In addition to the excellent suggestions above, some schools have writers’ “colonies” that give you a chance to do nothing but write and associate with fellow writers for a few weeks or months. You might want to consider looking into one of those and giving it a try to see whether this really is something you want to focus on.

i had a teacher a while back who had their MFA in writing. the upswing seems to be that if you’re interested in being a published author, a higher degree is a nice résumé touch, especially if you want to apply for a writing fellowship. also, for your benefit, it seems, you get to go back to school.

the downside seems to be that you have to work to stay in school— work in the sense of homework & the job that’s paying. also, grad school or not, there’s always the handful of early jobs that are, oftentimes, straight up boring. luckily, those [supposedly] go by quickly.

good luck!

A book you may like is referenced below. It is written especially for women, and has a very important point: YOU CAN REACH YOUR DREAM IN MORE THAN ONE WAY!!

1) Rather than gathering up more debt, can you start a Women Writer’s Support Group in your locality? The group called “Meetups” has a variety of Meetups of just that sort.

2) I have known of community college writing instructors who have set the bar at: if you get an article published, you get an “A” in my class. Period. You could seek a cc instructor with a strict guideline of finding an editor for your future book, based on one chapter you write & send out. That would be much cheaper, yet accomplish the same purpose.

3) You could make a plan to seek out and talk to x number of “writers” in your area, published or not, professional or not, and see what they suggest about writing. You may learn as much as in classes.

4) Read every book in the library on writing, and use the “college” money to order books to keep, on specifics of the subject.

5) Attend every writer’s conference you can get to. They’d be cheaper than college classes.

6) Subscribe to writer’s magazines & journals. Put your work in & get feedback from others.

7) Put excerpts of your work here (in Books & Authors section) & get feedback, here.

Get the idea? You can do everything writing classes in college do, without paying for college.