Creative “Field Work”
and why it matters for your creative education
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an essay in my “Design Your Rebel MFA Degree” series where I break down what it means to create your own Rebel MFA Degree and why you would want to.
[NOTE: Your email provider may truncate this essay, be sure to click on “keep reading” to read the entire piece.]
One of my favorite parts of designing my own Rebel MFA Degree is the “field work” I have required of myself. In my book, The Rebel MFA Way: Designing Your Path to a Creative Education, I talk more in depth about how to build field work into your education experience but here is a little run down on what “field work” actually means, why it’s useful as part of your creative education and we’ll close with a case study example.
What is it?
According to Mirriam-Webster1, field work is:
: work done in the field (as by students) to gain practical experience and knowledge through firsthand observation
Even though this is a term that is currently used inside higher education institutions, I like it. I like what it suggests — that gaining practical experience and knowledge can, does, and should happen outside of the classroom.
For the purposes of the Rebel MFA Way, “field work” is any experiential learning or practical application of learning by doing.
And the beauty of doing field work for your own Rebel MFA Degree is that it can include just about anything (which we’ll get to in the case studies).
Why is it important to the Rebel MFA Way?
It’s simple — learning that is isolated to a particular classroom, online environment or textbook can only take you so far in understanding and retention of the topic.
Taking what you’re learning and putting it into action is the only way you will actually merge the knowledge and the practical application of it.
That’s where field work comes into play. And I use that word — play — intentionally, because playing is a valid tool to learn!
The biggest difference between the field work you develop for a Rebel MFA Degree and what you might encounter in an actual MFA program or other higher institution is how you adapt the field work.
For example, in a MFA program like the one I refer to in the preface of my book, the field work mainly consists of writing papers or essays on the material you’re learning, submitting your creative work as required by your particular classes, a full length manuscript, and the famous thesis or dissertation that you present to graduate.
While those are all important within the structure of the MFA program, it’s very limited. There’s no room for play. No room for experimentation. Not when your entire degree is on the line.
But that’s not the case when you design your own MFA degree.
Field Work in Your Rebel MFA Degree
In my opinion, not only is finding and completing field work for your Rebel MFA Degree more fun and accessible, but it’s also tailored to what you are hoping to get out of your creative education rather than a strict guideline or requirement.
And because it’s tailored to you, the way it looks, feels, and manifests can be wildly different person to person. And it doesn’t have to be complex.
When students ask me about what kind of field work they should be engaging in, my response is to start with the easiest entry point.
I have learned that the easiest entry point is by analyzing what’s already been done or what’s right in front of you.
Example Topic: A student takes a class on writing dialogue.
Field work example (beyond what might be included as homework in the class): Watching several different movies or television shows and analyzing how the dialogue works. What worked? What didn’t?
Field work example: Reading several books and dissecting how the dialogue was used. What does “good” dialogue look like? What examples of “bad” dialogue did you find? How about subtext? Did the dialogue have nuance or was it too “on the nose?”
Field work example: Go to a populated place and sit and observe how people talk in real life. What are people saying or NOT saying to one another? How does the tone and cadence of their speech change what they are saying? What inspiration can you take from this exercise?
Example Topic: You take a self-editing workshop
Field work example: You self-edit a piece of your own writing
Field work example: You edit a piece of writing from a friend
Field work example: While self-editing any piece of work, you document the process and come to any conclusions about what feels “easy” for you in this work and what feels “difficult.”
Now these are two off-the-cuff examples but they certainly aren’t the only versions of field work available to you. In the next section, I’ll show you multiple different examples of how I’ve used field work to design my own Rebel MFA Degree and why they were important for my creative education.
Case Studies
Tales from the Crypt Series
I took a generative writing class on horror last year that required weekly writing submissions. While that alone could have been considered “field work,” I took it a step further to add another layer of the education and to give my community members an inside look at what I was going through as both a student and a writer. I called it “The Tales from the Crypt.” [really original, I know.]
For each submission I wrote and submitted to that workshop, I wrote a “debrief” to go along with it for my members. I broke down what the main “purpose” of the piece was supposed to be (according to the workshop facilitator and what we were learning). I added what my thoughts/intentions were while writing the piece (and what lessons I was trying to apply to the piece) and finally, a reaction/feedback section from my instructor and classmates.
This breakdown allowed me to show my members (and myself) how I was attempting to take what I was learning from the class and practically apply it to my work. Now, whether I succeeded or failed is a different story!
Here’s an example of a debrief I did during that class:
Submission #3: Embers and Bones
Instructions/Prompts
When I looked at the syllabus for the class, I knew this week’s assignment was going to be my favorite one to do and it was also going to be the hardest one for me for the exact same reason. The instructions/prompt for this week was to write from the monster or villain’s POV. Well, if you know me, then you know that this is often my starting place in my stories. I’m more likely to start a story from the POV of a villain or monster than a hero/heroine. I find them infinitely more fascinating and exciting to write about and write from.
My intention/thought process going into it
So, knowing that the monster/villain POV is where I usually start, I knew that I would have a hard time finding a character that I haven’t already experimented with or tried to write from. I came up with A LOT of ideas. A lot. But none of them seemed to stick.
Then, I remembered a story that I had started a year ago with a character that wasn’t exactly a villain but not a heroine either. She was still kind of muddy in my mind but I knew enough about her and she intrigued me. So I thought hmm, let’s see what she has in store for me.
Then I sat and meditated with her and I saw flashes of:
Scenes from the movie Firestarter (the old Drew Barrymore version)
Scenes from Bones and All (the new movie)
A girl standing over a fire pit, her face lit up by the firelight
The Submission
Here, I gave them the whole story to read but I’m not including it here because it’s too long for this essay!
The Reaction/Thoughts
On the one hand — winner, winner, chicken dinner! I loved writing this piece! I loved writing Kali. She felt like another one of my strong female characters that slipped right into my catalogue of badass leads. So I was really happy to see the strong reaction my classmates had to her. Even the instructor liked her… with some caveats.
In his written feedback, he was nicer but during class, he got very angry with me. And after I got over the initial shock of embarrassment and a bit of shame, I understood his reasoning. The way I wrote Kali, in this version anyway, she isn’t a villain. She’s an anti-hero. And I get that now. The differences are subtle, but when it comes to the horror genre, they actually are a big deal. And this is another reason why continuing to take classes and improve our craft and stretch our writing muscles is so damn important… I thought I “knew” the rules of the genre. Clearly, I did not.
But now I do. You can bet your ass I learned that one the hard way.
And he wasn’t wrong to put me in my place to learn it. Because as “good” as the scene might have been, it didn’t fulfill what the assignment truly asked of me. To write it from the POV of a villain.
The other issues he took with the piece are less genre related and more overall writing-craft related and while it stung to hear, again, he wasn’t wrong. Things like character motivation and the time-jumping. Basically, what’s the point? What does Kali want in the piece? What is her obstacle? Those aren’t present and they need to be regardless of which genre it belongs it.
Sigh. Another week. Another set of lessons learned.
30 Day Card Story Challenge
This field work was SO. MUCH. FUN.
I took a workshop on how to use tarot and oracle cards to write a story. The assignment (which I considered field work) was simply to “write a story using tarot and oracle cards.” It was very loose and up to us to decide how we wanted to apply the principles we learned.
I ended up doing this assignment in the form of a “challenge” on Instagram and invited others to join in. Not only would this help with accountability, but it also meant I could engage with other card readers and/or writers who were interested in how I was using the cards for creativity.
I set some self-imposed guidelines which were:
The daily prompts were from @lionharts + #onceuponachallenge
I pulled a card and posted it along with the prompt and few lines every day on my Instagram account (follow me here) but linked to the full piece.
This was a multi-layered challenge for me as I was limiting myself to create stories from prompts presented by lionharts, and it was only to be lightly edited before putting it out there. This was vulnerable and a challenge for me to not aim for perfection.
And the structure I chose to present each part of the story was similar to the above case study. Here is an example of the first day of the challenge:
The Prompt
Once upon a Card Challenge...there was a Card Reader who was guided to take a journey of…
The Card Pulled
The Story
Here’s where I presented the actual story [it’s too long for this essay!]
Behind-the-Scenes Comments
You guys. This one seriously wrote itself. I think my high energy vibes really brought the beginning of this story to life for me. I thought I'd have to wait a few cards in to get a feel for my fictional card reader but she practically leapt off the page. This was so much fun! (Note to self: remind myself that I said this when I'm on the struggle bus and bitching about how hard this was).
Source Material
Prompt from Mr. Lions Instagram
Card and inline description
As you can tell, this field work was completely tailored to what I wanted to get out of the experience. I wanted to infuse the writing with the mystical and spiritual elements I was learning about, I wanted to find out just how creative I could be using cards as the main inspiration and I wanted to share with others what all the pieces looked like when I put them together.
In addition to being fun, several people followed along, wrote their own stories and then joined my community as members.
Music as Muse
One of the workshops I built and submitted to a conference was based around the ideas that not only is music a muse for writers, but songs themselves are mini stories. In the workshop, we break down the lyrics of several popular songs to find the “storyline” and the use of other literary devices like sensory detail, character, rhythm, structure, etc.
Then, part of their “field work” was to take a song they loved, extract the lyrics and write a completely new flash story around an aspect of the song.
This was such a fun experience that I even wrote my own story to use as an example.
The song I broke down was:
The flash story I wrote based on that song is again too long to post here, but you can find it at the below link. [Disclaimer: This piece is NSFW and very raw. No editing or revision.]
These are only three of the many examples of what “field work” can look like as you design your own Rebel MFA Degree. The possibilities really are endless and can be shaped and molded to fit what you’re looking for in your creative education. I tell my students that any time they are engaging with writing in a way that pulls in the tools they’ve learned — it counts as “field work” and I offer you that same invitation, today.
It’s really quite simple and not as complicated or rigid as it may seem in a traditional program:
Create what you want to create while applying lessons learned.
That’s it. That’s all you really need.
If you want to see the full breakdowns of my Tales from the Crypt and 30 Day Card Story Challenge, it’s available to my Rebel MFA Sanctuary members as part of their membership. You can learn more about the Sanctuary here:
And you can join us by signing up for the Sanctuary at the Founders Level.
“Fieldwork.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fieldwork. Accessed 10 Apr. 2024.
The song!!! And your story based on it!!! OMFG, they hit HARD!!! Bravissima 👏🏼👏🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼