draft, and now I’ve finished a third one. The biggest advantage I had was that I was in a hurry to finish the program and return to my family, so I turned in my manuscript very early. And then pestered the professors to read it and give me their feedback.

The richest experience in my entire stint at Pitt was the personal interaction I had with each of my committee members, and I wish the writing faculty could enhance these sessions to at least twice a term instead of just once. I don’t know if there is any kind of orientation session with faculty for new students, since I joined a little late, but if there is, faculty should ask students to turn in their manuscripts early, as early as the beginning of the second year. After all, the reason why we join the program is to emerge with a manuscript of publishable quality, and for that we need time to implement the advice that the faculty offers us.

The hordes of readings throughout the term were an invaluable source of both entertainment and learning for me. Nothing even remotely approaching that is available in India. Chuck’s insistence on calling any and every visiting writer to his place to read to us was an added plus, though sometimes I wondered if the writers were there to read or to finish all the beers in Chuck’s refrigerator! But be that as it may, those will be some of my fondest memories, sitting in Chuck’s living room and talking to people just like oneself, who find themselves at the short end of the stick when it comes to being published and read.

If there’s one thing I wish had happened sooner in my stay at Pitt, it was receiving advice from the professors on getting published. Kathy George was highly encouraging, and gave a lot of good tips. Since all professors have published their works, they can just mine their own experiences and give a sense to students of where to apply, what kind of journal would look at their writing and so on. We all joined the program as much to learn the skill of writing as to get an entry into the publishing world, so this kind of advice should almost be a mandatory part of the program. As for me, I would have loved to meet a few agents during my stay there, but since hardly any of them are welcomed by the department, that remained a big blank. A small step to quenching this thirst for participating in the literary world might be for students to start their own forum, where they meet in a group and share their personal experiences regarding responses of journals to their submissions, which agents accept unsolicited manuscripts and so on. I believe such a move could give a huge impetus to Pitt students getting published.

At my first workshop, I was totally at sea about what exactly was meant by a workshop. And I was in a class with third year students for whom this was probably their fourth workshop! In addition to restricting the number of participants to a maximum of eight, I feel that at least the first workshop should consist of only new students, so that we are led into the at-times cruel process gently!

I cannot compare with other universities but I think the fiction professors at Pitt are amazingly supportive, and it was their constant encouragement that led me to believe that someday I might actually make writing into a profession. My advice to new students comes from an Indian perspective of teachers. We view them as gurus, to be respected and trusted, until they prove they are not worthy of our trust. Since I went in with this mindset, I could reap the benefit of the wisdom and knowledge of all the professors without questioning their motivation too much. This, I found, stood me in good stead. Many students believe that their work will not be appreciated by the professors. By the end of my third workshop class with Fiona, I had realized that the professors are not in the business of critiquing your work, but merely lending a helping hand in giving your raw material shape. Even if I wrote something far out and weird, they were always able to sift through the main points and show me a way to improve my work. I was able to use their expertise to understand what works and doesn’t work in my own stories and novel, and I’m immeasurably grateful to them for this help. I thank them all, and wish all students a successful career in writing.