I Graduated! Um . . . Now What?

Well, dearest folk of the Hollow, I just finished my last assignment in my MFA program through Southern New Hampshire University.

And I’m going to be honest, I got a little teary-eyed.

I know that’s probably really dumb. Who gets so emotional over just finishing a degree? Who sits in their library, heart heavy, shocked to find that they have at last finished the thing they have been working towards for four long years?

Me, that’s who.

I’ve grown up a lot through this program. When I started—I was a completely different person, just to sum it up. This program has really been the single most transformative experiences I have ever had.

My writing has evolved so much since going back to school in 2021, but has evolved the most since I started my MFA program in 2023. Before I went back to school, I’m going to be totally honest with you, when I wrote I eternally felt like the high school kid I used to be—holed up in my room, writing stories that were fun but ultimately immature in their essence. I wanted to move onto that next level. I wanted to feel like a “grown up” writer like George R.R. Martin or Stephen King or Anne Rice, but I didn’t know how to get to that next level.

The answer, my friend, was going back to school.

I have so much more confidence moving forward with my career now than I ever thought possible. Now I understand, with the calm distance of someone who has studied a thing and been forced to dissect it for a grade, how I can take my writing to the next level and how I can better approach my career as a whole. If you’ve been my friend for a long time you remember how it used to be: I was a ball of self-depreciating anxiety, throwing so much at the wall without any of it sticking.

Now, I get it.

I get now why I felt like my writing was “immature” in the past, and I’m so happy to say that I have at last taken it to the level where I wanted it to be.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about other writing I want to do—short stories, but mostly the novels I have in mind—and I get a surge of this excited energy. I finally feel like I can do them justice. I can finally make them as I see in my head (if not better) and just thinking about that incredible prospect makes me want to cry with joy.

Writing is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. I’ve known this since I was a kid (and I mean a real little kid. I was carrying notebooks with me in fourth and fifth grade and tried binding my own very short book with cardboard and yarn in my mom’s living room when I was still in elementary school) and to see it finally beginning to manifest is the most insane thing I can think of.

I’m going to be posting here a lot more often, and that’s another thing I’m really hyped for. I love it here in the Hollow, and yet I feel like I’ve been holding myself back because what I wanted to do wasn’t “good enough.”

Well guess what, past me: It is, you are, and this is the first step into something bright and beautiful.

Anyway, I’m going to stop myself here because I literally could talk for ages about how blindingly happy I am. I love that I got to meet so many great people throughout my program who I hope I can stay in contact with now that the program has ended, and I’m glad that we all got to help each other grow in our art.

I hope you guys will stick around as I add more and more to the Hollow: posts, stories, and whatever else I think you guys might like!

See you next time!