TJ's Question on College
TJ writes: I have a question for you, sir, that isn't really related to this blog post. I'm kind of at the point in my educational career where I really need to pick what I'm going to be doing with whatever education I receive. Being an author, or going for an English degree is one of the many choices I've been pondering. What I really want to know is how you ended up with your degrees in sciences, and then progressed into being an author? I'm sure that they have an effect on your writing, but I was just wondering how so?
I ended up having advanced to my candidacy for a PhD in science like most people in this world end up doing anything—just wandering around, not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but trying to make the best of things (what Thoreau would call leading “lives of quite desperation").
I started writing by reading a lousy book and declaring “How hard could this be?” and then tried my hand at it. I was blindsided. I’d taken a few literature classes in college but had never seriously entertained the notion of writing until I actually did it for myself. The moment I got my writing to the point where it read like a real book...well, I was hooked. I left the old life behind and started a new one.
Yes, I use my science background to help write the technical parts of my science fiction, and certainly I have a love for science that few do, but the net result of my long and expensive college education was that it in no way prepared me to be a writer.
Many writers just go off and learn how to write on their own, taking with them much, some, or to no extent what they studied in college.
Examples: Michael Crichton (anthropologist and MD); John Grisham (accountant and lawyer); Terry Brooks (lawyer); Stephen King (high school English teacher) ; Nora Roberts (legal secretary and homemaker).
So my advice to you is this: If you have the opportunity to go to college, then by all means, go! It may or may not help your writing, but you will learn about something that you’re interested in, and hopefully get a decent paying job afterwards.
(I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that most would-be writers do not end up like Crichton, Grisham, Brooks, King or Roberts!)
If you want to write—then write. Take classes or teach yourself.
The two activities (college and writing) are not mutually exclusive.
Good luck!
I ended up having advanced to my candidacy for a PhD in science like most people in this world end up doing anything—just wandering around, not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but trying to make the best of things (what Thoreau would call leading “lives of quite desperation").
I started writing by reading a lousy book and declaring “How hard could this be?” and then tried my hand at it. I was blindsided. I’d taken a few literature classes in college but had never seriously entertained the notion of writing until I actually did it for myself. The moment I got my writing to the point where it read like a real book...well, I was hooked. I left the old life behind and started a new one.
Yes, I use my science background to help write the technical parts of my science fiction, and certainly I have a love for science that few do, but the net result of my long and expensive college education was that it in no way prepared me to be a writer.
Many writers just go off and learn how to write on their own, taking with them much, some, or to no extent what they studied in college.
Examples: Michael Crichton (anthropologist and MD); John Grisham (accountant and lawyer); Terry Brooks (lawyer); Stephen King (high school English teacher) ; Nora Roberts (legal secretary and homemaker).
So my advice to you is this: If you have the opportunity to go to college, then by all means, go! It may or may not help your writing, but you will learn about something that you’re interested in, and hopefully get a decent paying job afterwards.
(I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that most would-be writers do not end up like Crichton, Grisham, Brooks, King or Roberts!)
If you want to write—then write. Take classes or teach yourself.
The two activities (college and writing) are not mutually exclusive.
Good luck!
posted by Eric Nylund at 5:53 AM
8 Comments:
Very glad to see this post. It's a very, VERY good question. I cannot fathom the potential that has been lost because of the vast number of people "just going to college and getting a degree in SOMETHING because my parents and everyone else says that it's a good idea".
Horrible. Just really horrible.
I know so many people here at the University of Georgia like that. I am very thankful that I was given the opportunity to stop and think, defy my parents' good intentions a short while, and get my head where it needed to be. If I hadn't done that, I can honestly say with zero doubt that this would have been a tremendous and expensive waste of my time. The value of degrees gets smaller and smaller as time goes forward, because of how many more people each generation are getting them -- so much smarter to make sure that you're going in the right direction before you go blow tens of thousands of dollars on a random one.
Intressting...,when i read your novels it makes me feel kinda stupid because you use alot of technical explenations that makes it kinda hard to follow for someone like me(meaning not speaking english as my first language). although it gives the text more... "life".
Got another question: when you write do you listen to music? or do you find it a distraction? and if you do listen, what kind is the best?
oh, and please excuse my spelling, im trying my best...
When my grandmother heard that I was interested in writing, she told me to go to a university. Why? "Because you write what you know. If you go to the university, you will learn everything, and you can write about everything."
Sounded good to me, and still does.
Knowledge is power. Then again, you can e-search just about anything these days, but there's nothing like writing about something that you specialize in. It could be your hobby, you curriculum, or even your everyday job.
To write about something you know, or include something you know in a major portion of your writing, makes it so much easier. I'm sure Eric knows this.
And planning your approach to a writ much like Eric has commented about in the past certainly levels the playing field a bit for yourself. That's my $0.02.
To Eric: If asked by Bungie, would you do a novelization of Halo3, or another canonical off-story such as TFoR or GoO? I'm sure I speak for a lot of fans when I say it would be awesome if you did.
Wow, I wasn't even expecting such a great answer to my questions, Thank you, thank you very much. I am actually in college right now, freshman year. I have always been interested in writing but at the moment I am headed down a dual major, one half Classicist and the other currently undecided and hoping for graduate school afterwards.
So thank you very much for your wonderful answer, it was perfect.
Just to clarify: I’m not knocking college. Statistically people who graduate with a college degree earn much more than those who do not (being a poor, hungry writer is not glamorous or “character-building”; trust me on this).
I am knocking some college systems where you pick a major and you’re set on a specialized track at the age of eighteen. If I had to do over again, I would have gone to college, but I would have taken a more diverse selection of courses...and maybe found out I wanted to write ten years sooner!
TJ- glad to hear you’re going for a dual major!
R104d, EMF -- I’ll get to your questions later. I’m running late today.
I Just thought this was a great place to share some advice that has worked for me. Maybe it will help somebody here (hopefully)...
If it's just a matter of finding what you want to write about, I think the best place to start is in something you like--maybe a hobby of yours. While it may not be on par with a science-fiction epic masterpiece and you find yourself doubtful, it's really just for fun and experimentation, and you do have to start somewhere. For me, it was sports cars and my love for their design and going fast.
In my senior year of high school, my class was challenged by my English teacher to create a 250-word _sentence_. It couldn't be anythng more than a single sentence, 250 words long, with the only period being at the two-hundred fiftieth word. It was hard, but in this exercise you will learn the _mechanics_ of writing to great extent and detail. It really does hone your writing abilities, as it forces you to use many tools of writing, such as colons, semicolons, dashes, parenthases, and so on. The exrecise _forces_ you to create new ways of rambling on about something you like without stopping the flow. If you can master this exercise, you can surely be on your way to mastering all mechanics of any writing feat.
Like I said, it helped me a lot and maybe it will help you. In fact, out of all literary classes I've ever had (high school & college), this exercise in my senior year of high school was by far the most beneficial. I still remember her name. I would've been worse off if I hand't have had her class and didn't take the challenge. And to add, I never even had an interest in writing until I was done with this very exercise that took no more than fifteen minutes. I realized then how simple writing could be. And now with the power of the internet, you can become a quasi subject matter expert on many things out there.
But like most people would tell you, I would say go for the college experience. It's worth it if you put in the time and work. And if you're already in....stay in. Try to major in something you like. It'll make the rest of your life that much easier.
I think one of the greatest gifts we have in this world (and one of the greatest freedoms of this country) is our ability to educate ourselves. The trick (to me, anyway) is to not limit yourself in what you learn/how you learn it/how you use it. College has many benefits, but ultimately it's will and ambition that make you get ahead or not (undoubtedly even more so in the wide world of writing). Of course, I'm reading Ibsen at the moment (carefully out of a 1930-ish printed hardbound book--a peccadillo of mine) and a lot of that centers around breaking out of the mold and allowing yourself freedom of thought so that's where my own thoughts are lying at the moment.
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