Evaluation of Social Media sources

In my past posts I have evaluated both general and scholarly sources concerning the debate on obtaining a Creative Writing MFA, and in this post I will be analyzing social media sources based on this topic.

First source

Durand, Chloe. "Screenshot of Elizabeth McCraken's Tweet." September 2013 via Twitter.

The first source that I chose to analyze was posted on Twitter by a woman named Elizabeth McCraken. After reading more about her on her website, I discovered that she was the author of five books and has taught creative writing at various universities, therefore deeming her a pretty credible source based on her experience and accolades. Searching through Storify she actually had several tweets posted about applying for a Creative Writing MFA but this one stuck out to me because it directly contradicted previous sources I have analyzed. A lot of them said that you needed to be young in order to excel at a Creative Writing MFA but McCraken disagrees by saying that actually being older allows you to be more experienced at life and therefore you will have more to share. Even on Twitter, she has a very large following - over 13,000 people. She does seem to tweet a lot along the lines of literature and creative writing. This tweet is from two years ago but McCraken stills seems a pretty avid Creative Writing fan with over 40,000 tweets, with still more to go.

Second source

Durand, Chloe. "Screenshot of The Pros and Cons of Getting a Creative Writing MFA."1/3/14 via Writer's Digest.

This was a surprisingly refreshing read. The author of this article, Chuck Sambuchino, is an editor for Writer's Digest and has published three books. His Twitter account was even named by Forbes as one of the top influencers in publishing. Sambuchino does not dismiss the MFA; instead, he simply gives both sides. He himself did obtain an MFA which he declared to help him a lot in his writing. However, he is also able to list several practical cons of obtaining the degree, such as cost and no guarantee of literary success. He does seem to be related to the topic and seems to be able to be an authority figure on the subject based on his experience, and he does have a large network of followers on Twitter. He has been tweeting for some time about creative writing and publishing. His twitter is still updated regularly. This article is more of an opinion piece but does cite an author, Carla Norton, who achieved success after obtaining a Creative Writing MFA from Goddard College.