Looking Past the Ivy to See the Writers
By Jane • Jun 10th, 2008 • Category: Letters of Opinion, Misc • •
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What do Diana Peterfreund, Lauren Willig, Julia Quinn, and Eloisa James have in common? They are all Ivy League educated authors. Peterfreund is a graduate of Yale University. Willig, Quinn and James are Harvard educated. They are all, to varying degrees, commercially successful writers.
At the both ends of the reading industry spectrum, from the publishers to the readers, the Ivy League pedigree can matter. It is believed, I am certain, that Ivy Leaguers know how to write it better. Slap Harvard, Yale, Princeton on the biography of the author and the books are instantly viewed to be of a certain quality. I think its like a dog whistle. We readers see that and have a certain instinctual response.
Maybe it’s because for most of us, an Ivy League education was simply not in the cards whether it was because of lack of funds, not high enough test scores, or not being able to write a good enough entrance essay. Because the Ivy League education seems unattainable, the ones who attend and graduate are afforded some instant literary god like status. And that works, initially, but over time, a writer’s success with a reader depends more upon the words on the page and not the letters behind their names, no matter where they come from.
Famously, Eloisa James debuted on the romance market in hardcover with Potent Pleasures, a book replete with historical inaccuracies. The story is set in 1799. Lady Jersey made a cameo appearance even though she was a child in 1799. The guests danced a quadrille two decades before its introduction. The duke’s daughter made her London debut in August when the season ended in June. There is a scene called the Hooker’s Ball in reference to a ball thrown to introduce prostitutes to titled men. Hooker as it relates to prostitutes, however, wasn’t used until the US Civil War. Ms James rewrote some of the passages to Potent Pleasures to eliminate the historical inaccuracies when the work was republished in mass market.
The topic of education and writing arose a couple of months ago upon a blog post by fantasy author Marie Brennan. Ms. Brennan (whose book, Midnight Never Come is released today) wrote “So my studies have taught me nothing at all about writing, but a great deal regarding what to write about.” There was a variety of opinions about what was the best degree to obtain. Yasmine Galenorn said that college is vital:
College is vital, IMO–not just to become a writer, but to expand horizons, to meet new people, to listen and learn new ideas. I think it can open up the world for some–not all–people.
Yet, three commenters spoke up about their lack of education: Jill Myles (Pocket author 2009); Stacia Kane (Juno Books); and Ilona Andrews (Magic Bites, Magic Burns).
I think education can provide you with the skill to get into the granular level of writing and assist one in relating the story, but some people just have a gift. Education isn’t determinative of who will be a good writer. But it can’t necessarily mean that when you extrude the education, it will come out in the a palatable form.
Education can train someone in the paradigm of writing but then again, not all education is equal. Robin and I have alot of discussions about the law paradigm versus the higher education paradigm. My emails are full of bullet points and timelines. (yes, I am possibly the most boring email correspondent). It makes for good explanation of the legal points to clients, but its not very good creative writing. Robin’s training, on the hand, is more suited toward creative writing and creative thinking.
I would argue an astute roadside waitress would be able to tell as good or better of a story than an ivory towered academic. Because that astute roadside waitress could see the visual clues of people’s interaction with each other and if she was gifted, could articulate those things. A very romance famous author, Edna Buchanan, Dorothy Parker all lack the academic credentials that others have but they tell brilliant stories. Lora Leigh, for all her writing faults, connects to some deep core inside a reader. When you can connect to people, you’ve got a gift. Of course, we readers might accuse authors of squandering the gift (*cough* Laurell K Hamilton *cough*) but it’s there nonetheless.
Successful writing requires a gift and it requires grit and maybe part of the grit can be taught in a classroom. As for me, I’m going to try to be more like Warren Buffett and not be swayed by an author’s credentials when choosing a book, but the book itself.
“I don’t care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business,” says Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. Jane also does not like to talk about herself in the third person, but apparently this is the way that this biography thing works (although in a true biography, someone else would be writing this blurb). Anyway, currently Jane loves urban fantasy authors Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. She's really excited about this year's crop of historicals including Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Sherry Thomas' Private Arrangements and the upcoming Loretta Chase Her Scandalous Ways.
She's looking for a good contemporary author. Email her with a recommendation!
Email this author | All posts by Jane
Oh, very well said.
One thing I firmly believe is that writing is a gift. You have it or you don’t. You can refine that gift, improve it-but if you don’t have it, nothing you do, no classes you take, no craft books you read, nothing is going to suddenly cause that gift to come to life inside you.
Yep. I ended up getting my GED in 1994, three years after I left high school (I didn’t graduate; I was half a math credit short.) And if I had to do it all over again?
My situation was a bit skewed, as after I “graduated” I had no place to live, and was homeless for six months. (I believe this–and life itself–expanded my horizons very well, thank you, with all due respect to Yasmine Galenorn whom I admire greatly.)
So if I had it to do all over again I would have dropped out of high school at fifteen and taken the GED then, then gone to community college for two years so I had a better shot at supporting myself when my Dad kicked me out of the house.
Of course it’s difficult to say that for sure; I wouldn’t be the person I am now. I doubt I would have been able to write the book my agent is currently shopping, the one that draws so heavily on my experiences at that time. I doubt I would have been able to write most of my books. I might write something else; different themes might sneak their way in when I’m not paying attention.
Modesty doesn’t permit me to agree that you either have it or you don’t, that writing is a gift that cannot be picked up but only developed (although I suppose I do, it just feels odd to say it). But I do believe that academic credentials are meaningless, that one can learn just as well on their own, that life is more valuable than college for a writer.
I wish I’d gone to college so I could have had a roof over my head. I wish I’d gone to college because I enjoy learning. I would have liked it. I would have liked studying the classics with a teacher, discussing them, expanding them in my own mind, just as I would have enjoyed history classes or biology or whatever.
But I don’t wish I’d gone to college because it would have made me a better writer. I just don’t believe it would have. Whether I’m any good or not isn’t for me to say, really, but I know what I know and I learned what I learned, and I did it by reading on my own. By copying passages from other works into a notebook so I could study how they were built, how the change of one word changed the entire meaning, how to pile words like blocks to obscure a point or strip them away to reveal it. I learned by watching people walk by, hearing their conversations, watching their faces when they thought nobody was looking. By meeting people and talking to them. All of those things made me what I am, for good or bad.
And I’m proud of it. And of myself. I don’t need a degree for that.
Some of the smartest, most interesting people I’ve ever met never graduated high school, let alone college. Why should it matter at all where an author went to school? I buy books because the story interests me. Not because the author was the best student Yale ever had.
The only instance I can think of where it would is if you were writing about the inner workings of an Ivy League school (like Diana Peterfreund). And even then, it’s not really necessary. Experience is great, but there are tons of ways to do research, not to mention a little thing called imagination.
I agree with Shiloh. Writing is a gift. You can (and should) work on it, but some people just have it and some don’t. Everybody has their own personal “superpower” if you will, whatever it is.
I could not draw a decent picture to save my life. Can’t sculpt, can’t paint, can’t design clothes, or do a hundred other artsy things. And sports. Don’t even get me started on how uncoordinated I am.
But give me a keyboard and a word processor, and I can take you away to another world. Just like Calgon. ;-)
While a college/university education is great, it isn’t the only path to learning. I’ve met quite a number of people over the years who have educated themselves, through reading, listening, discussing, enquiry, and reflecting critically on what they come across, throughout their lives. My grandmother left school in 1912 at the age of 12, yet she had a strong intellect and an enquiring mind. Despite having quite a tough, working class life, she read voraciously, buying most books from second-hand bookstores. She was passionately interested in social conditions, and read Dickens, Marx, and Engels. She was also interested in the relationship between economic and social theories and religion, and so she taught herself to read Latin and Greek, so she could study the Testaments in the earlier versions. My mother still has many of her books, with her pencilled notes. Sadly, grandmother died when I was a baby, so I never really knew her, but I suspect she was more ‘educated’ than some people I know with multiple degrees :-)
For the record, I went to the University of Sun & Fun (USF in my hometown of Tampa, Florida.) I have a degree in Creative Writing, another in Speech Communication and was five classes short of a masters degree in English Education when I got my first job in a classroom and decided that sitting in five more classes with literature grad students who had no plan for their lives except to get doctorate degrees was not for me. I already knew I wanted to be a teacher and a writer, so I started my quest for both. Did my degrees help me publish? I don’t think so. Did my degrees give me a perspective into writing that other authors might not have? Of course. We are who we are as writers because of our life experiences and sometimes, those life experiences include our schooling.
That said, I do NOT begrudge anyone an Ivy League education and I don’t fool myself that the coursework at Harvard, Yale, etc. was equal to what I took at USF. I have friends who went to Ivy League schools. I know better. Their program, their professors, their entire college experience a whole lot tougher and broader than what I experienced at USF. They did study harder and likely know a lot more than I do on a great many topics.
Does it make them better writers? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the person, of course. I don’t really much care what makes someone a good writer. I just want to enjoy their books!
Personally, I think Diana Peterfreund is one of the most brilliant women I know. We’ve been friends for years and one of the things that attracted me to her (we met when she was a reporter interviewing me for an article in an alternative newspaper) was her incredible intelligence, irrepressible sense of humor and unique outlook on life. All of those things were nurtured in college, I’m sure, but education is more than four years at one university. However, she never would have been able to write her hugely entertaining Secret Society Girl books with such dead-on precision had she not been at Yale and I’m sure that her classical knowledge will lend heavily to her killer unicorn book, Rampant, which comes out next year.
But let’s not fool ourselves. Ivy League is the Ivy League for a reason. I don’t pretend that my education was equal to those friends of mine who went to Harvard and Yale. I know better. Does it make them better writers? I don’t think about that. We each have our own perspectives to bring to the table.
I’m very uncomfortable at the tone of this post, to be honest. Bringing up historical inaccuracies in Eloisa James’s first book as a way to what, cancel out her Ivy League education? To make it appear worthless? I’m pretty sure her degree wasn’t in history, but even if it was, she has no more obligation to be historically accurate than anyone else. But at the same time, she has every reason to be proud of her degree and the university she got it from.
If this post is meant to make those of us who didn’t go to that kind of institution feel better about having no formal education at all or going to colleges were underwater basket weaving was actually a course selection, the I think it’s a cheap shot. I don’t have any need to put anyone else’s education down in order to feel better about my own. My education is what it is. My books are what they are. How publishers perceive or market them is not my choice.
Look, when I was first published, the fact that I was an ex-Catholic school teacher was THE MARKETING POINT. It got me interviews and attention where nothing else would. It would only have been better if I’d been an ex-nun. Publishers who tout an author’s education are doing it to sell books, particularly where it is relevant, as in Diana’s case, where her schooling is directly related to the topic of her book.
I’m really puzzling over the point of this blog.
Wooo! Uneducated authors unite!
Lol.
The three of us are uneducated because of chance or necessity, not because of lack of brains.
I don’t have a shadow of a doubt that Jill could go into any Ivy League School and graduate with fanfare and flying colors. She is terribly smart and is some sort of scary genius when it comes to accounting. She likes to play it down, but a mutual friend once had a tax-related question on her blog and Jill left her a small essay which forever filled me with awe.
Stacia is very, very perceptive and sharp. She has this very interesting way of punching straight through to people - and characters - motivations that’s almost uncanny. She also has an innate understanding of what it’s like to not have things go your way, which some people don’t.
I tried college twice and dropped out. The first time my scholarship was cut. I went back a few years later, after having kids, but I needed to help support the family and so I went to work as a legal AA instead. Given an opportunity, I’d love to back to school.
When I was a kid and questioning the benefit of education, my Dad gave me Jack London’s Sea Wolf in hopes I would understand why I eventually had to go to college. This passage stuck with me through the years:
And that is, in essence, the failure of self-education. Sure, I have read Locke and Hobbes on my own, but I wouldn’t have picked up Rousseau unless I was forced, simply because I had no idea he existed.
College teaches you ultimately how to educate yourself. It formalizes the education process, making sure that a student’s education is well rounded, and it also allows one to interact with smart people, all forced to ponder the same topics. It demonstrates a range of opinions and alternative points of view, which is absolutely vital. Actually, even Supreme Court ruled on this point in Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950).
In 1946, University of Texas School of Law denied entry to Herman Sweatt on the basis of him being black. Texas was forced to admit him but tried to get around it by actually building a separate facility which would only house black students (of which there was only Sweatt at this point.) The case went all the way to Supreme Court, which came down on UTSL like a ton of bricks. The chief argument against Sweatt’s segregation was that for a lawyer to receive a proper education, he must take active part in the debate, which he couldn’t do sitting by himself in some shoddy classroom.
Does going to an Ivy League school make you a better writer? I have no idea. I never got to set foot in one. :P I’m not sure if writing is a gift either. I think it’s work. Tons and tons of work.
I’ve got a couple of degrees, from state schools. And while I love my education, and would do it again in a heartbeat, none of it figured into my becoming a writer.
I think the most valuable training came from being socially awkward, and having a crappy childhood. You need things in your life that will force you to be a daydreamer, and an observer of the world, rather than a full-time participant. If you look around, there are hundreds of stories, all around you, all the time. You shouldn’t have to go to Yale to figure this out.
I’ll agree that college broadens the mind, But you kind of have to be going in with a narrow mind and limited opportunities, to get the most effect. If you are already open to the world? Then the reverse can turn out to be true, and you leave college thinking there is only one right way to do things. And that right way would be standing by your alma mater, and sending your kids there, and insulating yourself from the plebs.
Anything that separates you from sympathy with and understanding of other people unlike yourself, is death to writing.
That’s funny. I’ve never paid attention to an author’s educational degree, unless it was something really interesting like Susan Grant having graduated the Air Force Academy. I mean, c’mon, that’s cool! But, Ivy league…whatever. I’m much more impressed with what people actually do with their education. I’ve noticed that authors’ education and previous or concurrent employment is as varied as their personalities. And they all use that education and experience in unique ways as authors. In the end, only the story matters to me.
When I say writing is a gift, I’m not really claiming that writers have some sort of special status and I don’t much see it as a modesty thing, if that makes sense.
I actually get annoyed with people who love to brag on about what a talented writer they are, whether they are talented or not. Because I see writing as a gift that’s given to a person, something they do naturally. Kind of like breathing.
We can work hard at it, and we should. We can improve, and we should. But that gift, being able to string words together, has to come first. I firmly believe it’s something we’re given. Gifts are meant to be cherished, not bragged and gloated over, IMO, so I don’t think calling writing a gift, in my mind, is an issue of modesty.
;) Not exactly related, but kinda sort…in my weird way of thinking. Somehow it came up over the weekend that I don’t always handle it very well when somebody tells me they like my writing. Yeah, I like hearing it, but I also get a little uncomfortable. Reasoning is…. writing to me is like breathing. I’ve always done it.
And how weird would it be for somebody come up and tell you, OMG…I love how you breathe…
Wasn’t there a country song about this? :smile:
Well, I’m a reader, certainly not a writer, and I’m college educated (degree in French) and I’m a meeting planner. So, it just goes to show that not everyone’s degree comes in handy. My college degree mostly taught me how to fit three keg parties in to one evening.
I’m fortunate to be acquainted with several successful authors, and in my experience, when you ask those who are writers when they started writing, the story almost always seems to start with: “I started writing stories in first grade…”
That’s why, even though I read a ton of romance, I’ll never be a writer. First, I don’t want to be a writer, but also, because I’ve never had stories in me. I have a pretty good imagination, but not one geared towards story telling.
The degree makes not one whit’s worth of difference to me. I don’t care where an author has or hasn’t gotten a degree from. What I care about is, does the story ring true? Am I moved my the story? Do I like the characters? I don’t give a damn about where the author went to school.
But hey, like I said, I’m just a reader.
~Yasmine Galenorn said that college is vital:
College is vital, IMO–not just to become a writer, but to expand horizons, to meet new people, to listen and learn new ideas. I think it can open up the world for some–not all–people.~
Really? Despite Galenorn, I’ve done pretty well with my high school diploma both professionally and personally.
College is great. Ivy League? Fabulous. But a storyteller is a storyteller, and neither better nor worse, more or less talented because she attended college–or didn’t.
‘Vital’ is a poor word choice, imo.
Heh. Quite possibly…hmmmmm…
Julie, I read your post above- your comment-
Something I got out of the blog wasn’t that it was poking at people, really, but more that a person’s formal education, or lack of, doesn’t define that person as a writer. Now it may well dictate what sort of stuff they write, but even if some of Ivy League writers mentioned didn’t go to college at all, they’d still have the ability to tell a story. And those who didn’t go to college, if they had gone, they’d still be able to tell a story.
That’s how I’m seeing it.
LOL. Ilona… it’s both.
Funny, as it pertains to my reading material, I couldn’t care less about credentials. I belong to the school of thought that believes that you are either born an author or you are not. I think that a college education (even if it’s not in writing per se) helps, however, you need to have it in you to begin with.
P.S. I won a writing contest during my first year in college, with an essay on precisely this subject.
P.S.S. Oh and yes, I wrote a novel and a bunch of short stories (all romance) when I was a teen, for my younger sister’s reading enjoyment. However, I’ve always shown that I am better at literary analysis than creative writing so I realized early on that I did not have it in me. I may have the ideas but I have no clue as to how to put them together. ;)
Heh.
To be honest, I consider the argument of education with writing success to be something like: “Is it easier for a blonde or a brunette to get published?”
When that first post went up on FFF, I expected to see the response to be half-and-half. Or whatever the standard is for college-educated-vs-non-college-educated in the real world. I was honestly very surprised (and a little embarrassed at my own lack, I’ll admit) when there were so few of us that didn’t have a degree. I don’t like to feel like I’m lacking. :)
But then I sat down and thought about it, and to me, writing is not a gift. I might have an ear for language, or I might read 150 books a year and that makes it easier for me to understand what goes in a story, but writing is work. Lots and lots and lots of work.
No one taught grammar to me beyond 7th grade - at least, not that I can recall (though I could be quite wrong). High school English seemed to consist entirely of Wuthering Heights and Shakespeare (both which make me cringe). So when I decided, 6 years after I graduated from high school, that I wanted to write…I didn’t enroll in college. I grabbed a book on grammar. And I wrote. And I wrote more. And I sent it off to people and said “Is this right?” And they slapped me on the hand and said “No! Stupid!”. So I fixed it, and then I wrote some more.
Maybe if I would have had the existing knowledge it wouldn’t have taken me 2 books to get published, instead of 5 or 7 or whatever. I have no idea. Maybe it would have taken me 12 and I happened to luck out.
But the education shouldn’t matter. I think half the appeal of writing is that (IMO) anyone can do it. If you work hard enough, if you make an enticing enough story, you could break through and be successful.
(And Ilona! You’re making me blush! You want to see a scary genius, try asking Ilona about alloys and metals.)
I went to a small liberal arts college in Penn and I graduated with a class of under 400 and in my Communication Major with a group of 10 and all females. I was so lucky to be involved in so many things that helped me in so many ways for my future. For some, writing is a skill they are born with while others must work at it. Regardless of where you go to school and if you receive an education, all matters is how you tone your craft.
The point of the blog post is that publishing and the media who promote publishing and readers all are drawn to what I term as pedigreed authors and the literary pedigree of an author does not mean that the contents of the book is quality. James was published in hardcover as a debut. Lauren Willig is advertised as a historical fiction author by the hardcover nature of her books and the covers. Julia Quinn was profiled in Time Magazine. Would these authors have received the same treatment had their educations been at state universities?
I’m trying to point out that education isn’t what we should use as readers to measure whether the contents of a book is going to be good any more than we should judge a book by its covers. Sure, it’s a marketing thing, but just because it is a marketing thing doesn’t mean that we readers should pay attention to it.
Excellent post and I agree - education is nice but it doesn’t gift you with the ability to tell a good story. That’s innate and it can’t be taught, to me. You either have it or you don’t and readers can tell the difference. Also, I am the complete opposite when it comes to seeing Harvard and Yale credentials in the biography of the author. Most times, I leave the book on the shelf because while it may read “quality” in my mind, it also screams boring.
However, there are other notable authors with degrees, not all from Harvard, but they are brilliant storytellers - Diana Gabaldon and Roberta Gellis are two authors who come to mind and my absolute favorite, Catherine Asaro is a Harvard physicist who writes fantasy novels and does a really good job of it, too.
I don’t think and you didn’t imply this - that every Harvard author has had commercial success but having the credentials on the jacket doesn’t hurt and there is a slight advantage or an assumption that the work will be more, “quality” for lack of a better word. But quality doesn’t always sell. I don’t care how well written the book is - my first question will always be, is it any good?
Excellent post. I enjoyed reading it.
I’ve got a couple of degrees, from state schools. And while I love my education, and would do it again in a heartbeat, none of it figured into my becoming a writer.
That, I think, is key. Laurell K. Hamilton is, by education, a biologist. Eloisa James is, by education, a specialist in Renaissance and Jacobean plays. I’m not saying that I don’t think their education has informed them as writers, but I think no more or less than a lot of other life experiences, like having kids (especially in EJ’s case: see Midnight Pleasures) or falling in love.
Many paths, same goal.
I will never tell anyone that an Ivy League education wasn’t ‘worth it’ (actually, I will: I know a high school teacher who went to Princeton. Now he’s oodles of dollars in debt and will be living off ramen noodles for the next forty years to pay it off — and he knew he wanted to be a teacher before he went). Generally speaking, though, writers are self-taught to such a large degree (has anyone taken a university class on How to Write a Romance Novel?) that how it affects your writing may be minimal.
I’m still jealous of those who could afford to go to Harvard or Yale (or even Brown) for undergrad. Although, yada yada, if I hadn’t gone where I did, I wouldn’t have met my fiance, etc.
I see this all the time on the fan fiction communities I’m in, where writers are of all ages and from all around the world, and of all levels of experience. A certain facility with words is required, and that requires some level of education. But what makes the story good is whether or not it has a spark that brings it to life, and no amount of education can teach that.
I’m not. I’ve known and have heard of people going to these Ivy League schools only to come out with degrees they can’t do anything with. Law degree, great, chemistry, physics, doctor - excellent. It’ll pay itself off, hopefully, the rest, you can forget it, unless you’re rich and you don’t have to work.
I think storytelling is a gift, and it takes a lot of work to tell a story articulately and entertainingly on paper.
I don’t believe you can be taught to write, unless you already have the gift. Then you can be taught, or you can learn, how to refine it, nuture it, expand it.
And then, you have to be willing and able to bust your ass.
Like so much in writing, it’s individual. Creative writing classes, for instance, may push open the door for some–and may block it for others.
I’ve always felt, for me, the best tools in my writer’s toolbox are my no-nonsense education by the nuns (9 years of it) and my fortune in growing up in a family of readers. So, again for me, the tools are discipline, guilt, an innate love of stories, the strong drive to write along with a willingness to sweat it out. And reading, reading, reading.
Other writers, other tools.
I come from the East Coast prep school Ivy pipeline to success, so I’m familiar with its biases. And I know that getting into an Ivy is a peculiar numbers game dependent on luck, demographics, family support, and how well you meet a crazy profile and have reached your peak at 18.
And a lot of great talented people, and me, didn’t go to Harvard and the like. So what?
It’s an everybody poops situation. “I went to Harvard.” ‘That’s nice. Everybody poops, you know.”
Personally I find Willig’s novels to be unreadable, so that’s actually a point against Harvard. And what’s Brooke Shields done with her Princeton degree?
I still can’t help but think that there isn’t a little jealousy involved here. Look, if authors get singled out because of their education…or their charity work…or their life as a fighter pilot…or their background teaching in Catholic school and now writing hot books…who cares? It’s no reason to single certain authors out and say, “They’re no better than the rest of us because of their education.” I’m quite certain none of THEM said they were. But their degrees from respected institutions of higher learning isn’t something they should hide, either, just to make everyone else feel better about their own educational journey or lack thereof.
I think as writers, we should be proud of those who have gone to Harvard, Yale, etc and have chosen to write GENRE fiction. Trust me, I’m sure they catch a lot of grief about that from their similarly matriculated colleagues. I know that as a grad student, I caught all kinds of holy hell for wanting to write, ::gasp:: romance novels! If people were this snobby at USF, I can only imagine how they were at Yale and Harvard!
I say we should be PROUD of all writers accomplishment–particularly FEMALE writers–and not minimalize each other in any way. We cannot control the perception of the media or the general public–and we shouldn’t begrudge another author some choice publicity.
I guess I see writing as a skill and storytelling as the talent or gift. People can work on the skill of writing but if they can’t tell a good story… And really, every life experience can broaden and expand your world in some way, some great and some not, but they could all lead to a great book.
I don’t think an Ivy league degree is an automatic indicator of anything, except perhaps perverence and determination, which are of immense benefit in *publishing* as well as in the work of writing a novel (or rather, writing several novels, because all the authors you named have written not just one successful book, but several). The degree might help in marketing, as Julie Leto said, but the real proof of an author’s talent/skill/success is measured in sales–do people love the books enough to keep buying them? It seems unlikely people are buying, or not buying, any author’s books based on where she went to school.
Oh boy. Julie, so basically what you are saying is that an Ivy League educated person is vastly superior to someone like me, and I should be be grateful and humbled that they chose to slum with me in the ghetto…
Heh.
I guess I don’t see your point, Julie. We readers should be proud that Ivy Leaguers have deigned to come and wallow with the masses? Frankly, I don’t think we deserve respect in the romance genre because of where a body of authors went to school. We deserve respect because there are books in the romance genre that are damn good.
No, no. Just as proud as the single mom with the GED that is now writing romance novels. Or the former accountant who writes romance novels during lunch time and has published them to great success. We don’t have to put down one to elevate the other. That’s all I’m saying.
Caroline, you make a good point. Readers don’t usually know and don’t care what an author’s background is–they just want to enjoy the book. Julia Quinn was already a huge success before TIME did the feature on her. I had no idea of her educational background, either, until I read that article and I knew her! Most people don’t shout about their own educational backgrounds, but it does come up in marketing and there’s nothing wrong with it!
I think the original idea here is about equating marketing with writing ability.
If you go to an Ivy league school, you can bet that it will show up in the author bio. Because marketing is looking for any hook that will give the book an edge. And ‘Ivy leaguer writes romance!’ is a hook.
Of course, they probably secretly wish that you were a single mother you wrote the book longhand, in a coffee shop, while on the dole, and rocking a stoller. That’s a better hook. Or maybe if you were a tattooed stripper, like that woman that wrote ‘Juno’.
Or if you were a single mother in a coffee shop, who was stripping to pay off your school loans after Harvard…
There is very little question that Harvard is shorthand for ‘well-educated’. But it is only one component of the individual. It doesn’t have to mean anything, as it relates to who wrote what, or how good it is.
It is a sore spot for me knowing that LKH has the talent to pen better than the drivel she puts out year after year. She would be on a list of authors who waste talent.
I’ll say this.
Jill Myles is a very smart woman. She’s smarter than I am, and she got it cheaper than me.
That’s all I can say. :)
And in case anyone’s wondering I went to college.
I’m far more impressed when I hear of a successful writer without a background in higher education then the other way around.
Speaking as someone who went to the UK equivalent of an Ivy League, I’ve always felt the whole thing to be a bit of a lottery. I was lucky: there were any number of candidates who were as bright (if not brighter, frankly) than me, and who would have done as well (better!) in my chosen degree.
From what I understand of the American system, it’s even harder to crack, with the astronomical sums of money involved. From this I presume that most Ivy Leaguers are reaping the benefits of a comfortably well-off social/ economic background, or (in rarer instances) they are admirably intelligent - and determined enough to overcome great obstacles. Also, they were lucky.
However, knowing that a writer has an academic background means I might place greater importance on the quality (competence?) of their writing and research. In that context, what you say about Eloisa James’ first novel is hilarious and just goes to show, doesn’t it?
(Also, what Julie said.)
Ilona’s made me blush too, Jill! Especially considering how whip-smart she is. And I agree with Jill, I thought the responses would be more balanced. It felt a little like taking my top off in public, admitting that I never even properly finished high school.
Personally, I see this post as empowering, not as a put-down. I’ve never felt my lack of formal education, save when I’m in a room with people who think I’m lacking because of it (as in that FFF discussion). So I always appreciate seeing it publicly acknowledged that despite the way “college education” has come to seem like a requirement for life, it isn’t.
I didn’t think you were being egotistical at all, Shiloh, and my comment was a more general one–we were responding at the same time, so I didn’t see yours when I posted mine. I do agree with you; at the most basic level you either are or are not a writer, just as you either are or are not someone who likes the color blue. Perhaps if I had a bigger career I would be more comfortable referring to myself in those terms, lol. Or if I were more secure in general; who knows?
But I agree 100% about people who run around bragging about their talent. It always signals to me that there is ego where there should be skill.
…and sometimes, you can have 2 bachelor’s degrees from a “pretty good” university and a master’s and still end up toiling away at an 11/hour job you hate.
’cause they’re not hiring at the literature factory. *sigh*
Also, I watch Jeopardy and kick ass at it. :-)
Erm… I watch Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader and you don’t even want know how I do playing that show!
Oh, hell no. BUT to the outside world (ie, the non-romance-appreciating world), things like this can affect the perception of the genre. “See, Eloisa James, with degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Oxford, writes romance novels! And they are really good book, not trash!” I bet plenty of people went to check out Julia Quinn’s books after the feature in TIME, people who might not have looked twice at a romance before, and I bet plenty of them were very pleasantly surprised. Since even many readers feel the disrespect romance often gets, I have to say that authors who can lend a little glamour to the genre–whether it’s an Ivy degree, or a supercool profession, or a fabulous ‘first sale’ story–should be appreciated for that. Now, if you don’t like their books personally, that’s also fine, no one makes you buy them.
And fwiw, none of my Harvard classmates look down on my career; a number of them are green with envy, in fact.
Interesting discussion as always, Jane.
I don’t recall ever paying any attention to an author’s credentials when picking up a book to read. It’s the story that grabs me, not the author’s bio. That being said, and like Julie said, marketing will often use an angle like Diana’s Ivy League education and the tie-in to her series. That makes her education interesting, not pertinent.
For me, I wallowed along for years taking courses here and there, building my career and raising my children while juggling college when I could. Eventually I knuckled down and did the two year binge to finish. All in all it took me 20 damn years to get my degree. Has it been useful to my writing career? The degree hasn’t. What was useful was the perserverence during that 20 year journey, that never giving up, that drive to succeed. I used that in my determination to see a book from start to finish, to set goals to publish, because I knew I could. I’d perservered before and I could do it again. It paid off.
And that was oh so useful, way more so than the sheepskin.
Well, Caroline, we do have THE BEST JOB in the universe! They should be envious!
I have a degree from a state university, but I wouldn’t say it helped me with writing in any fashion. Maybe some authors come out of college ready to publish, but I didn’t. Like other folks, I don’t consider the writer’s credentials when I’m reading fiction. I don’t read bios in the back unless I’m super-impressed by the book and am looking for website info so I can send an email.
They are! And I can’t tell you how many of them–smart, successful, ambitious, driven people–have said to me that they would like to write a book someday, but just don’t even know how to get started. So to every romance writer out there, know that many of those Ivy Leaguers envy you, even if they don’t admit it out loud…
For me, my education provided a wonderful writing foundation–not because it gave me tons of ideas (it didn’t, unless you count meeting my husband on the second day), but rather because you can’t go through four years of Harvard without learning how to write a proper sentence. I may not have written much fiction while I was in college, but I wrote paper after paper, and I had to know my grammar and punctuation. I had to know how to vary sentence structure to make the words flow (especially if I had no idea what I was talking about, which happened more often than I’d like to admit.)
But do you need an Ivy League education to learn all this? Of course not. You don’t even need a college education. But it helps. Writing takes practice, and I had to practice for four years. I’m not the most disciplined of writers; I don’t think I would have focus to write as much during those years without school or a paycheck to kick me in the butt.
I think Jane has an entirely different point about the cachet of an Ivy League education, however, and there is a lot of truth in that. For better or worse, it means something when you say, “I went to Harvard.” It doesn’t always mean what you want it to mean, and it doesn’t always mean anything based in reality, but everyone has a preconception the instant they hear where you went to college. I never knew what to say when I would tell someone where I was going to school, and they’d go, “Ooooh. You must be smart.” Finally, I decided just to go with it–”Uh, yeah, I am.” I mean, what do they think I’m supposed to say?
And yes, the Harvard part of my bio makes me interesting to journalists looking to cover the genre. They find it unexpected. It breaks a stereotype. It makes for an interesting story. Journalists who don’t know anything about the romance genre know about Harvard. It gives them something to start with.
That said, the TIME Magazine piece, which was truly one of the highlights of my career, had nothing to do with my having gone to Harvard, despite it being a prominent part of the article. TIME was planning to run a themed issue on love and romance, and Andrea Sachs, one of their book reporters, insisted that they do something on romance novels for the book section. She had to argue to get the piece in, and in the end TIME went to RWA and said, “Give us the youngest romance writer you’ve got who has hit the New York Times list.” That turned out to be me. In the end, the love and romance issue was scrapped, but I lucked out and they ran the piece several months later when they had room.
Best,
JQ (who got NO special Harvard treatment at the outset, and if you don’t believe me, go check out the original cover of my first book)
Jaci, I so agree with you. What my degree says to me is: You ran the gauntlet. My dad used to tell me this when I had plans of a mahogany-clad corner-office high up in a skyscraper doing finance-type things, and that degree was my ticket to that. He said, “A college degree doesn’t say you’re smart. It says you stuck with it and you did the work and you got through it.”
IMHO, I don’t believe this. If someone came up to me tomorrow and said, “If you work hard enough, you can be an opera singer.” Mmmm, no, I can’t. I sound like a 12-year-old redneck who ate a dictionary and my singing is worse than that.
Writing is a talent, just like any other, and people have different ones. Whereas most people go, “No, I couldn’t possibly be an opera singer” and are in touch with their limitations in that area*, there are a whole lot of people who think they can write**. And they can’t.
*Caveat: The American Idol contestants, I’m told, do not know their limitations.
**I do not equate being able to write with being able to get published. I’ve read a lot of wonderful stuff lately that won’t ever get published by a traditional publishing house because of subject matter, not because the author can’t write. More than a few times I’ve seen authors say, “Well, if you can’t get published your manuscript is crap,” which confuses the issue to no end.
~You don’t even need a college education. But it helps.~
I just disagree. I think it depends, entirely depends. Would college have helped me in this area? I believe, strongly, no. Would it help Other Writer? Very likely yes. Or maybe. Or absolutely. Or no.
It depends on Other Writer.
Education is a hot button for me. I was forced into going to college and when it didn’t work out (scholarship issues), I had to come home and join the work force. A lot of people – mostly family – didn’t understand my decision when I came home not to take classes at the local community college. The two things I always told them was (1) I didn’t want to go in the first place because I don’t like school and (2) I didn’t need a degree to write.
As for life experience… well, let’s just say there’s something to be said for the experience you gain jumping from temp job to temp job. You meet tons of people, learn about different systems and industries, develop thick skin and mature outlook real fast (as opposed to the college lifestyle, which isn’t prone to engendering maturity) and YOU’RE MAKING MONEY!!! Money with which you’ll have to know how to pay bills, balance, save, invest, and enjoy.
This year is my five-year anniversary of graduating from high school - and as I see my friends and peers graduating from college, getting entry level jobs that pay less than mine, fighting with student loans, and facing responsibility for the first time, I don’t have one regret.
Interesting and thought-provoking post. I could care less what someone’s educational background is when I buy a book. All I want is a good read. I might find the author’s background interesting to know, but it doesn’t sway me to read or not read a book.
I agree with Christine. It’s a marketing hook to exploit and bring attention to the author. But as she also points out, the stripper writing a book could be a good hook too. It depends what the marketing goal is. JK Rowling’s rags to riches story was a fantastic marketing hook. I would have been drooling over that marketing hook!
I think college can definitely expand horizons, but I don’t think it’s a requirement for or against being a successful writer. Experiences shape writers on a number of levels. Whether knowledge is accumulated in college or on-the-job, a writer is shaped by their overall life experiences. I’ve worked as a nuclear warhead technician, waitress, retail clerk, travel agent, attorney’s administrative assistant, environmentalists, advertising manager, marketing coordinator, public relations, and executive assistant for a top level government official.
I did all of those jobs except for two before I got my college degree. I learned something new in all of those jobs, just as I did when I attended school. However, I confess that at no time since graduation have I EVER had the need to use my calculus skills. For me, a college degree is simply an extension of the learning and observing I do every day.
And as for the kegs MaryKate referred too, I partied my way through one occurrence of flunking out. It took a while, but I eventually got my act together and finished. But I have some GREAT stories I can share about my wild child party days. *grin*
Actually, this post makes me think more about the how an MFA from any institution was like an anti-writing credential for a while.
Claudia, speaking strictly for myself, I am incapable of learning how to write from a program. I don’t like being told what to do (or how to do it) at the best of times. And I think I would always wonder: “If this teacher truly knows all the secrets about writing, how come she’s teaching this program instead of writing bestsellers?”
I will say that my degree (well, the one in Communication — the other one’s fairly useless except as a weird party trick) DID help me become a better writer. But, as Julia Quinn said, largely because everything I did for those years was practice writing. Day in and day out. Classes, internships, part time jobs, everything I did was about writing, whether it was academic writing or journalism. The one thing I *didn’t* do was creative writing.
Then I did the mom thing for a while and didn’t write at all for about eight years. When I sat down to write again, I really, truly sucked because I was so desperately out of practice. But then all that training started to come back to me. Everything I learned in college about grammar and structure and style, even though it was quite an operation to pull that grammar stick out of my, er, somewhere uncomfortable.
I will never say that my education hasn’t made a difference to my writing, but I would also never say that college is the only path to good writing.
I think the same thing regarding Teaching. Just because you know a lot about a subject doesn’t mean you can teach it. Have any of you had those completely brilliant college professors that could NOT teach what they knew?
I am a teacher. I taught elementary grades before kids. I substitute teach now that both are in school. My hubby has a Bible Degree. He works part time for our church (with the kids~grades 1-6). He is a MUCH BETTER teacher than me,even though I am the “trained” teacher. He has a gift that is just a part of him.
I think writing is something that is a natural talent that you build upon. Whether through education or other means.
While I did go to college I did not grow up thinking that was the only way you could educate yourself. My dad is one of the smartest people I know. He dropped out of college when funds ran out. Intending to go back but then he got married, had kids. . .. . .etc. However, he started everyday reading the paper and he can talk about any current event for hours.
All that to say, I guess an author’s education doesn’t matter to me one way or another. It’s all about the story and does it reach out and grab me.
thanks for the correction JQ.
What I failed to make clearly is that this is a reader issue. Some amount of the reading public deems academic credentials as important or it wouldn’t be used in marketing. Maybe we readers feel better about the genre because we can say these academic elites walk among us. Whatever the reason, my suggestion to readers us that the connection between where someone went to college or how many degrees they have are not directly proportional to the quality of the book.
The only way to be a writer is to read and write what you want to write.
Though I’m no Ivy League-er, I did a darn lot of writing as an undergrad. But writing about “dominant paradigms of heteronormativity in mainstream advertising,” “Said’s Analysis of the Western Imperialist Narrative Implicit in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park” or endless riffs on “postmodernism” do jack squat for you when it comes to writing fiction.
No matter how much formal education we have, all writers share a hard-won and not-so-secret knowledge: the only way to be a writer is to write.
Until you think up a story and get it onto the page, all your training, your education, and your theories about writing are, well, merely academic.
I gave a workshop last year and one of the comments from a woman in the audience went like this: “I want to write but I only went to high school, so I’m not qualified.” I almost wept. The idea that she would limit a dream because someone somewhere gave her the idea that a college education was a requirement made me kind of sick. I went to college. Loved college. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania and going to college opened up the world up for me, one where I met my now husband. But I would say college helped me as a writer only to the extent it helped me define who I am as a person. I probably could have gotten that definition somewhere else. I happened to get it in college.
And isn’t all the education and career talk about authors really related to marketing? People put down romance novels. So, as a way of knocking back some of the it’s-not-worthy crap, the industry pulls out folks with Ivy League educations and impressive careers as a way of saying - right or wrong - hey, we’re smart. So what? It’s marketing. Diana is a great example. Tess Gerritsen is another. Her being a doctor is interesting because she left medicine to write and she wrote HARVEST which used her medical knowledge. The connection is clear. Gerritsen would have be short-sighted not to work that angle. It’s an easy one for the press to pick up on. Does the degree make Gerritsen smarter than the rest of us or a better writer? I have no idea. I think it might make her promotion angle easier. The rest is part of her list of personal achievements - worthy and awesome, but not necessarily related to her writing talent. Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s different for each person. That’s why saying it is some kind of requirement for everyone strikes me as wrong.
I disagree, Julie. If people were saying that authors who went to Harvard, Yale, etc. were pretentious blow hards, I’d probably agree with you. I still get inordinately frustrated at those comments disparaging female MFA grads and literary fiction generally. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I think what’s being said here (and I can’t account for every comment, only the original post and the general tone of discussion as I am reading it) is a questioning of the way we tend to elevate (IMO artificially) authors who get degrees from certain places. The author, for example, who has an AA from a community college won’t be placing that prominently on her bio, but an author who has a Princeton diploma might, and that characteristic will come to represent her, in part, as an author. And yet, does it make the author *better* as a writer? I think that’s the question that’s being raised here.
I am a huge advocate of higher education for several reasons. First, I think college/university helps develop certain critical thinking and problem solving skills in a very focused and effective way. Education levels continue to correlate positively to many different things, from patterns of charitable giving to voting participation. And educational achievement is still the number one facilitator of social/economic mobility in the US (and educational achievement is predicted most strongly, btw, by parental educational achievement). To me, public education is still perhaps our most important democratic institution. And in addition to making a career in education, I have four degrees, three of them (all the advanced degrees) from top tier programs/schools. I’m also a product of private education and economic and cultural privilege, so I know a little something about how these factors play into the distribution of educational opportunities, as well as how school rankings don’t always correspond to the quality of education a student receives.
All that said, I don’t believe that authors are necessarily better or worse writers because they attend a top-ranked college or go on to earn an MFA (and my doctoral institution also graduated the likes of Michael Chabon, Whitney Otto, and Alice Sebold as MFAs). And I don’t think we should be judging them as such based on that. Not that either of those things can’t influence one’s writing craftsmanship. I know I became a better writer in grad school, not only because I had to do A LOT of it, but also because I had to teach it. But some of my professors and peers remained horribly convoluted writers, even though they were working in the Humanities and teaching. I have friends who swear by the writing experience and feedback and instruction they received in their MFA program. Others not so much. And many, many MFAs from my graduate institution continue to toil in relative obscurity, while the number of “stars” remains proportionately small, even though they were graduated from one of the tippy-top ranked writing programs.
In Romance, three of my favorite authors and IMO superior craftspeople — Judith Ivory, Jo Goodman, and Laura Kinsale — do not, as far as I know, have MFAs (IIRC, Ivory is a mathematician). Jennifer Crusie, who almost completed an English PhD, has made some very disparaging comments about her educational experience (which was, apparently, very different from mine). I’ve never been bowled over by some of the Ivy League-authored books (some I have and some I haven’t), even though I’m sure the authors are very bright and capable.
IMO, people should be proud of what they have accomplished, whether that be a diploma from Harvard or a GED obtained many years after the high school years have passed. What I don’t think, though, is that we should be measuring the quality or fitness of authors based on these educational markers — that is, these degrees do not make them superior as authors/writers. Now with someone like Peterfreund, as you said, her background was relevant to the subject of her first book. But honestly, I don’t think such a prominent advertisement is warranted or even necessarily wise as a *general* way to promote an author’s talent and/or craftsmanship. And as we continue to rely on it, IMO, backlash will eventually occur, just as it has with the disparaging attitude toward literary fiction you see with some genre readers.
This is an interesting topic. The core of this discussion is revolving around the age-old argument about the value of formal education over informal education. Jane sliced it even finer by introducing the relative value of an Ivy League education over other colleges when it comes to the creation of the most popular fiction in the world - Romance.
The larger question of your post…
…is establishing respect for the genre, well, that is an entirely different question. As it is, we have the folks over at Teach Me Tonight who explore the various themes, tropes, memes, patterns and archetypes found and established by the genre. Indeed their devotion and belief in the genre as literature* is so strong that they are founding an academic association and peer-reviewed journal to chop away at the bias in academic circles.
Perhaps we also need to have a greater understanding of the demographics of the readers of romance (a la this wonderful piece of info-pron from “>The Guardian from June 5, 2008.
Mind you, the categories will be very different, but this kind of graphic is a great way to illustrate the broad range of people who read the genre.
Another issue is the covers. Though they are getting more sober, there is also an affection for the old clinch covers - and apparently, the clinch and man-titty covers reallt sell well, or they wouldn’t still be used. Or, is that true? I’ve only read a little on this and most of that on Romance blogs.
Framing the genre. One last thought, George Lakoff, the linguist, (and other linguists) often points out that the reason prevailing attitudes to many aspects of modern civilization are prevalent is because of the way in which they are framed.
I bring this up because I believe that the way in which literature has been framed is core to the lack of respect the world has for “women’s” fiction in general and the Romance genre in particular. This is a really obvious thing to say, but the pervasiveness of the frame is found everywhere. Breaking or re-imagining the frame and establishing a new way to refer to this fiction will take time and discussion.
What ideas do readers have for “legitimizing” the genre as literature for the rest of the uninformed and blinker-wearing public? Note: I believe that Romance is legitimate literature. However, we are all aware that others do not believe it is a legitimate literature. NB: The debate on the merits of Romance as Literature is a completely different topic - perhaps to be discussed at another time.
***
As a long-time reader of genre fiction, I don’t really care if a writer has any kind of formal education. What I am first aware of is craft, and within a genre (be it Romance, SciFi, Fantasy, Mystery or any combination of the four), a sense of Art, if you will. The idea that an author can transcend a genre while still holding fast to the following elements that, to me, combines to make a strong book (I wish I could lay down bullet points):
-A strong core story
-A strong sense of the world in which the book is set - with a real sense of verisimilitude
-A sense that they have done their research (I noticed those mistakes in E. James’ first book, but forgave them because her characters were so well drawn and because she wrote well.)
-Grounded characters
-Reasonable character behavior
-Some sense of humor appropriate to the plot and character
One doesn’t need a degree or an advanced degree to understand how to tell a story.
That can come from native curiosity, a love of reading, a love of the story, and a fine sense of observation. Jane Austen didn’t have a degree (at that time, as we all know, she wasn’t eligible for one). However, she did have a strong grounding in grammar, was a keen observer, knew her world well and understood the greater world, and was, as we all know, a fine storyteller.
***
I agree with others re marketing:
As Miss Snark, the literary agent used to say (paraphrasing here), “Tell me where your book will be shelved.” We all know that this is the market at work.
So, if a publisher is willing to sign an author because the book is written by an Ivy League graduate and said publisher believes the book will sell really well out of the gate. . .There is not much a reader can do about that. That is a marketing judgment made by the publisher. . .Or is there? (Please refer to the above.)
That’s my two-cents.
Darn, “>The Guardian link didn’t work.
I’m trying again.
Yes, it is about marketing, and as you and others have pointed out, it can be very effective as a way to counter stereotypes about women and genre fiction. Which, again, goes to show the bias of the mainstream and its perceptions both of women and of genre fiction.
But still I think we need to separate the issue of credibility from capability, and I agree with Jane that there seems to be a bit of a conflation between these two concepts within the genre community.
Second try.
Perhaps we also need to have a greater understanding of the demographics of the readers of romance (a la this wonderful piece of info-pron from The Guardian. Mind you, the categories will be very different, but this kind of graphic is a great way to illustrate the broad range of people who read the genre.
Nora wrote:
,,~You don’t even need a college education. But it helps.~
I just disagree. I think it depends, entirely depends. Would college have helped me in this area? I believe, strongly, no. Would it help Other Writer? Very likely yes. Or maybe. Or absolutely. Or no.
It depends on Other Writer.>>
Sorry, Nora, I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t mean to generalize for all writers–I’m the first person to say that there is no correct way to write a book. And likewise, there is no correct way to “learn” to be a writer.
I do think, however, that to be a good writer –in the nuts and bolts sense of the word; storytelling is another matter entirely– you have to practice. You have to get your butt in the chair and do it. For a lot of people, however –and certainly for me– the sticking of the butt requires some motivation. I love to write. I really do. But I don’t know that I would have the discipline to write just for the sheer love of it. When I wrote my first novel, I needed that goal of seeing my book in a bookstore. Today I need deadlines. And when I was in college, I needed structure and requirements. I can say unequivocally that I would not have written twenty pages on the residential architecture of Antonio Gaudi my junior year of college if it had not been a college requirement. (And I LOVE the residential architecture of Gaudi. Enough so it’s one of the only term papers I actually remember something of.)
It’s kind of like the difference between aerobics and step-aerobics. If you’re lazy, you can go through aerobics without getting much of a workout. But with step-aerobics, even if you just go through the motions, you’re going to huff and puff because of the damn step. College is the step. It makes you write. You don’t need it, but it forces you to build a foundation of writing skills that you can build upon as a novelist. You can get those skills in a variety of other ways–but you have to be more focused. You have to work harder. You have to have more drive.
JQ, for whom college did not, apparently, teach me how to spell “unequivocally.” (I had to look it up.)
I’ve got about three years worth of a history degree. It remains to be seen if that has any bearing on my writing career, but I highly doubt it. For some people, I’m sure college can be great, providing those four years of practice others have mentioned. For other people, I can totally see how it would be a negative, locking them into one style of writing until they loose their own voice for a while.
Lunch time today, a coworker in our break area was talking away about the fact that I’m always writing on breaks and how she has a book she’s been working on for four years. “Well get back to it,” I wanted to snip. “And let me get back to mine.” :D
As you all can tell, I am having trouble with my link the The Guardian info-pron. If anyone wants to be sent the image, please e-mail me at rj748 at yahoo dot com.
I don’t think I know one writer who loves the actual *process* of writing. The words, the effect, what writing is and can be and might represent and accomplish — much love and passion for all that. But the drudge of doing it, the word-by-word work of crafting and refining it? Not so much.
:( I do.
Huh?
Well count me as the first one you know who loves it, then. When everything’s flowing, you’re suddenly doubling your normal word count, and you know exactly what happens for the next twenty pages? Bliss. Even edits can be fun sometimes, when you fix that one teeny thing that was off and screwing everything up.
That’s not to say it’s always fabulous, but every now and then. Just enough to keep me going.
Though I am not published, when I am writing other things, even my long entries to post on this blog, even training or technical docs, I enjoy the process.
There is nothing so satisfying as getting into a groove and following that line of thought until you need to stop - usually because you think of something new or need to clarify what you just wrote.
I just wish I could type better. :(
I also enjoy the editing. I have no problem combing through what I have written to check for clarity, syntax, logic, audience appropriateness, etc. It is also good to be challenged and be asked to discuss or defend what you have written - especially the internal logic of a paragraph or sentence. It is important, no matter your kind of writing, to be clear.
Hence Jane’s love of bullet points! :)
Eh, I do. I can see how some people may see it as hard to love, but when I’m lost in a story, sometimes, it’s even better than reading a story. Not that I necessarily think I’m putting out anything good, but losing myself to the story, one that I’m creating? It’s an awesome feeling.
Now something I don’t love, something I can definitely consider drudgery…edits. I hate edits. Sad sigh. I have some waiting for me, too. They are a necessary evil.
I’m with you on this one. I love when the ideas are flowing around so fast they make my head spin. I love the creative adrenaline shock when things are flying. But… on those days it’s not (probably about 2/3 of the time) I like to think of it as my own little, self-imposed hell.
Nothing is so boring or frustrating as sitting at a computer, hands poised and ready for action, and having to scrounge around your vacant head for just the right words.
You know, the media loves a good “rags to riches” story just as well. Who doesn’t know that J.K. Rowling was on a single mom on welfare when she wrote the first Harry Potter? Perhaps an author’s personal background and her educational achievements are irrelevant. As readers, should we discount all of these details, or only the ones that (supposedly) suggest elitism?
I admire Julia Quinn and the other Ivy League authors. Graduating from a prestigious university is a major accomplishment. I’m continually surprised and delighted by the company I keep as a romance writer.
I’m also impressed by those who’ve struggled to accomplish their goals without a degree. As for me, I went to a continuation high school and a community college. After I transferred to a 4-year university, 100% of my tuition was covered by grants. My education hardly rivals that of a Harvard grad, but it cost almost nothing and I’m damned proud of it.
This happens a lot in England.
Writing programs don’t teach you “how” to write (at least not in my experience and I went to one of the top two creative writing programs in the country for undergrad and the best one on the West Coast for my MFA). I see this misconception a lot so I couldn’t resist debunking it here. Writing programs have you spend a certain amount of time reading, critiquing and studying what the professors consider great writing, and they have you spend a TON of time WRITING and critiquing each other. And it’s that last part that is truly educational. No, not the writing, the critiquing. Learning what works for you, why it works, why it doesn’t work, and how to fix it was vastly useful to me as a budding writer.
I recently got talked into attending a day-long workshop with Margie Lawson. It was obvious that this was the first time most of the people in the room had actually thought about the things Margie was talking about. Many of the attendees clearly found the process of studying their own work and of actively thinking about its structure mind blowing. I was dumbfounded that everyone wasn’t doing this already. Why? Because that’s what you’re taught to do in any writing program worth its salt. What Margie teaches all over the country and gets paid good money for is basically a teeny-tiny bit of what you get from a good creative writing program. I hear constant buzz about how wonderful her workshops are, so it seems to me that lots of writers are hungry for this type of instruction.
Do you need a BA or an MFA to be a great writer. Obviously not (hello Nora!). But I wouldn’t give up what I see as the benefits of having earned an MFA for anything (and they’re totally internal; I’m well aware that having an MFA won’t help you sell genre fiction).
Count me in on this one too. There’s something wonderful about struggling and then managing to jump the fence on your way through a story’s development. It can definitely be frustrating at times, but when you land on the other side, it’s damn exhilarating.
~I don’t think I know one writer who loves the actual *process* of writing. The words, the effect, what writing is and can be and might represent and accomplish — much love and passion for all that. But the drudge of doing it, the word-by-word work of crafting and refining it? Not so much.~
I actually do. I’m in love with the process.
As with any love, there are certainly times I hate it, or am frustrated with it. But I love the word-by-word work.
Julia, I certainly agree re the practice. I just believe different people practice differently. I think because I do love the actual process–and I have more than my share, perhaps, of discipline and guilt–I’ve always practiced lots.
I would not have done so well if I’d been ‘assigned’ the work. It’s outside that love for me, and my process. I did well in school, but I can’t say I thrived. And I hated it, couldn’t wait to be out of it.
Different methods, different ways of practicing the craft.
My older son just hated college. My younger bloomed and thrived. The older has used basically nothing he studied in his career. The youngest has a career that reflects his major.
I absolutely believe a college education can help some writers improve their craft. I so believe it’s not the only way to improve and practice.
Kalen - I see what you are talking about as training a person as to the paradigm which I think can be important. It helps you extrude the work and it can help you polish it but from a reader’s standpoint (and I know you don’t say this or assert this but just wanted to make the point) it is important that we don’t rely upon the credentials of the author in judging whether we should buy the book.
HelenKay - I agree that it is a marketing technique and a good one from a marketing and authorial standpoint. But only because we readers respond to it in a positive way. I.e., we readers elevate authors who have the pedigree. I also think that by using the pedigreed authors as a way to “prove” the quality of the romance genre is a dangerous and fallacious thing simply because I don’t believe that an analysis would prove this to be true. It could actually hurt the romance genre - i.e., see even the pedigreed authors can’t write worth shit (and I am not saying that anyone I named can’t write worth shit, I’m just making a broad generalization here).
To some extent I see the elevation of the academic credentials similar to AS SHOWN ON TV or the OPRAH WINFREY’S BOOK CLUB endorsement. Let’s say that Oprah finally recommended a romance novel. Would the genre suddenly be respectable because of it? Respectability to should rest upon the quality of the genre and not the biography of those who write it. I think it also comes down to the idea that its all about the book and not about the author.
I don’t mean to hijack this conversation, but who are these people? I don’t know a single unemployed person who went to an Ivy. Lots of people change their careers or move on from their major (cough *me* cough), but they are doing something.
Hear hear, having worked with lawyers for many years, I’ve learned that higher education - which I have not - does not make for a more intelligent or talented person.
I’m sure others have said it but you don’t need a degree to be able to write well.
Someone mentioned that JKR was uneducated and a single mother on benefit but that’s not strictly true, true she was a single mother (and on benefit because that’s how our system works over here) but Rowling graduated in 1987 from the University of Exeter with a degree in French and Classics!!!
Since I’m supposed to be editing, I haven’t read all the comments (got to 55 or so, I think), but I just wanted to toss in my two cents.
My degree is in costume design (started out in Drama) from North Carolina School of the Arts. Took lots of literature courses to fulfill my academic requirements, remember precious little from any of them. While I’m sure my experience at NCSA fine-honed my already borderline obsessiveness about seeing a project through, the degree itself had no bearing whatsoever on my writing — which I didn’t begin seriously, BTW, until my early forties. I was not one of those kids scribbling stories in the first grade — had no stories to tell, then.
Wasn’t until I’d spent roughly four decades of observing my fellow humans muddling through this thing we call life that I felt ready to turn those observations into fiction. The good news is, not only had I been an avid reader from very early on, but I’d had the basic tools of grammar drummed into me by some of the best teachers the Baltimore City school system has ever seen. Even though I wasn’t writing fiction, I knew how to write *before* I hit college, as did everyone I shared classes with…which saddens me greatly, because I see far too many high school students today who seem to be lacking those basic tools of grammar, punctuation and syntax that I took for granted as part of my education in the ’sixties.
Of course, fiction writing was a whole ‘nother learning curve — and yes, count me in the camp that believes that storytelling requires talent, and that talent is a gift. Good writers aren’t necessarily storytellers, or have that insight into human nature to write “real” characters. Conversely, plenty of people have stories that stay in their heads for lack of ability to translate their ideas into words. Magic happens when you have a confluence of imagination, craft, and discipline — and that doesn’t happen as often as some might think.
Certainly, one has to learn the craft from somewhere (and the writer who doesn’t learn language skills early on is at a definite disadvantage, since it’s been proven that language structure is harder to assimilate as an adult than as a child — not impossible, just harder), so education certainly has its uses. ;-) But writing is not only such a ephemeral thing — that coalescence of experience and skill that many of us can’t even define — but a personal one, as well. What’s vital and precious and priceless to one writer would have been a waste to another, whose own, vastly different experiences have shaped *her* into the writer *she* is, or will become.
There are no “better” ways, only “different” ones.
I’m going to have to come down on the side of loving the process. Not today, of course, since I’m supposed to be editing, and not hanging out here. But generally? I’ve had jobs that were ‘manual labor-no brain needed’, and one where the boss locked the fire exit, to make sure we didn’t sneak out.
In comparison, there is nothing better than a good day of writing.
And I also must have been the worst college student in the world. Undergrad from University of Wisconsin, not Ivy League, but an excellent school; double majored, theater and English. But I was one of those people who did the minimum of work for the maximum result. If the sun was shining, I skipped the class. I slept in the library. A lot. My papers were consistently late, badly typed and a half page short. But I was a strong writer, and smart enough so none of the bad behavior killed my grade point.
Except for the only class I took where we studied Jane Austen. That one I flunked outright because I never went to it.
And that was my background for writing historical romance.
I made friends, discovered Chinese food, saw lots of movies, and had a great time. And the part of my degree that I used for work was for technical theater, and I didn’t need school for that. I wouldn’t call myself willfully ignorant. I was just interested in learning things that weren’t part of the curriculum for the classes I took.
After the kids were born, I dropped out of theater, and went back to school for a masters in library science. I was a quite a bit better at deadlines, but school still wasn’t the main priority in my life, and the writing was a necessary evil.
When I decided to write fiction, it was totally from love of the craft, and a hunger to prove myself. And it was unlike anything I’d written before. The research, the grammar, the reading, writing and re-writing were all things I did by choice. And since it was my decision, I did it with a light heart.
When the time was right, I found the self discipliine to do what I wanted. But I sure didn’t get it from school.
It’s one thing, I think, for a writer to feel that a program helped them become a better writer. It’s quite another, IMO, for certain names in education to be sold as some kind of guarantee of quality writing. In the first case, there is an articulated relationship between the work the author has done in school and the strength of their craftsmanship — it’s a personal measurement of growth and competence. In the second, the only thing being presented is an ambiguous notion of “excellence” that circulates without context. Which is why, fwiw, institutions like Stanford now reject the US News and World Report rankings. Bill Readings did a wonderful analysis of the cult of excellence in his posthumously published book, The University in Ruins. If the relationship between certain types of education and the writer’s experience are expressed substantively and relevantly, I think it can be very powerful, but as a superficial endorsement, not so much, IMO.
People come out of all schools — public, private, community colleges, Ivy League, whatever — with degrees they couldn’t afford that can’t directly get them a job. They do this for many reasons, but one of which is one we’ve been bouncing around: the idea that if you don’t have a degree, you can’t do what you want to do, whatever that is. Ugh.
And, Caroline, here’s an example (I count ‘underemployed’ as unemployed) from five years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/business/yourmoney/26ivys.html?ex=1382500800&en=9e13d5cf7ca23d18&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
If only 77.6% of Harvard Business School graduates could get a job by graduation (down TEN PERCENT from the year before), I hate to know what the job stats on Harvard graduates with B.A.s in music or art history are. (I can say that. I have a degree in music history.)
I think that writers who love the process are incredibly lucky, but I have to share this perspective, because I understand it so well, lol.
Well add me to the non-college-grads who’ve pulled off this writing thing. Got halfway there, then got distracted with hubby and babies and life and just never finished.
I do not think it has hurt me at all in terms of my writing ability. Having an education can never trump being a person who loves words. I inhaled (and still do, when I have the time) anything I could get my hands on. I carried books around before I knew what all those squiggly letters were, and I wanted to write stories from the time I could hold a pencil. That made all the difference.
It also helped that I had a very eccentric aunt who used to bring me books, then quiz me on them the following week. She put Brave New World and 1984 into my hands when I was in 5th grade. I’d read all the so-called classics before I started middle school. Reading, in my opinion, was so much more important than sitting in any classroom listening to someone try to teach me how to be creative. (Must say, about my aunt, she and I debated my romance reading habit. Until I went through a history lesson with her on torture methods used during the Spanish Inquisition all because of a fabulous, rich, meaty historical I read called Come Faith, Come Fire. Anybody remember that book?)
Beyond being readers, I think writers are inherently people-watchers, as well. I got inspiration from snippets of conversation I overheard while ordering Happy Meals at McDonald’s when my girls were little. Other authors might have been getting them from the professors and classmates they interacted with at the very same time. Neither’s better than the other, IMHO, but like the point Jane made, they have a marketing hook that I just don’t.
That said–Nora’s “wrote my first book when my kids were driving me crazy because they were housebound in a snowstorm” has always been a good marketing hook. And (as a stay-at-home mom) was something that really inspired me. Especially because I was living nearby and SO remember that snowstorm!
Oh, one more thing: I read Eloisa James’s first book when it came out. And as an avid regency reader, I absolutely noticed the problems. However, her voice was utterly magnificent, and for that reason, she won me as a reader for life. It wasn’t her degree, or her credentials, it was all about the storytelling.
As a reader, it all comes down to, “Can you tell a Story?” All the education in the world is useless if you don’t have