Should You Go To School for Writing?

I’ve known that I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was five years old. Not every writer knows this so early. Some discover their talent as teenagers. Some in adulthood. Others in their retirement years.  But if you know early on that you want to make writing a career, should you go to school for writing?

I did, and they were the best school years of my life. But was it helpful? Do I recommend it to everyone who wants to write? I’m a bit torn on the issue. So, here are my pros and cons towards going to school to get your degree in writing.

Pro – You get feedback from fellow authors

Working towards a writing degree means workshops, workshops, workshops. Writing classes are designed for you to not only practice your writing but to learn how to critique others’ writing and accept their feedback on your work. It’s one of the best parts of your day if you truly love to write.

In these workshops you are in a safe zone monitored by a professor. They encourage students to be honest yet kind in their assessments. As a result, you receive helpful feedback to improve your work. This helps you to learn what readers notice about your work. What sticks? What doesn’t?

These classes require you to bring your A-game, even if it’s just the first few pages of a potential story or the first few lines of a poem. You have to write every week. But knowing that a group of people will be reading it makes you want to deliver.

Of course, not everyone is as dedicated as they’d like to be. They might not read your work in advance (if that is how the class is set up) or have new material themselves to bring in each week. But as long as they fill a chair in class, you have yet another opinion on the content that you bring to class.

Con – You may be discouraged from writing in the genre of your choice

I went to college preparing to come out as a children’s author. I came out trained as a poet. This was not me, but it was what was required of me to make the grade.

A strict rule in my writing classes was no genre writing. So, each poem and short story had to be written as the next great American poem or novel. They said that we could return to genre writing after college, using the skills that we learned writing these generic pieces to make us the best in our genre.

It felt like a form of brainwashing, making us believe that genre writing wasn’t serious writing. I also wasn’t a poet but was forced to make my senior project a poetry chapbook. It was full of terrible poems that reeked of inexperience and disinterest. In this way, I feel that college set me back in my writing.

It took a long time before I abandoned my poetry career and decided to focus on the writing that I like best. It’s also the type of writing that I do best. So, if you want to go to school to learn how to write fantasy, horror, romance, or any particular type of genre writing, you might be disappointed.

Pro – You learn to master writing mechanics

I’ve read a lot of self-published novels, and I can always tell when a writer hasn’t had formal training. They write in passive language, they use generic phrases mimicked from similar works, and they don’t know basic grammar and punctuation rules.

I’m not saying that my work is perfect, but I do know how to use semicolons and quotation marks. I’ve also had years of practice to learn to identify many of these errors and to self-edit effectively. I’ve also learned how to identify choppy or run-on sentences and improve the flow of my pieces through editing and revising.

Because most self-published books don’t make it through an editor, every rookie mistake makes it onto the page. So, if you need help with mechanics, some college training may help you out.

Con – You are training for a profession that doesn’t typically pay the bills

Honestly, I declared Creative Writing as my major knowing full well that there’s no job out there called “Creative Writer.” My hope was to work in some sort of writing industry, such as a publishing company or any large company that needed a writer. But unless you live in New York City or some other town full of publishing companies, finding a writing job is hard. And finding a writing job with no experience is nearly impossible.

Run a job search for “writer” as if you were job hunting for a writing career this week. You will see that every job posting looks for 5-7 years of experience in professional writing, a specific form of technical writing, or as a copywriter.

Many of these are for very industry-specific fields, such as engineering or science. Basically, they want an engineer or scientist who can write.

If your skills and experience are limited, so is your shot at a writing career right out of the gate. I wish someone had told me that so that I could have chosen a more practical career path and continued writing on the side.

Pro – You leave with a portfolio of work

Going to college for writing gives you the time and motivation to write. A large chunk of your homework is spent crafting short stories and poetry. Even if they aren’t any good, they give you much-needed practice.

As a result, you learn how to meet deadlines, write from different viewpoints, or under different guidelines. By the time you graduate, you have a collection of published pieces to develop or submit. These pieces have been carefully workshopped one or more times. If anything, it provides a sort of photo album to show how far you have come.

It also puts you into the habit of writing regularly. If you can squeeze writing into a full college schedule, part time job, and extracurricular activities, then you can find time to write when you have a full time job.

Con – You don’t learn everything you need to know

While I loved every writing class I took, my overall experience left out several crucial elements. These elements included how to submit your work, how to find a job in your field, and how to network outside of school.

I went to college during a transition in the writing world, when electronic submissions were starting to become the norm and self-publishing was super convenient and accessible. However, my professors were not up-to-date on these emerging features. So, we were given brief instructions on how to submit our work via expensive snail mail and how to browse free publications for writing opportunities.

I completed all of my internship credits on campus. This was convenient and allowed me more power and leadership opportunities than I would have had at an outside company. However, this kept me in a bubble, creating a meager and unimpressive internship credit for my resume. And the small, personalized university wasn’t helpful in helping us to find these outside opportunities, both internships and entry level jobs. Without this crucial knowledge, we were largely on our own.

Pro – You get to network with established writers

In our writing classes, we regularly had guest writers come to read their work and were invited to several on-campus readings and lectures. These opportunities are not as easy to find in the real world, besides the occasional Barnes & Noble book signing or local library visit.

Having these writers available to answer questions and offer advice in-person was a great opportunity. Our professors themselves were also published poets and authors who had found moderate success and knew what they were talking about.  They didn’t harp on the odds of publishing success. They drove you to work towards it in due time, the same way they did.

Con – You can leave with a pile of debt and no job prospects

Due to a number of fortunate factors, I’m one of the rare breed who didn’t leave school with a mountain of debt. I also managed to find “cushy” administrative jobs that paid my bills, even if they weren’t the greatest gigs.

However, I know that this is not always, or even usually, the case. Most of my former classmates make their career as waitresses and cashiers despite being gifted writers. They will also be paying for their college experience for years to come. This is true of most people I know who have a college degree, writers or not.

Let’s face it. So many people go to school now that it has made the competition fierce. Technology is moving faster than we can keep up with, eliminating more and more previously human jobs. This is not the life that we were promised if we worked hard and got a good education.

However, writing is something that everyone chooses, and it’s something that genuinely dedicated people do, regardless of the pay. Having a college education can make you better in a lot of ways, but it can hold you back in others.

So many writers have succeeded without formal training. Others credit their formal training with getting them to where they are. In the end, that is for you to decide, but hopefully now, you will have full disclosure of what you are getting into, should you choose to declare yourself a writing major.

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