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If I’m Not Good, Let Me Get Good: Choosing the MFA
Manage episode 508202770 series 2948123
After a painful experience at a writer’s conference, I stopped writing for a whole year. Doubt crept in, and I convinced myself maybe I just wasn’t cut out to write fiction. But the thing about silencing something you love? It never really leaves you. It nags. It whispers. It refuses to let you go.
In this episode of Have a Cup of Johanny, I share how that season of doubt led me to ask new questions: What about me? What if I’m not good? How can I get better? With the Army Sergeants Major Academy on the horizon and COVID shutting down in-person programs, I chose to nourish myself in a way I never had before—by enrolling in a Creative Writing MFA at National University.
It was the single best decision I made in higher education, and it gave me the foundation I needed to finally bring my stories to life.
✨ Be one of the first to read my debut novel The Ordinary Bruja! Advanced Reader Copies are available now:
📧 Email me: [email protected]
📱 TikTok: @acupofjo_hanny | @thebookbruja
📸 Instagram: @haveacupofjohanny
If today’s episode hit you in the chest the way it hit me, don’t just walk away—walk toward something that reflects you.
Subscribe to the podcast, hit that YouTube channel for the behind-the-scenes, and if you’re ready to read a story about what it really means to come home to yourself—
👉🏽 Preorder The Ordinary Bruja.
https://haveacupofjohanny.com/product/the-ordinary-bruja-book-one-of-las-cerradoras-series-j-e-ortega/
It’s about a Dominican-American bruja who’s been running from herself her whole life until ancestral magic, generational wounds, and a haunted-ass hill force her to face the truth.
If you’ve ever felt “too much,” “not enough,” or like you don’t fit anywhere, you’re exactly who this story was written for.
🎙️ Subscribe.
📺 Follow on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2SRDePbyy8M85Wbf25VUCg
📚 Preorder The Ordinary Bruja. https://haveacupofjohanny.com/product/the-ordinary-bruja-book-one-of-las-cerradoras-series-j-e-ortega/
Because becoming who you are is the bravest kind of magic.
Chapters
1. Welcome to Have a Cup of Joannie (00:00:00)
2. The Writer's Conference That Broke Me (00:01:13)
3. What About Me? Finding My Learning Style (00:04:02)
4. Three Things Collided: The Turning Point (00:12:09)
5. Failure As a Comma, Not a Period (00:16:10)
6. The Ordinary Bruja: My Adult Debut Novel (00:21:59)
168 episodes
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