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Teacher/Novelist Career Combo

M.C.Statz

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I was reading another thread here, which prompted me to start this one. I was considering maintaining my current job while honing my writing skills. If I get published and things look promising from that perspective, take a gamble, and go back to school to teach. Specifically, I thought it would be really neat to be a university prof, teaching mainly creative writing, and drafting novels on the side.

The downside is I'd have to get a PhD in Literature, Creative Writing, or something related, which means I'd likely have to actually read The Scarlet Letter instead of writing my essay based on the cliff notes. (Yes, I did that. Yes, I feel shame. But reading that book makes me feel like the dude from The Pit and Pendulum, and really should qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.)

Anyways, several posters mentioned that teaching and writing were not great combinations. I'm curious, for those who've tried it, what level did you teach, and what was your experience? And any there any current/former doctoral students who have experience trying to balance the two?

Not looking for justification one way or to be scared the other. Just want people's unfiltered experiences.

Thanks in advance.
 

rwm4768

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My gut instinct says it wouldn't be a good combination. Teaching at any level often requires far more than a 40-hour week. Even in college, you have to spend a lot of time on publishing in your field. I'd worry that it would take away far too much writing time.
 

frimble3

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Specifically, I thought it would be really neat to be a university prof, teaching mainly creative writing, and drafting novels on the side..
No actual experience, but I'm thinking this is a bad combination: a) you'll be using up your creative energy on discussing, reading and grading student work, and b) if you write a really successful novel, there's the risk that a student might claim it was 'based' on something they handed in for a class. Or discussed in a seminar, etc. If you have a huge body of work, then there will be lots of samples to compare to, but if you've had a couple of books published, it might be harder to prove your innocence.


Anyways, several posters mentioned that teaching and writing were not great combinations. I'm curious, for those who've tried it, what level did you teach, and what was your experience? And any there any current/former doctoral students who have experience trying to balance the two?

Not looking for justification one way or to be scared the other. Just want people's unfiltered experiences.

Thanks in advance.
From what I remember of my profs at uni, they didn't seem to have a lot of time for writing books, the stuff they published was work related, and tucked in among teaching classes, reading/grading student work, holding office hours, prepping for the next class, etc.
But, then, I was a history major.
 

Anna Spargo-Ryan

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I don't do this now, but I'm working towards it (I'm about three months into a creative writing PhD). I'd be teaching, writing, and doing my other freelance work (not writing) though, and hoping that would balance it all out!

ETA: I'm looking at sessional teaching, which is more like 10-15 hours a week. Probably quite a different kettle of fish.
 
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Chris P

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Perhaps he's not the biggest name in the industry, but he's no slouch either, Tom Perrotta has balanced being a creative writing prof at Yale then Harvard while penning a few titles turned into films and an HBO series.

Of course, one example doesn't make a winning combo or even a trend. You know how you work best, and if burnout on an all literature, all the time diet is a real thing for you. I worked for a time as a proofreader and copy editor. The upside is that I avoided a lot of mistakes in my writing, and it's tighter as a result. The downside is that it made my writing too analytical and therefore formulaic. A always leads to B which has to lead to C, and that took some of the fun out of it but also opened new avenues.

Become a prof because that's what you want to do, and for no other reason. Write fiction because that is what you want to do, and for no other reason. Do both if that's what you want to do, and for no other reason.
 

RightHoJeeves

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I don't see why it would be any worse of a combination than writing with any other job... but to be honest I think getting a PhD and teaching creative writing is probably hugely romanticized. I have a good friend who did exactly that, and he isn't actually enjoying it at all because he's teaching first year students who don't really care about writing, they're just there because they have to take an elective and they thought it would be easy.

Obviously there are situations in which teaching writing would be hugely rewarding, but those positions would be rarer than hen's teeth, and you'd be in line behind a load of Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize winners.

This is just me being a negative nelly though.
 

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Stephen King and Dean Koontz both started out balancing teaching and writing.

King quit after Carrie became a success, while Koontz couldn't wait and quit in order to become a success.
Today their success levels--in terms of sales--are identical. But that's all teaching school kids.

The most famous uni prof writer is probably John Gardner (the one who's not the Bond franchise guy), who I think taught forever, as did other literary fiction stars.

What I glean from writer bios seems to point to school teaching being writerly hell but uni teaching being fine. On the other hand this may be a simple overlap with the ages of the writers I checked out--when they are 20--everything is hell, not just their current job of making school kids pretend to be civilized, whereas once they reach professor or assistant professor age--they are in better control* of their lives anyway.

____
* With the caveat that for many of them "in control" means "functional alcoholism/drug addiction" as in "being able to show up and meet deadlines".
 
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neandermagnon

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Anyways, several posters mentioned that teaching and writing were not great combinations. I'm curious, for those who've tried it, what level did you teach, and what was your experience? And any there any current/former doctoral students who have experience trying to balance the two?

UK based answer (but I suspect similar issues exist elsewhere).

I'm an ex teacher. I used to teach in state school (what you call public school in the USA). I've always done writing alongside everything else I've done in life since I was 12.

The workload of teachers is beyond ridiculous. There is far, far more to teaching than just being in the classroom, planning lessons and marking work. I was up at 5am every day to plan lessons. My day in school would finish around 6pm (classes finished before 4pm but there was always a load of meetings to go to and other stuff you had to do). And then marking after that. One weekend day would be taken up with catching up on marking. The other on being in an exhausted stupor and trying to do household related things.

I quit, following advice from my doctor, for the sake of my health and my kids. Yep I was trying to be a lone parent somewhere in all that, and honestly, the fact I had to say "sorry I can't help you with your homework, I've got this pile of other kids' homework to mark" and "sorry we can't go anywhere at the weekend, got marking to do" is my number one reason for not being a teacher.

As for writing... I did that here and there to stay sane but the quality of what I wrote then wasn't all that, mostly because I didn't get time to re-read and edit it properly.

This is just the volume of work... bear in mind that being in a classroom with 30+ teenagers (or 30 five year olds, for that matter) is extremely demanding. You're constantly mentally alert. If you compare it to a normal job, a day teaching is like giving presentation after presentation, on all different topics, for the whole entire day, while also being responsible for crowd control at your presentations. And the crowd doesn't particularly want to be there. It's exhausting. That's just the in classroom bit. Now add in planning and marking. Now add in a ridiculous amount or record keeping that's required by inspectors but doesn't actually benefit the children but you have to do it anyway or they'll fail your school. Now add in meetings. Now add in dealing with parents and detentions for naughty children... and bear in mind that "free" periods during the day get taken up by covering other teachers' classes due to absence. Probably stress-related absence.

The main issue is that current teacher's workloads are incompatible with sanity or having any kind of life outside of teaching. There is a very serious recruitment crisis* due to so many teachers quitting for the sake of their health and sanity or simply because they want a life outside of teaching, but no-one's bothering to listen to ex teachers and fixing the reason why. After I quit teaching, I put my CV on a government jobseeker's website. My CV stated plainly that I was no longer teaching. It listed my transferrable skills and that I wanted a completely different job. I've been in my new job for more than two years, and I still get bombarded with emails from teaching recruitment agencies offering me teaching work. Bizarrely, not just teaching work in my specialism (biology/sciences) but also teaching English. They're that desperate they'll take science teachers to teach English.

These days I work for a mortgage company. A 9-5 job. Strictly 9-5 as in everyone turns off their computer and exits at 5pm and by 5:05pm it's like a ghost office unless overtime is available to work until 6pm. Working to 6pm is "overtime" *mind blown* lol. The main difference is that at my new job, I switch my brain into work mode at 9am, and switch off work mode at 5pm, then don't think about work all that much until the next day, leaving me free to have a life... be there for my kids and do writing after my kids are in bed, or get up at 6am to do a bit of writing before I wake up the kids. Weekends are entirely my own. I can actually do stuff at the weekends! With teaching, you switch your brain into work mode a few days before the start of term in September, when you have to attend various INSET (ongoing training/development) days and a ton of meetings in preparation for the new term. You switch your brain out of work mode around the 18th December when you break up for Christmas. Repeat for the next two terms and finally get a slightly longer break at the end of July. But then spend your holiday acutely aware of how fast time's running out before you have to do the whole thing again.

This is coming from someone who loved being in the classroom with the children and loves teaching. People who hate teaching generally last about two weeks. If that. They won't even get through the first part of teacher training.

So yeah, if you're looking for a day job that's compatible with writing, choose a 9-5 one. Preferably one that doesn't take up so much of your mental energy that you've got nothing left when you sit down to write after work.
 

Harlequin

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It's really not that easy to just become a professor. For one thing, professor pay is horrendous. For another, in times of not much funding, creative writing is usually one of the first things to get cut, along with Classics and Archaeology.

Lots of jobs aren't compatible with writing, teaching and nursing specifically springing to mind. Hence writing remains an activity of leisure/despair for many, filling in the few empty hours or else being written on the goodwill of wealthy family/spouses.
 

benbenberi

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To stand any chance of succeeding in an academic career you have to be fully committed to the idea of that PhD. You have to love of the subject you are studying for its own sake. You have be prepared to spending way more than 40 hours a week on the grinding day to day work of a junior academic. And you have to be comfortable with the knowledge that there are approximately 400+ fully qualified candidates for every academic job and you won't have any choice of where you'll live because job searches are national (some international) and there may only be 5 or 20 openings in your field in a year so if you don't apply for the ones in the places you really don't want to live you might not be applying for any at all. Much less landing one.

And unless you're lucky enough to land a tenure-track position your first time out, you'll have to repeat the search every year or two until you do, or until you slide down into the hideously underpaid underworld of the permanent adjunct, with only a succession of one-off gigs to keep you going, or until you succumb to despair (or realism) and quit academia altogether.

If you do land that mythical tenure-track position, you'll have to put in a huge amount of time working on the publications that will qualify you for actual tenure, plus the huge amount of committee work, department service, student advising, & other mandatory activities on top of the teaching. Unless your academic job is creative writing, don't expect to have any time for that for at least 7-10 years!

That said, it's perfectly possible to combine being a professor with being a novelist. There are plenty of examples out there. (Jane Smiley leaps to mind, but she's far from alone.) But you can't go into it on a whim, or look on the professor part as the side-job that subsidizes your real writer job. Because that's a sure road to failure.
 
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M.C.Statz

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What sort of publications do literature tenure-track profs do?
 

M.C.Statz

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Unless your academic job is creative writing, don't expect to have any time for that for at least 7-10 years!

I can't tell if you're being slightly tongue in cheek here. Is that possible for a literature or creative writing PhD?
 

polishmuse

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Become a prof because that's what you want to do, and for no other reason. Write fiction because that is what you want to do, and for no other reason. Do both if that's what you want to do, and for no other reason.

X10000
 

Harlequin

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a professor of literature wouldn't do creative writing, except as a hobby. They'd be writing essays and articles and conducting research. you'll have a publication/research quota to fill in addition to teaching duties and other requirements.

Creative writing professors don't necessarily churn out books. They probably do tend to write a few but a lot of stuff will be lectures and the nonfiction side of it.

it's not easily attainable as a career.
 

benbenberi

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M.C.Statz

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.

Become a prof because that's what you want to do, and for no other reason. Write fiction because that is what you want to do, and for no other reason. Do both if that's what you want to do, and for no other reason.

"Don't always follow your passion, but always take it with you."
-some guy I don't remember
 

M.C.Statz

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I worry you are looking at this as an easy route when in fact it's probably anything but.

Worry not. I served on a ballistic missile submarine. I did 6 90 day patrols, 3 back-to-back-to-back. In port I routinely worked 100+ hour weeks.

Right now life is easy at 50 hour average weeks.

I don't exactly relish going back to the type of hours you and others are describing, but I am no stranger to hard work.

Really all I was after was understanding people's experiences, not the implications that I'm some lazy louse looking for an easy path into the life of a famous author.
 

Bufty

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Worry not. I served on a ballistic missile submarine. I did 6 90 day patrols, 3 back-to-back-to-back. In port I routinely worked 100+ hour weeks.

Right now life is easy at 50 hour average weeks.

I don't exactly relish going back to the type of hours you and others are describing, but I am no stranger to hard work.

Really all I was after was understanding people's experiences, not the implications that I'm some lazy louse looking for an easy path into the life of a famous author.

I think you may have misinterpreted Hbooks' initial comment. :Hug2:
 

AW Admin

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Pay for an English full professor with tenure is pretty damn good, depending on the university. One of my dissertation members had UCLA buy him a house, and pay him over 100K/year. He was/is a major scholar, at the top of his career. He worked his ass off to get there, and was a stellar scholar from the start (Rhodes scholar, etc. etc.)

It is possible to be an active academic and write fiction; it's rare and it's not easy. To have job security, you need to have tenure; getting tenure is especially hard in the humanities.

You'd have to publish in order to get tenure, you'd have to teach, and you'd have to do service.

It's fiercely competitive.

Getting an English Ph.D. is expensive, and less than easy. More than half the people I started with didn't even make it to qualifying exams. Of those who made it to quals, the failure rate was pretty high.

Of those who make to dissertation stage, most do not complete the dissertation.

And then you have to get a tenure track job, and tenure.

If you want to write fiction, I'd suggest an alternate career path. If you want to teach, consider a Ph.D.
 

M.C.Statz

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I think you may have misinterpreted Hbooks' initial comment. :Hug2:

You're probably right. I can get a little sensitive about things.

I apologize to everyone for my rant.

I literally had no perspective on what it is like being a doctoral student, non-tenured prof, or tenured prof. I am not afraid of my ignorance and I love to ask questions. I sincerely appreciate everyone taking the time to consider my questions and respond.

(Incidentally, in a lot of ways I'm an aural learner, and I often have to rephrase things in my own words and bounce them back before I truly grasp them. I fear I often come across as pedantic or argumentative in these cases)
 

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I teach part time at a local university (3 days per week, about 3.5 hours each day) in a field totally separate from writing or literature. While there is definitely a lot of work that comes home with you when you're a teacher--at any level--I find that there is enough down time in between to do some real work on my own writing projects.
 

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I know a few writers/teachers. Their experiences are diverse.

The one with a PhD quit as University lecturer due to low pay and poor benefits. She is a high school department head and loves her summer vacations abroad. She recently published her first novel.

One has only an MFA, but from a top university (Ivy). Since graduation he's taught at the same university. I don't know his tenure status but he lives comfortably in a high standard of living city and finds time/dollars to take exotic trips a couple times per year. He published sporadically, mostly literary short fiction.

One has only an MFA, and from a middlin' university. she has taught at now two universities since graduation. At her current position she will only be required to teach one class per week, 7 quarters out of 8 (over two years), plus one hour of office hours. In addition, because she produces a book roughly every 18 months, she is frequently in demand to do readings and workshops. This is an excellent source of additional income and travel opportunity. She's a bit of a literary rock star.

These three all love to read and learn though. Getting advanced degrees and entering academia isn't for everyone.

Good luck.
 
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I completed a two year MA in English Literature; I had intended to go on for a doctorate, but decided to stop with the MA. I had no time for creative writing in grad school. The analytical work of a grad student in English Lit bears little resemblance to the kind of thing one can whip off quickly for an easy A as an undergrad. For grad work, you need to read the primary text(s) for class, yeah, but then you need to go out and research on your own to write the papers, and you need to be spending all free time on this. It is very, very competitive, and very political, and to be successful, it needs to be your entire world.

Many of the people I know who went on to do the doctorate ended up with low-paying adjunct jobs. For example, a brilliant former classmate now teaches three adjunct classes at three different universities, and since these jobs don't pay him enough to live, he also works at Payless. It is very, very, very difficult to achieve tenure in English these days, and even if you do get it, it will take YEARS (including the 6ish years you'll spend in grad school).

Anyway, I stopped with the MA and became a high school English teacher instead. During the school year, I spend many hours outside of class reading and grading compositions. Many, many, many hours. Plus, the administrative aspect of teaching is a special kind of hellish drudgery: long, long weekly meetings, usually featuring lengthy lectures about topics that could and should have been summarized in a quick email, and extra curricular activity requirements. Working with the kids is delightful, but dealing with parents and admin will wear you down quickly.

(Can you tell I'm about to enter my last "free" weekend before the school year starts on Monday? I'm super stressed out just thinking about it).
 

WeaselFire

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For my perspective, every great literature or creative writing professor I've had has also been a novelist. For that matter, the best professor's I've had in any subject have been writers, fiction or non-fiction, on that subject. When I taught as an adjunct, I also was working professionally in the field and authored or co-authored a number of non-fiction books on the subject. It is very possible to do this as a career. A rather poor paying career, but a career nonetheless.

Now, you will need the advanced degree, generally the terminal degree in your field. Whether that's a master's or a doctorate depends partly on the course and partly on the school. A MFA in literature or creative writing is usually enough to get an adjunct position, especially if you have credit in the field such as winning an Edgar, Hugo, Rita or especially a Pulitzer. Or some of the writing awards by major universities. Or multiples.

A full professor position will likely require the PhD and it's getting much harder to find tenured positions in major universities. Teaching creative writing is a job with a finite number of openings, unless you start looking at some of the online degree programs like University of Phoenix. Remember, Stephen King was a teacher, Dan Brown was a teacher, Kurt Vonnegut was a teacher, George Orwell was a teacher, JK Rowling was a teacher, Robert Frost was a teacher, Robert B. Parker was a teacher, Joann Harris was a teacher...

Yes, you can do it. And it does fit together better than being a steel worker and a dancer. :)

Jeff