Degree or Writing classes only?

[Deleted member 2173]

Hello Everyone,

I would like some opinions on a challenge I am facing.

I have not completed a degree program, but I did begin an online program for a bachelors in English with a focus on Creative Writing. I started this journey as an attempt to expose myself to ideas, concepts, and points of reference that I may not have had the opportunity to experience otherwise. I also hoped to add depth and substance to my writing through the program and build better writing habits with the required classwork.

Prior to this, I have been an avid reader of books on writing. I feel that I have learned a great deal from them, and continue to re-read my favorites.

My challenge is this; I find the pursuit of the degree is in fact driving me away from my writing. I dread every assignment and my patience for the requirements for the degree is wearing thin. The degree will have zero impact on my day job, and is purely for my hopes of becoming a better storyteller.

My question is, should I shift my focus to non-accredited writing classes and workshops that are targeted towards my goals or should I continue on my path of a degree with the understanding that the investment in broadening my knowledge in other areas will enrich my writing later?

I especially like to hear from those that have a similar degree to the one I am pursuing. Was it worth it, or would you go a more "technical school" route with your education?

Thanks in advance!

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Let me tell you a little something personal about myself. My mother is a writer. I have been trained to write since I was old enough to dictate stories to my mother who then typed them out on a typewriter. I have been an award-winning writer since attending an arts-themed high school as a teen. I was a literature major, and presented in my field of study at international conference in graduate school. I have assistant taught university level course work in literature at a prestigious state university.

I have not actually graduated from an institution since middle school.

If you want to learn how to be a writer, read. Read everything. Read old stuff. Read new stuff. College literary criticism will kill the creative impulse. You don't need school to learn to write! You need to pick up a pen and learn from the best teachers the world has to offer - the guys who have gone before us. We stand tall because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Read what you love, and write what you want to read. There is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, to be gained from pursuing a degree in writing except a self-perpetuating degree and wasted time. Look up the bios of the writers who you love to read. If you want to write literary fiction, well then, you'll probably find fine art degrees aplenty. But if you look in the bios of the masters of fantasy and science fiction, you will be surprised at the wealth of experience that has NOTHING to do with pursuing English degrees.

The real world is our first and best teacher. Go out and read, my friend. Save you money for your slinky. I can't live without mine.

 

[Penpilot]

Writers come from various backgrounds. Some are Lawyers, Software developers, Soldiers, etc. And somewhere among those backgrounds are people with writing specific education like English Major or Literature Major.

Brandon Sanderson is, I believe, a Literature Major. If I remember right, he said he would have been better off if he majored in something else. Campbell winning Mary Robinette Kowal was a professional puppeteer before becoming a writer.

Finally George RR Martin earned a B. S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, graduating summa cum laude; he went on to complete his M. S. in Journalism from Northwestern.

My point is no matter what your major, there's no guarantee that knowing X will make you better at Y.

In my writing group we had an English teacher. His writing was technically perfect, but devoid of emotion, sprinkled with a bit of pretentiousness. He kept telling us how he wanted to explore this abstract idea or that one without ever expressing the desire to just to tell a simple, entertaining story. He's not published.

On the other hand, another member, who's a tradesman with no formal writing training, all he ever wants to do is have fun and tell a fun tale, he's published. Sold his first book, then the publisher said give me another one, and another.

IMHO do what you interests you, expect challenges and difficulties along the way, but in the long run if it's something you really want, then it's worth your while.

PS.

Me, I'm a Computer Science Major, a few credits short of a philosophy minor. I'm also a trained draughtsman. The one big thing I learned in school that IMHO made me a better writer was the ability to learn on my own and understand. When I don't know something, and it interests me, I go an research it. Whether it's from a library book or a wiki entry or a TV show, I try to understand it.

 

[Deleted member 2173]

Thank you for your words of guidance. After my posting, I realized that I had placed an expectation on my schoolwork to feed my need to express my creativity. Misfire! I think I will continue with the classes for now, but I have an understanding that the work I need to do is beside this pursuit, not inside the pursuit.

 

[Philip Overby]

I have a Master's in English Lit., focus on Creative Writing. I was a poetry writer back then, so I can't say it really helped my actual writing. Here's what helps me most:

1. Reading books (as others have said)
2. Reading books on craft
3. Writing and re-writing
4. Participating in writing groups

Having fun with your writing, as Penpilot said, is most important. Telling a good story with great characters will always succeed one way or another.

 

[Alexandra]

There is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, to be gained from pursuing a degree in writing except a self-perpetuating degree and wasted time...

I studied English Lit and creative writing while in university and went to some great parties, they were not a waste of time. As to writing?... write. I'm sure you've heard the cliché, "those who can't do teach"—like a stereotype, there must be at least a grain of truth to it. I don't think you can learn to be a good or great writer, you write to become a good or great writer. All the rest is just polishing.

 

[Svrtnsse]

The degree will have zero impact on my day job, and is purely for my hopes of becoming a better storyteller.

I feel this part is really important.
You'll learn better if you're enjoying what you're doing - and the other way around.
If you don't need the degree and the studying is affecting your motivation to write negatively, then it probably isn't the right thing to do.

 

[C Hollis]

Thank you for your words of guidance. After my posting, I realized that I had placed an expectation on my schoolwork to feed my need to express my creativity. Misfire! I think I will continue with the classes for now, but I have an understanding that the work I need to do is beside this pursuit, not inside the pursuit.

Maybe it's because I'm an old guy, but I was happy to see you post this. While a degree may not have a tangible, direct impact on your writing that you can hang your hat on, I believe there are a host of little things that eek their way into your craft that you may not notice.

All those pathetic papers you have to write for assignments that make you want to gouge your eyeballs with a #2, they actually help with critical editing. And, I believe, anytime you are writing you are practicing your craft; from e-mails, to blogs, to message board posts, to the occasional short story.

I think we all like to brag about how we've achieved certain goals without taking certain paths. Heck, my fields of study were Computer Science (programming) and Sociology, and my career is in Quality Assurance with a beer company. All of us have taken different paths to our dream, and none of those paths is the finite answer; they just worked for us.

I had the wonderful opportunity to learn in the real world and then later in life work a full time job while taking a full load of college courses. From my experience, lessons learned in the real world and lessons learned in school are of equal value.

A degree is a degree. Some people will poo poo it, others have grown to know its value. Regardless of what some may think of it, it is something to be proud of. It doesn't make you better than anybody else, but it does make you better than you were.

 

[HabeasCorpus]

Coming from the perspective of someone who has suffered their way through more education than he can probably afford, and seeing as I'm not a professional fiction writer, please take what I have to say with a moderate amount of salt.

To say that a degree will help you become a better writing is like saying a trophy makes you a better [insert relevant activity]. All it does is show other people what you have done, in this case, completed some school's requirements necessary to obtain the degree. Whether it will make you a better writer depends on what you put into your time there and, as Lowan said, whether there were others there of the mentor type that really helped you with your craft. Note that this doesn't necessarily have to be a professor.

I just finished King's "On Writing" and, like anyone else that has read it, would greatly encourage you to read it if you haven't already. [Unlikely in this case.]

The real meat of my opinion though, is this: It may not help with your writing, but it may very well help with other aspects of life, including putting food on the table during those times in between hunching over your writing table and pouring your soul into your pages. For that, you have to deal with corporate America. Corporate America, for whatever reason, loves degrees. For better or worse, it is a way to legally discriminate between two people for a job. At the very least, a degree is a sign that you can commit to something and finish it regardless of how much you hate it.

You mentioned your degree doesn't aid you in your current job. I get that. I'm not going to tell you to change your major either. It's a common fallacy out there that everyone has to use their degree upon graduation. Often, the biggest thing those degrees signify is an ability to think, reason and solve problems. Exceptions exist of course. So, while your degree may not help your current job, it might help a future one. I'm not sure if you're slinging pizzas or if you're a copy editor for a magazine, so if you want to stay at your current job, then by all means do what you want.

But then what happens when you meet the guy/girl of your dreams and life becomes about more than just you?

It's clear you're fed up with the schooling, and I completely hear you. I've done too much of it myself and will never go back - ever. My encouragement to you is to consider the bigger picture. Your decision isn't just, do I stay in school and finish or do I pick up and venture out onto the open road. The consequences are more than, will it affect my writing. There's a lot attached to a decision like this and, frankly, none of us here know enough about your situation to offer any real advice. Of course we want you to succeed and to that extent we will paint as truthful a picture as possible and exhort you to your best. Along that line then, I plead with you to consider the picture as bigger than the one you're painting.

 

[Deleted member 2173]

Coming from the perspective of someone who has suffered their way through more education than he can probably afford, and seeing as I'm not a professional fiction writer, please take what I have to say with a moderate amount of salt.

To say that a degree will help you become a better writing is like saying a trophy makes you a better [insert relevant activity]. All it does is show other people what you have done, in this case, completed some school's requirements necessary to obtain the degree. Whether it will make you a better writer depends on what you put into your time there and, as Lowan said, whether there were others there of the mentor type that really helped you with your craft. Note that this doesn't necessarily have to be a professor.

I just finished King's "On Writing" and, like anyone else that has read it, would greatly encourage you to read it if you haven't already. [Unlikely in this case.]

The real meat of my opinion though, is this: It may not help with your writing, but it may very well help with other aspects of life, including putting food on the table during those times in between hunching over your writing table and pouring your soul into your pages. For that, you have to deal with corporate America. Corporate America, for whatever reason, loves degrees. For better or worse, it is a way to legally discriminate between two people for a job. At the very least, a degree is a sign that you can commit to something and finish it regardless of how much you hate it.

You mentioned your degree doesn't aid you in your current job. I get that. I'm not going to tell you to change your major either. It's a common fallacy out there that everyone has to use their degree upon graduation. Often, the biggest thing those degrees signify is an ability to think, reason and solve problems. Exceptions exist of course. So, while your degree may not help your current job, it might help a future one. I'm not sure if you're slinging pizzas or if you're a copy editor for a magazine, so if you want to stay at your current job, then by all means do what you want.

But then what happens when you meet the guy/girl of your dreams and life becomes about more than just you?

It's clear you're fed up with the schooling, and I completely hear you. I've done too much of it myself and will never go back - ever. My encouragement to you is to consider the bigger picture. Your decision isn't just, do I stay in school and finish or do I pick up and venture out onto the open road. The consequences are more than, will it affect my writing. There's a lot attached to a decision like this and, frankly, none of us here know enough about your situation to offer any real advice. Of course we want you to succeed and to that extent we will paint as truthful a picture as possible and exhort you to your best. Along that line then, I plead with you to consider the picture as bigger than the one you're painting.

Thank you for the thoughts!

The good news is that I am a highly successful marketing executive, and my soon to be husband and I are very fortunate financially. There are no considerations financially in either the cost of the degree or if I complete it or not. In fact, I could quit school tomorrow and there would be no net impact on my life other than more time to read and write.

I will ride this wave a little longer, focus on more of the English classes than on the requirement for the degree, and see how I feel.

 

[Alexandra]

A degree is a degree. Some people will poo poo it, others have grown to know its value. Regardless of what some may think of it, it is something to be proud of. It doesn't make you better than anybody else, but it does make you better than you were.

Thank you C Hollis, these comments are so true. I've two of them (degrees) and neither directed me to a wonderful, high paying job, made me rich, or helped make me famous. I doubt whether either degree directly helped make me become a better writer even though I studied creative fiction. I do believe the time and effort I spent earning my degrees helped make me a better person and therefore may have helped my writing indirectly, but that's not the point. Good experiences are priceless and my time spent in university was a good experience, I'd do it again in a heart beat.

 

[Ennokos]

I come from a different perspective as I have never had any higher learning but work at a University. I see it everyday the students that are just going to school because their parents are forcing them or just to make more money, never really learning anything except how to memorize what's on the next exam. I do see the usefulness of places of higher learning, but for me I have never once considered taking a creative writing or English class for hoping to improve my writing. Just like Alexandra alluded to, it's an experience, and it's all about what you take out of all the experiences you have been given, not just what experiences they are.

 

[Rinzei]

I have to agree with the others - the degree won't help you with writing if you find you're not enjoying it. Creative fields thrive off of enjoyment - you remove that, and you'll find your inspiration shrivel up and die. Sue, you may learn a thing or two in the process, but you have to weigh whether this is enough to make it worthwhile.

I had a similar problem with a Design-based degree. I went to four years of university, learning nothing new from what I had self-taught already and doing assignments that I had no interest in or had no connection to my personal work. I put my nose to the grindstone and focused only on that - my personal work, drawing and writing, took a back seat to my education.

In the end, I had my Bachelor's - I also had a dead muse for BOTH drawing and writing. I've found it easier to get back into writing a little bit, but 3 years later, drawing is still very difficult for me to do now. It's still a struggle. I do have a job, and the degree helped me get it, but only because it showed my dedication - my job is unrelated to my field of study and only when I make it so does any creativity work its way in.

 

[skip.knox]

It is interesting to me to see the variety of responses here. I've got a PhD in history and I do think it helped me to be a better writer. I also think it helped me be a better computer programmer (which was my day job until I retired recently). There are all kinds of indirect benefits to be had from any kind of learning. What higher ed provides is an opportunity to do a lot of reading and a lot of writing in different disciplines. This is general useful. Moreover, I learned a lot of history, which not only helps me write historical fiction, it taught me how to be efficient in historical research. Sure I could have learned that in another way, but it turns out that structured education by professionals is one of the most effective ways in which to learn something.

But, as others have said, the only way to learn to do fiction writing is to write fiction *and* to get edited by outside sources *and* to be forced to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Even then, there are good writers and poor writers, successful writers and unsuccessful writers (four overlapping sets). In the end, it isn't about the education, it's about what you did with the education you got.

 

[OGone]

I'm starting a literature and creating writing degree in September. You obviously don't need one to become a writer but I feel it'll be advantageous to me for a number of reasons. First of all I'll be able to live off of my student loan for the next three years, I won't have to work during my university terms, granting me more time to write than I usually would have. I'll be surrounded by people with a similar interest to myself, I feel that will motivate me more to write. I'll also be able to take writing further and at least have a qualification in a field I'd like to get into. You never know who you might meet at university and I feel the freedom will be beneficial to me, I'll go to more writing conventions and speak to plenty more people. I find I'm a lot more independent when away from home. Finally, with a degree, at least I'll be able to pursue journalism, editing or some other job in the field if I never do succeed with my writing and the practice I gain from failed attempts won't feel like wasted time to me. I would, eventually, like a Masters.