Daniela: Thanks for the kind words. I agree that age is an issue. While many PhD students are “older,” I still feel that I am behind somehow. I feel I should have a novel published and a PhD by now. I know this attitude doesn’t help, but I think this is at the back of my mind too.

It’s true about the dark side of the US PhD programs too — the slave labor. They also do course work too, whereas here we are pretty much on our own. I do worry a bit about how a British PhD is perceived in the US, given how different the two systems are.

I think having a PhD in creative writing will help in the teaching market though, if one wants a full-time academic post in a good department. I was told yesterday that the vast majority of those applying for CW positions want to teach part-time and seem to be interested in teaching as a way to support their writing, not really because they have a burning desire to teach. Having a PhD would give me a bit more credibility that I am truly interested in academia. It might also help if I publish a book but it’s not a smashing success.

If I do publish my book and could make money from it, then I may not be interested in pursuing a teaching career, but realistically the odds of that happening aren’t good. I could write a successful book and still make no money from it. Regardless, I will be proud to have a PhD even if I don’t use it to get a job. It’s worth it to me for its own sake. But I do feel a tremendous amount of anxiety now and pressure to write a good book and get it published. While I was excited to do a PhD in creative writing because it gives me the time and space to write, the flip side is that I feel more pressure to create a commercial product. It’s hard ot reconcile those two things.

The bar that one has to get over as a creative writer is so much higher. You could publish short fiction, but not every novelist is a short story writer. And placing a short story in a good publications is WAY harder than putting an academic piece in a good journal. Since students do care about the publication history of their teachers when they’re taking creative writing courses (whereas they really don’t care at all about academic books, scholarly monographs) things truly get very tricky.

So, whereas the degree brings benefits for those on the lit track, on the writing, not so much. You have to publish, and if you do, the degree become immaterial anyway…

Almost no good american english departments would permit a creative writing phd for this reason. But, in general, the awareness of the job issue isn’t as high here in the UK. People do seem to think of the degree as something one might do without seeking academic work, whereas that notion has all but disappeared in the US. (It also matters, in line with your comments, that in general good US programs pay their PhD students, whereas here, especially with international students, it’s a money maker… The dark flip side of the US is that schools often keep PhD programs in place to use as a cheap teaching pool to staff comp courses, work their students to death, and the like, with little prospect of a job…)

If I were in your shoes, maybe I’d try to put out some short fiction, if that’s at all possible. Are there sections of the novel that could be extracted? I think that would give you some sort of publication record to trade on, even if it’s still tough…