High school education vs college ?

This question will sound stupid but I'm pretty much getting bummed out and am questioning my abilities.

Is it true some authors, successful ones at that, had no previous writing experience or college? I spent the day with a friend, a very successful one at that, who told me I may be wasting my time on trying to get my manuscript published by a legit publisher. He said I'd be better off with a pod and brought to my attention that I have no formal education other than high school and as he put it, 'you need more than that to make it, you could only find work at a fast food place without a high school diploma.' Just want to get an idea, how many people went to college to be a writer? Thanks

This person is a friend?

Maybe your manuscript isn't up to snuff, but if that's the case it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your lack of a college degree.

Learning is always a good thing. But you don't need a degree to be a writer.

- Victoria

Re: High school education vs college

Diva -

You do not have to have a college education to be a good writer.

You do need to have a solid grasp of grammar and an innate ability to tell a story. You need a good understanding of character, plot structure, symbolism, climax, denoument etc. to write fiction. You should have a basic understanding of those concepts from your English classes in high school.

Did your friend who told you you could not get published read your book? or was the comment based solely on your level of education? If your friend has read your book, I'd ask for more specifics about what the problems and weaknesses are.

You can always take a fiction writing class or workshop to improve your skills.

Re: High school education vs college

Time to get a new friend, not a bachelor's degree.

Education is always a good thing -- more is always better than less. But to say you can't be a good writer because you don't have a college degree is plain ignorant.

Diva,

If you want my opinion that person is NOT your friend.


This guy's self esteem obviously hinges on the fact that he went to college. He'd never be able to live with himsef if you wrote and published a novel with no college. If you succeeded like that, it would threaten his fragile, yet precious sense of superiority and his whole world would come tumbling down.

DON'T LISTEN TO HIM!

He said I'd be better off with a pod

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Screw a pod! Even terrible writers are better off WITHOUT a pot. He's trying to undermine your self esteem and railroad you into failure.

brought to my attention that I have no formal education other than high school and as he put it, 'you need more than that to make it,

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Yes, that's true. You need a well written book with a good story, but nobody needs a diploma, much less a degree to accomplish this. All you need is literacy, perseverence, and enough sense to know good advice from bad.

Anyway, you've come to the right place. Stick around, kid!

Wow, someone has some seriously low self-esteem. And I'm not talking about Diva. I'm talking about the so-called friend who just dashed her to bits.

Find better friends Diva. This moron is just going to drag you down, and that's not fair to you.

Sorry if I sound crass, here. But people who try to destroy other's dreams really get my goat. >:

You want to know something? I didn't even finish High School. I went and got my GED when I was 30. Took all the tests in one day, and passed with flying colours.

My fiance has a Bachelor's in Sociology, with minors in Asian Studies, and Eastern Philosophy, and is incredibly intelligent. Not to mention that he's this -><- far from his A+ Certification. He's a wonderful guy, and would never hurt a fly, but he doesn't have the patience for dummies. Do you think he and I would be together, and incredibly happy, if I couldn't match his intellect?

A degree doesn't make a writer. If it did, my fiance would be on the best-seller's list, and we'd be living good. But it's me...the one with jack for formal education, who's making a go of it. I know I'm good. I just need a little assistance in the polishing stages, and a good dose of courage.

Don't ever, ever, EVER let someone tell you that because you don't have some piece of paper you're not able to be a successful writer.

*steps down off her soap-box*

Your ability to express yourself is what counts, not your degree.

You can learn in college or through life experience. It's how you translate what you've learned onto paper that people will read.

I have no college education.
My skills are learned from the ditches.
I applied for a job that I later found out had over 1,000 responses. I was the only one that interviewed without college. This job was a high profile fortune 500 middle management position with huge advancement.

I got the job. I interview very well and performed better. We both won and I went on to better things.

College is great but remember this:

A high percentage of great companies are run by College drop-outs or less who are smart enough to hire College graduates.

Ask Bill Gates.

This is applied to writing as well.

College is good but not THE ultimate criteria for success.

Mike

Thank you! No he never read the manuscript. I told him about the storyline, the characters etc...

Is there some kind of company (Editing?) that reads manuscripts and lets you know if it's good or needs more work?

I know it may sound like I don't believe in my work to have to ask these questions, but I do! I'm working on my next steps as some of you were nice enough to explain to me and my mistake was allowing negative thoughts to invade my space.

Re: High school education vs college?

Wow, some of you are quick on the trigger to make judgements on Diva's friends without having the most salient fact - and that would be whether his comments were made after reading her ms or not.

I was one of the first ones to say that a college degree was not necessary to be a writer - I stand by that. But I also know that a more than basic grasp of grammar and drama are necessary.

If her friend read her ms and made that statement, then perhaps some formal education - classes, whatever might be in order.

To say this person is not a friend or has self-esteem issues is an unfair - not to mention judgemental - thing to say. You are basically doing what you seem to think he did - making judgements with almost no factual information whatsoever.

Pots meet kettle.

Re: High school education vs college?

Well, he didn't read the ms and made that comment. So I stand by my comment.

Her friend is a louse, whether he has read her ms or not. Of course I'm only basing my judgment on what she told us, since I can't verify everything with the "friend."

But instead of telling her to take some classes or find a mentor -- which a true friend would do -- he told her she should just go POD (bad advice to begin with) simply because she doesn't have a college degree. Such is not a friend, IMHO, whether he's read the ms or not.

From her post, I gather she can actually write and she seems very intelligent. She doesn't deserve a remark like that from a "friend."

All things being equal, I think a college education is immensely valuable, and it is easier to become a writer with a degree than without one.

This said, I've done it both ways. I was a high school drop out when I wrote and sold my first few short stories and my first novel. So it absolutely can be done without a degree.

But then I decided I should give college a try, and I learned more about writing and about literature during my first six months at college than I had in the rest of my life put together.

College doesn't make anyone a writer, but college doesn't make anyone a doctor or a lawyer or a mathematician, either.
All college does is put a person in an environment where he is surrounded by both knowledge in book and computer form that is hard to find elsewhere, and in an environment where he's surrounded by knowledgeable people highly intelligent, highly knowledgeable people who share his interests. It's then up to the person to take advanatge of all the opportunity college presents.

It's easy to say a person can learn as much without going to college, and it's certainly possible, but unlikely. Very few have the discipline to read and study as much when it isn't a requirement, and it's very difficult to surround yourself with the same kind of learning environment and people when trying to do it all on your own.

So, I think it's much better to go to college than to not go. I think that however well one writes, however successful one is without college, college will still help tremendously, and just about anyone will climb higher with college than without. And most successful writers, most by far, do have a degree, so if college is in any way possible, then you should go.

This said, your friend is simply wrong. Unlike most professions, writing fiction doesn't demand a degree, it just demands the talent, the skill, the dedication, and the discipline required to write well. There are writers without degress each and every year who sell to major publishers.

Writing is a matter of reading much, and writing often. It's having the talent and acquiring the skill through much practice. I think it's faster and easier with college, and I think many find problems with the dedication and discipline without college as a stabalizing factor where reading and writing and studying widely is a requirement, but it's certainly possible.

You just have to want it bad enough to be willing to do the reading, the studying, the learning, and the work without classmates and professors to help.

To say this person is not a friend or has self-esteem issues is an unfair - not to mention judgemental - thing to say. You are basically doing what you seem to think he did - making judgements with almost no factual information whatsoever.

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I had enough facts for my diagnosis. We've got a college grad assuring somebody that they will never succeed, and may as well not try, and worse, directing them to pod the manuscript - all because the 'friend' doesn't have a degree.

Seriously now... what possible motive?

If you want to write literature, as with The New Yorker, or work in publishing or journalism, then yeah, college is a great advantage.

But if you just want to write well, and read great works that resonate with you, then find where your passion is, what books you enjoy the most, and go to those author's websites and find where they learned and how they do their research.

All the information is there. I did it all before the internet, and you can, too. There's a great lineage there that you can discover on your own, such as how James Herriot learned from reading Conan Doyle and Conan Doyle learned from reading Bret Harte.

Louis L'Amour also learned from Conan Doyle, and he dropped out of high school because "School was interfering with my education." As he worked in the merchant marine and rode railroad cars, he read everything he could put his hands on. Same with Jack London, self-taught all the way.

The best thing about college is the camaraderie and being exposed to books, music, and cultures that you wouldn't ordinarily know. But you can save yourself so much money and time by getting an apartment in a college city or travelling and so on. Then you'd actually have something to write about than your experience in slogging through term papers on “Industrialism in 19th Century Novels.”

So yeah, many writers have gone to college, of course. But many of those, like John Grisham, Conan Doyle, Keats, and recent Nebula winner Elizabeth Moon, studied law or medicine or science. There's also many writers who went to college and then dropped out, including Anne Lamott, August Wilson, Cormac McCarthy, Gordon Parks, John Muir, Mark Twain, Richard Bach, Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, Walt Whitman, and Woody Allen.

To sum up, it all comes down to applying yourself. Focus and discipline. You can do that in college or on your own, but in the end that's the major determining factor of whether you'll succeed in what you start.


The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift the individual the burden of pursuing his own education.
- John Gardner

No university exists that can provide an education. What a university can provide is an outline, to give direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself.
- Louis L'Amour

I don’t think a college degree is necessary to become a good writer. I’m not even certain it’s an advantage. College probably won’t hurt you – if you don’t take it too seriously. But far more important, I believe, is broad general experience: living as active a life as possible, meeting all ranks of people, plenty of travel, trying your hand at various kinds of work, keeping your eyes, ears, and mind open, remembering what you observe, reading plenty of good books, and writing every day – simply writing.
- Edward Abbey

One of the best editors I know, currently working in New York at a major publisher, doesn't even have a high school diploma.

It isn't what piece of paper you have -- it's what you can do.




I've got a pretty cranky rant about all this, but not for right now.

I'm in college right now, and about the only writing class I've ever taken was Writing 100 back in the Fall 2000 semester, and that was for writing essays, which is pretty different from writing stories. Even writing a reflective essay on something that happened or that I experienced in life wasn't all that helpful because it had to be me reflecting on something in the past, whereas when I'm writing the stories, I want to write them in such a way that as you're reading them, it seems like it's all happening right now (how successful I am at that, I don't know ,but that's what I go for usually). Anyway, I digress. College may help, or you can figure out how you want to tell stories your own way.

As for the advice on vanity press publications, well, I don't know; maybe your friend meant well and he just didn't know that vanity press publishers were a really bad idea. Who knows? Either way, don't do it, okay? From what I've heard on the issue, they definitely won't make you happy.

Furthermore, the only time you should consider someone's advice when it comes to your stories is if the person has actually READ the stories.

JamesARitchie has said it right: college will help, but it's not necessary. Attending college exposes people to new ideas and new influences that in many ways (IMHO) are more important than the subjects they formally study.

But to be honest, all the really important things I've learned, I learned after college. But maybe that's just me...

Time for the Rant

Y'know, I see an awful lot of half-baked self-publishing and vanity publishing schemes.

An awful lot of the time, I look at 'em and I find that they were founded by a successful, happy, healthy, well-to-do businessman. So why is this SHHWTDB starting his own publishing company? Because he's trying to publish his own manuscript, and he wants others to join him in his folly.

Why's he need to self-publish? Because he's written a book and it's been rejected from Hell to breakfast. Could it be that the manuscript isn't very good? No! It can only be that publishing is broken beyond repair, so the SHHWTDB will fix it by using the Power of the Internet and the Miracle of Print on Demand to make wonderful books out of manuscripts that those stuck-up snooty editors in New York don't even read (proof they don't even read 'em? If they read them, they'd love them, just like their authors do).

Some of those start-up POD publishers do convince others to go with them. Some of them go out of business within a year. Some of them turn into scammers.

The thing that they don't realize, the reality that they've come across, is that for the first time the amount of money they have in the bank, the diplomas they have on the wall, the kind of car they drive, the country club they belong to, their name, their father's friends -- none of that matters. All that matters is the black marks on the white page. It's a dreadful thing for those guys to fail. For many of them its the first time they ever did.

You want to get published? Tell an entertaining story. If you can do that, you've got it licked. If you can't, being a PhD won't help you.

Re: Time for the Rant

As I said, I do think college can help, if you take the right courses, and if the college experience instills the dedication and discipline and ability to learn how to learn, but the best thing about a college degree is undoubtedly the simple fact that no matter how disciplined and dedicated one is, writing simply may not work out. Or even if it does, it can take many years, and may never make one a pile of money.

Not only can college help with writing, but perhaps more important, any degree can allow a writer to find a much better job. Keeping the wolf away from the door can be difficult for new, or even experienced, selling writers, and a college degree makes a great wolf repellent.

Rightly or wrongly, a college degree is the ticket you need to ride the train at most businesses. And again rightly or wrongly, an MFA just impresses the hell out of many editors and many publishers. I, too, have known a couple of editors who had little or no formal education, but this isn't the norm by any stretch of the imagination. Writing aside, getting a job inside publishing is one heck of a lot easier if you have a degree in something, and an MFA can land you a job in pubishing quickly. So can a business degree, for that matter.

Landing a job inside publishing without a degree is simply not easy, or even realistic these days. Landing a good job anywhere doing anything is immensely more difficult without some sort of degree.

Being a writer is a fine thing, but it's not a wise profession to bet your future on. We live in an age where certification is often more important than actual knowledge, and it's only wise to have a backup play. The portrait of the starving artist may be romantic, but it's no fun when you're actually living it.

There are always exceptions, but just run down the bestseller list top to bottom, pick any dozen writers at random you consider to be successful, and odds are nearly all will have degrees. The numbers are overwhelming. It's just not wise to count yourself as an exception until you prove you are one, and by that time it's likely to be too late.

College won't make a person a writer, but neither will lack of college, and college will darned sure make the road a writer travels a heck of a lot smoother and more pleasant until the time comes when writing starts paying off. I believe anyone who has a dream should follow it, but there's no sane reason to follow it in misery or poverty.

As for vanity and self-publishing, as far as I'm concerned that's just a way of assuring failure before you even get started.

You certainly don't need a college degree to become a successful writer.

You do however need the equivalent of a rigorous college education, even it's gained by personal study.

This means the ability to write mechanically correct manuscripts, without misspellings or grammatical errors.

It also means that you need to have a wide knowledge of the world around you, including literature, classics, history, government, science, and similar.

Whether you gain this in college or in the school of life is not important. But you must be on the ball.

school of life

If I had my way, every writer would spend at least a month living in a third-world country, a couple weeks seeing art and history in Europe, and a week volunteering in a hospice. If they are not American, I offer them a month in the U.S. or other country of their choice.

College ed. is a way. Not the way.

Education of any kind is never a waste of time.

People often ask me what writing courses to take, and what books to read. I ask their interests and talents and go from there. A degree is no panacea.

We all know teachers of the "those that can't do, teach" ilk. God knows I've had a few music teachers like that. And I know they were of that ild because they told me.

A writer must master the tools of his trade. Do what it takes, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I agree with a lot of things said here, but I agree most with Jamesaritchie, katdad, and Gala.

I am as uneducated as you can get; flunked every grade I ever took all the way up to the sixth; I have been published, no questions asked except was the ms good enough. Unfortunately I never made a best seller list. A fifteen year old girl did though, S. E. Hinton, with her novel "The Outsiders."

Raising a family and supporting it consumed more and more of my time until my writing went out the window. My handle is "Writing Again" because for the past ten years I did no writing at all. The ten years prior to that my writing was so sporadic it amounted to less than a hobby. If you don't have an education supporting yourself, let alone a family, can become a time consuming, physically tiring, emotionally exhausting task.

Now many of the jobs I held, including the one I hold now, you cannot get without a high school diploma. Why? Just because people want to make life difficult and want people to conform. There is no reason in the world why an adult American cannery worker should be required to have a high school diploma in order to sort fruit or clean the floor -- when the same job is being done in foreign countries by children who should be in school instead of working.

On the other hand I work alongside people with college degrees who could not find a job in their fields. Many of them earn less than I do because I operate specialized equipment. But that is not the real downside. The real downside is that the company no longer hires people who are “over qualified” and you can no longer lie successfully about your qualifications: The computer will catch you.

What does this mean for you?

As a writer nothing. How far you advance will depend entirely on your dedication, skill, luck, your willingness to continue learning your entire life, and if you are married your spousal support. If you don't have the latter it does not matter how much love is there your writing will suffer, believe me.

In the rest of your life if you can get an education it is your best bet: You still might lose but the deck is stacked in the favor of education.

Keep in mind Robert Frost:

It takes all sorts of in- and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

And:

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Re: school of life

SimonSays, I stand by my statement, the guy is a louse. Diva stated he never read the manuscript, -and- he tried to encourage her to POD. That doesn't sound like an encouraging friend, IMO.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from anti-higher education. If I'd had the money, I would have gone on to college (and I still intend to, even though I'm in my 40's). But a college education does not a writer make. Talent and perserverence, and an ability to keep at it, is what makes a writer (amoung a gazillion other things). No, a college education won't hurt. But it's not the Holy Grail, either.

Re: school of life

If I had my way, every writer would spend at least a month living in a third-world country, a couple weeks seeing art and history in Europe, and a week volunteering in a hospice. If they are not American, I offer them a month in the U.S. or other country of their choice.

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Exactly!

Life experience is going to go further in making a good writer, than a pile of books.

Again, going to college is not a bad thing. But if you go to college to make yourself a better writer, don't take writing classes. Take philosophy, the sciences, history, arts, etc. Writing education can be gained much more cheaply than college, in workshops, places like here, and anywhere you can get good feedback. Observe life around you. Participate in life, and you'll get an awesome education in writing.

Re: school of life

Writing is kind of like visual art--proof is in the pudding, or for the artist, the portfolio. As an artist, having a degree is a bonus, a little something extra to help you nail down the job you want. But a degree does nada if your portfolio can't cut it. For the writer, the trick is how well can you tell a story?