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Jun. 5th, 2007 10:54 pmThe question buzzing round my brain tonight is why I don't use data projection when I give talks.
The satisfied mumbles from my midriff are due to the delumptious food my Food in History class brought in this week (plum cake, brie tarts and stuffed aubergine).
The confusion hovering around it all comes from a conversation I had yesterday. A person (whose name I don't know) told me he will become a writer. I keep meeting folks who want to become writers, so wasn't terribly surprised by his dream. I made encouraging noises. Except it turns out he doesn't quite know yet if he can write. He hasn't written fiction or non-fiction and isn't quite certain of how one goes about it. He thinks a university degree will sort it all out.
The best writing degrees are very handy beasties. They can give you access to places you woudn't otherwise have access to and can help you see the industry more professionally earlier in the piece and they can help give you the discipline to stick with it and some really very handy skills (like editing). If you don't actually write, though, it all becomes moot.
Most people who talk to me about doing degrees have unfinished first novels somewhere or have started thinking about freelance journalism. There is stuff unsent and stuff sent and stuff agonised over. There are words on paper and words on computer and sometimes some rather cool fanfiction on the net under a pseudonym. This bloke has nothing. Just a dream of paying for a uni degree, studying his guts out, and turning into a writer by graduation time.
It's not an impossible dream, I admit. The thing that troubled me was his negative reaction when I suggested he write and send stuff off and get it published. Put a toe in the water, so to speak, and start making contacts and getting a clippings portfolio together. Now. Not after doing a degree. Nothing wrong with degrees - I have enough of them, I ought to know - but also nothing wrong with checking that you're spending so much of your life on something you want.
Writing is such an unpredictable thing for a career. You don't just need to know that you have talent for words and ideas, you need to know what level of passion you bring with you when you play with those words or ideas, and where your real skills and talents lie. And if you choose one of the more difficult paths (novels, for instance) success becomes harder.
For novelists, success isn't just about writing the best book you have in you (each and every time). It's about patience and dealing with self-doubt. It's about more patience and dealing with over-confidence. It's about patience and slowly unravelling the layers of complexity that comprise the worlds of writers and publishing. It's about patience and getting on with the next work while the last work slowly finds its way to market. It's about patience and realising you still need the day job. Those few who don't need the day job are to be emulated, certainly, but until any of us join their number, we should be patient and yes, keep the day job.
What the guy didn't realise was that first he has to want to write. He dreams of newspaper articles, not novels, so there's nothing stopping him getting his work in front of editors immediately. Also, he doesn't need the godlike degree of patience. He can get near-instant rewards for his work.
The other thing the guy didn't realise was that being a writer is a life, not a job. He wants to write so he can give up his day job - he's thinking of the university degree in the same way a would-be accountant thinks of a degree.
I wish him luck. My kind of writing and my vision of the writing world is so far removed from his that I can't be of any use to him. This is why I feel clouded by confusion. I really, really hate it when I can't help someone.
I also hate it when I start a post in one zone and finish in such a different one it feels as if I'm treading water. I suspect it means I've got more thoughts on this: they'll have to wait.
The satisfied mumbles from my midriff are due to the delumptious food my Food in History class brought in this week (plum cake, brie tarts and stuffed aubergine).
The confusion hovering around it all comes from a conversation I had yesterday. A person (whose name I don't know) told me he will become a writer. I keep meeting folks who want to become writers, so wasn't terribly surprised by his dream. I made encouraging noises. Except it turns out he doesn't quite know yet if he can write. He hasn't written fiction or non-fiction and isn't quite certain of how one goes about it. He thinks a university degree will sort it all out.
The best writing degrees are very handy beasties. They can give you access to places you woudn't otherwise have access to and can help you see the industry more professionally earlier in the piece and they can help give you the discipline to stick with it and some really very handy skills (like editing). If you don't actually write, though, it all becomes moot.
Most people who talk to me about doing degrees have unfinished first novels somewhere or have started thinking about freelance journalism. There is stuff unsent and stuff sent and stuff agonised over. There are words on paper and words on computer and sometimes some rather cool fanfiction on the net under a pseudonym. This bloke has nothing. Just a dream of paying for a uni degree, studying his guts out, and turning into a writer by graduation time.
It's not an impossible dream, I admit. The thing that troubled me was his negative reaction when I suggested he write and send stuff off and get it published. Put a toe in the water, so to speak, and start making contacts and getting a clippings portfolio together. Now. Not after doing a degree. Nothing wrong with degrees - I have enough of them, I ought to know - but also nothing wrong with checking that you're spending so much of your life on something you want.
Writing is such an unpredictable thing for a career. You don't just need to know that you have talent for words and ideas, you need to know what level of passion you bring with you when you play with those words or ideas, and where your real skills and talents lie. And if you choose one of the more difficult paths (novels, for instance) success becomes harder.
For novelists, success isn't just about writing the best book you have in you (each and every time). It's about patience and dealing with self-doubt. It's about more patience and dealing with over-confidence. It's about patience and slowly unravelling the layers of complexity that comprise the worlds of writers and publishing. It's about patience and getting on with the next work while the last work slowly finds its way to market. It's about patience and realising you still need the day job. Those few who don't need the day job are to be emulated, certainly, but until any of us join their number, we should be patient and yes, keep the day job.
What the guy didn't realise was that first he has to want to write. He dreams of newspaper articles, not novels, so there's nothing stopping him getting his work in front of editors immediately. Also, he doesn't need the godlike degree of patience. He can get near-instant rewards for his work.
The other thing the guy didn't realise was that being a writer is a life, not a job. He wants to write so he can give up his day job - he's thinking of the university degree in the same way a would-be accountant thinks of a degree.
I wish him luck. My kind of writing and my vision of the writing world is so far removed from his that I can't be of any use to him. This is why I feel clouded by confusion. I really, really hate it when I can't help someone.
I also hate it when I start a post in one zone and finish in such a different one it feels as if I'm treading water. I suspect it means I've got more thoughts on this: they'll have to wait.