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Mon Jul 29, 2013 6:25 pm
elliedee96 says...



So I'm in college and I'm just about to choose what course I should take at University, I was going to do Biology but I really want to be published once I've finished writing my first book. Would taking English make me more attractive to publishers or doesn't it matter?

I could really do with some help..


Thank you, Ellen
  





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Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:38 pm
Rosendorn says...



Doesn't matter.

Publishers are looking for all types. All degrees can help you with writing, because writing is not exclusive to any one discipline. In fact, writing pulls from all disciplines, because you have to know about:

Biology- All life in its entirety (up to and including human anatomy, animals, forests, biomes but there is a lot more; depends on your subgroup of biology)
Sociology/Anthropology- How cultures behave in general
Medicine- Injuries and remedies
Chemistry- What happens when you mix elements
Physics- How things move
Linguistics- The very foundations of languages and building them
History- Studying the past to know where we come from
Marketing- Both your own business of being a writer, and how much propaganda influences the world
Geography- Knowing what actually makes sense when it comes to maps
Psychology- How individual people tick

And more. Including more hands on skills (cooking seems to be one constant) than I care to shake a stick at.

Get the gist?

You also really have to consider your job prospects. Writing is not an easy way to make a living. Professional writers are often journalists and they only cut off their columns when they have a huge base of writing work to pull from. Seeing as how absolutely everything you can do at university will be helpful somehow, take what you want to do and run with it.

Learning English is a case of reading critically. See what you like and don't. See what works for you and what doesn't. What is typical in any given genre, what you'd like to see in those genres. Read wildly. All media, all genres. Study what makes a story tick. What's plausible? What's not? What feels forced and what feels normal?

That's what it takes to be a good writer. These are things you don't really learn in an English degree. You learn those by looking at other topics of study and thinking critically. One of my friends is taking an English degree and the writing coming out of her program needs a whole host of improvement (her writing is fantastic, but she's been on YWS for quite a few years). Meanwhile another friend of mine is in programming, only one or two creative writing classes under his belt, and his writing is absolutely spectacular. And dozens more writers never even went to college (Neil Gaiman comes to mind)

Study what you want and what you're passionate about. Writing will come regardless of what your education is.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Tue Aug 13, 2013 12:16 pm
Tenyo says...



Purely from a publishing perspective, it doesn't matter. When you send a novel to a publisher your blurb is your CV. The only lifetime achievements that matter are your plot points and your character reference doesn't matter, it's your fictional characters that do.

From a studying perspective, I've heard that most Art Degrees are real muse killers. I ditched school a lot, and there are some amazing books that I read as a kid that my peers hated because they had to study them, rather than take the time to enjoy them.

English degrees will require you to read books quickly and be ready to provide a report on them, which will encourage some really bad habits when it comes to enjoying them. Simply by being a writer you pick up unusual and sometimes joy debilitating practices. I quote from Rosie's signature "you can't read a book without analysing it for plot and characters."

Having a life outside of writing is essential- you may need to write in order to live, but you also need to live in order to write. A variety of experiences will give you fresh inspiration and biology is a good contrast and can take you to a broad spectrum of different places and environments.
We were born to be amazing.
  








akdsjfh you know that feeling where you start writing a scene but then you get bored with the scene so you move on and start writing a different scene and then you get bored with that scene so you move on to an entirely different WIP and then you get bored with that so you move on-
— AceassinOfTheMoon