Do You Need a Degree to Be a Writer?
This question is silly ironically enough, you maybe found this post googling that very same thing Do you need a degree to be a writer? As Ive often mentioned, the answer to any headline ending with a question mark is no. This is the case here, too. No, you dont need a degree to []
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Davyne
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Mar 23, 2020 10:20AM
I agree with you -- heck no! But also agree with you that my education expanded how I think and what I think about, and this, inevitably, made me a better writer.
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Indeed. I suppose any experience could make someone a better writer (provided they have the maturity of mind to reflect on it critically or, perhaps more importantly, from an affective perspective), but education has the added benefit of teaching you a thing or two about the subject, too.
No, life itself gives you a degree, if you're paying attention, and have a God-given talent. Some great writers suggest that believing that a degree, or studying the craft in an academic setting can make you a writer, or a better writer, is fallacy at best, a hinderance at worst.“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.” ― Ray Bradbury
“A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.” — James M. Cain
