Being a graduate student in a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) program gives you the benefit of being in an academic setting focused on subject matter that you actually care about, while taking advantage of a university social environment. After three-hour seminar classes, you and your classmates would invariably find yourselves in someone’s dorm room, drinking jug wine and smoking cigarettes, discussing writing, authors, or your own literary endeavors. Full time grad students enjoy an existence of erudite intellectual and philosophical pursuit.

For some of us, we had to manage a full time job while attending classes’ part time. In my entry class, I was the only one of eight students accepted into the program that year. Complicating matters was trying to manage a serious relationship with my significant other simultaneously. Balancing those two worlds was incredibly difficult, and ended up in arguments between us more often than not.

And that’s what this story focuses on; a struggling wanna-be writer that is trying to find himself both as a person as well as a writer. One very interesting thing of MFA programs is the type of people you find as your classmates and peers: different backgrounds, different talent levels, and different genres, all trying to support one another while sizing each other up at the same time. They can be very supportive; they can be very destructive.

Writers are kindred spirits in this way. In an MFA program, most are struggling to find their “writing voice,” and the discipline of writing every day and being scrutinized can be exhausting.  Writing is rewriting, or so the mantra goes. Writing is endlessly critiqued. Good writing is hated; bad writing heralded.

Alliances are formed between students in even the smallest of classes. Not surprisingly, working closely with people also tends to form attractions between them. Causal hook-ups and dating are not uncommon; breakups and drama, even more so. And perhaps the most titillating is the controversy that reveals itself when people open up to someone else.

This story focuses on the latter. Because in the end, people’s experiences are stranger than any fiction that can be written.

And that’s the truth.

Taken from Why People Do What They Do by Emilio Iaseillo

Published by Deer Hawk Publishing www.deerhawkpublications.com

Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency https://loiaconoliteraryagency.com/authors/emilio-iasiello/