Do you need an MFA to write a novel?

On learning how to write, degrees, the nature of story, practice, and making your way through the maze toward improvement.

When a manuscript from a writer with an MFA landed in my inbox for the first time, what I found was a beautiful tangle of ideas that hadn’t quite become a novel. We dove into coaching and created a lovely book. When the same thing happened again with other manuscripts, I began to question the MFA programs. If an MFA is supposed to confer expertise at wr…