MFA Application Survival (a selection)

Music is a thing that sings into our skin. It rings in our minds like a bell. Like Pavlov—the way a song becomes an emotion, a character, a smell, a beloved. A playlist can become an altar every time you slip on a pair of headphones. There's a kind of power there, the way a song can become something else.

Applying for an MFA is not a simple thing. It is a force of willpower. It is an Olympian battle. It is Heracles, coming face-to-face with something savage and red. But you can survive—you will survive. So let's descend, dear Dante, and let these songs guide you through those burning circles.

1. "La Vie en Rose" by Daniela Andrade

First, you must make the decision to apply for an MFA program. This part begins as an andante, though you might not know it yet. It feels forte vivace; it feels color, and noise, and big, banging brightness. How honey oak the workshop table will be in the September sunlight, your Moleskine journal creased like a holy book, your handwriting illuminated. It's late January, and your applications are due in the fall. But the key is shifting, now, to 6/8 time. Save your dream sweetness. You will need it later, when the tarantella comes.

2. "The Ruse and the Caper" by Coyote Theory

It's February, and you are writing your portfolio. Each word feels like a kiss, a newness, a love at first sight over a crowded subway car—have you ever written something so perfect, so complete? So gentle?  This process is a love affair, and it cannot be rushed.

3. "Wolves (You've Got Me)" by Dreamer

This is spring, the season of ambition. Now it it is still a time for dreaming—for flipping through school websites, for looking up the authors in the literary journals you read to see where they got their MFA, for poking through chat forums. Some schools you'll find alright. Some schools you would never apply to in a million years, even if they paid you. Others make you want to howl at the moon, and put on your wolf skin to join them.

4. "... Ready for It?" by Taylor Swift

Studying for the GRE is a nightmare of absent light and tissue boxes stacking in your recycle bin. The best time to begin was yesterday—what is to give light must endure the burning. But to burn, there must be kindling, and you don't want to run short in late November when all the cold deadlines begin to collide at once. Please just try to recall that no one will string you up by your toes if you don't get the top scores in the Quantitative section.

5. "Where We Went Wrong" by the Hush Sound

Now, my dears, it is August, the month of the metronome. August ticks and ticks and ticks, and nothing will stop it from ticking away until the deadlines come due. This is the ground you tilled in February, ready for seed. It is time to edit all your lovely words—but, of course, they don't look so lovely under the hard August sun. Are those line breaks in your poem actually working, or is that the sleep deprivation talking? Is it too late to begin work on something else? (Hint: yes, it is). How did it all go so wrong, and why is there so much to fix? It's time to begin editing all those words you put together back in the winter. Remember, like all plants, you will need sunlight and a few hours of rest.

6. "Rasputin" by Boney M.

Sometimes, you will find your fixes brilliant. And sometimes, they will be just a bit silly. Sometimes, things fall together as neatly as playing cards into a bridge—and the only thing you can do is put on a silly song and do bizarre dances all around your living room.

7. "What You Know" by the Two Door Cinema Club

These poems, these plays, these essays, these stories—you can make them something beautiful. You know you are capable of it, you know it's living somewhere deep inside you amongst the forest foxes in your belly. A flower bed of hyacinths and a tree with inked pages for leaves. You are growing these words, and they turn their faces to you like sunflowers. Don't be afraid to ask your writer friends for help. Landscaping is a two-person plus job, especially when you've decided to plant the laburnum trees everywhere.

8. "Lavender Blood" by Fox Academy

I heard you like editing. So I left some suggested edits on your edited draft, so you could edit some more. I hope that's okay.

9. "Still Sane" by Lorde

In late October of my application cycle, I fell down a set of rain-slick stairs and landed on my right wrist. Nothing broke, but the joint swelled with pain every time I tried to move. I was wrapped in the gauze of a revision I couldn't tear my way out of, and I thought there was no time left. But, after all, that day I couldn't write. Instead, I went the park to watch the leaves change, to get coffee and an eclair in a part of town I hadn't been to since July. I spent hours circling a lake and watching people. I met my boyfriend for dinner, and it was the first time we'd seen each other awake—really awake—since February. I came home drifting, rested, ready like the trees to begin with new foliage.

10. "Wishing Well" by the Airborne Toxic Event

Letters of recommendation are a leap of faith—the trust you are putting in this mostly-stranger to say the right things that the right people will read between the right lines, and decide that you, above all the others just as wanting and weary as you, are the most deserving. It is best to approach professors early. Like any other being of the forest, they may startle if rushed. Be polite, and come bearing all your gratitude for their blessing.

11. "Lines" by Theodora

Hello again. It's me, the Edit Monster. I whisper in your ear in the middle of night and send you flying out of bed to change your entire narrative structure at five in the morning. Let's tango.

12. "You" by The Pretty Reckless

There's a little voice that lives in the back of your head. The one that says, I can't do this. The one that says, I am not good enough for this, and who did I think I was, trying to be a writer anyway? I have some bad news, love. This voice is never going away. The trouble is, you need it too—the little fear and the little voice. Sometimes fear makes us stronger. Sometimes fear wakes us at 6 am to restructure that last scene and sob at our own endings before we get ready for class. Sometimes fear forces us to stay at the writing desk until all that seems lost becomes suddenly, inexplicably found. The trick is to be like iron. To let the voice burn, but never consume.

13. "The Story of My Life" by Astronauatlis

And here we reach the personal statement, the diversity statement, the academic statement of purpose. There's so much to tell and there's not enough to tell. Others have spoken to this so much better than I. Keep in mind the laws of narrative—show them how writing tugs into every part of your life. You don't have to tell them, if you do it correctly. They will see your want-need-joy in every line.

14. "Divine Intervention" by Taking Back Sunday

There are garbage bags of energy drink cans in the foyer. The stacks of reference books around you will bluster into the Tower of Babylon if you try to escape your desk at the wrong angle. The fall has crisped and kindled around you, and it is winter now. There is nothing but you and the words, and the words are flawed, and contradictory, and perfect. And you have done it. And you have never loved something so much that you've also hated so sweetly. It's been bloody, and horrible, and now it's done.

15. "Pressure" by Company of Thieves

And now it comes together—the months of effort, the transcripts, the test scores, the words you wore thin rubbing them between your fingers. This is the last push. Keep it together. The pressure is building, but you are stronger than you know.

16. "This Old King" by Why

You brilliant thing, you have done it! Hang your want cloud in the atmosphere. All there is to do now is wait. And that may be the longest, hardest part of all.