what not to study
I've known that I wanted to be a writer since I was a little boy, younger even than ten. By the time I was eleven I was writing elaborate fictions set in fantastic universes for friends and family. When I was about seventeen I started in on my epic fantasy novel, but didn't make much progress. Fortunately, all copies of this early effort have now been lost. At nineteen I decided to bite off something I could chew, a short story, and wound up penning a twenty-thousand word sci-fi novella. I have not lost the copies... yet.
So of course, when it came time for the great Life Event that is college, I majored in... Computer Science. Oh I know, an English or Lit major would have made so much sense, and I might have had a crack at being summa cum laude or some other silly Latin title, but no, I took comp-sci and got C's and slogged through several levels of Calculus and University Physics.
My rationale for not focusing on the language arts, even though that's technically what I want to "do", may have seemed hubristic: I didn't think that they had anything to teach me about writing. It would have been wonderful to really study the classics and read all those authors you know you should but never will and have valid opinions about Irish Poets and things like that. But it wouldn't have helped me write fiction. Critical essays, yes. Nuanced analyses, yes. Incandescent storytelling, not so much. Anyways, that was my opinion at the time and the years really haven't shaken it. As far as I can tell the only way to learn writing is to write, a lot, and that's what I've tried to do. My left brain recieved invaluable discipline in college, my right brain is ticking along as relentlessly as it ever did.
Anyways, it's not as if I've ever been wracked with doubt on the topic, but it is nice to see one's opinions validated occasionally: Author Crawford Kilian ruminates on what aspiring writers should NOT major in.
So of course, when it came time for the great Life Event that is college, I majored in... Computer Science. Oh I know, an English or Lit major would have made so much sense, and I might have had a crack at being summa cum laude or some other silly Latin title, but no, I took comp-sci and got C's and slogged through several levels of Calculus and University Physics.
My rationale for not focusing on the language arts, even though that's technically what I want to "do", may have seemed hubristic: I didn't think that they had anything to teach me about writing. It would have been wonderful to really study the classics and read all those authors you know you should but never will and have valid opinions about Irish Poets and things like that. But it wouldn't have helped me write fiction. Critical essays, yes. Nuanced analyses, yes. Incandescent storytelling, not so much. Anyways, that was my opinion at the time and the years really haven't shaken it. As far as I can tell the only way to learn writing is to write, a lot, and that's what I've tried to do. My left brain recieved invaluable discipline in college, my right brain is ticking along as relentlessly as it ever did.
Anyways, it's not as if I've ever been wracked with doubt on the topic, but it is nice to see one's opinions validated occasionally: Author Crawford Kilian ruminates on what aspiring writers should NOT major in.
posted by braun at 10:51 AM
5 Comments:
I'm terrible at doing everything math related, but I majored in education and lo and behold, math is the one subject I can teach with some effectiveness.
Write write write, yes, but I do believe you need critique to really make strides. I wrote four books in two years, over 800000 words, but I didn't truly impove until I met my critique group.
Well, I dropped a dual biology/English major back to English, kept the education minor and focused on creative writing. I did lots of workshop classes. Lots of them. Now, I already had the English bones down, seeing as I passed an AP test for a full year of college credit. But the knowledge of critiquing, both giving and getting, was invaluable.
It is really difficult to learn to read like a reader and like a writer. You have to learn how.
But, to each their own.
And I can't balance my own checkbook. I am slightly number dyslexic.
I'm not saying that critiquing isn't important, and I don't think Crawford is either. A creative writing class can be very helpful that way. The point is just that as a writer it probably doesn't matter what you major in in school...
Majors truly don't matter, I agree; but you can still learn a lot with an English degree. It's not really useful in the 'real world' but I did get a helluva lot of critiquing and workshopping experience, is all I'm saying.
You did the right thing; now you can write and support yourself financially at the same time.
I wish I could have chosen something useful, but I couldn't help myself at the time and chose to major in English. My minor in writing, however, was a great experience.
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