I am a writer IN SPITE OF and NOT BECAUSE OF my formal education in writing
Dispelling the myth that learning writing makes the best writers
The other day someone asked me on TikTok if I studied writing (I did: English Lit at Bowdoin College, then Creative Writing at UW-Madison). She said she wants to write a book “BUT” she’s a nurse.
I’m fired up about her “BUT”!!
A nurse, in almost every single case, experiences more humanity, better stories, and more interesting conflict than almost any non-nurse writer I can think of.
Take “We All Want Impossible Things” by absolute legend and former hospice worker Catherine Newman. I like this book way more than a lot of the uppity novels I read in my MFA: the types of books that gaze at their own navels, as if to say, THIS BOOK HAS BEEN THROUGH MANY SERIOUS WORKSHOPS.
I think writing gets a reputation for being some kind of hard-to-achieve science. But writing is about personality more than anything else. The structure part, the plot part, and certainly the grammar part can all be ironed out—in fact, most writers (myself included) work with editors and copyeditors to help with those things. It’s simply no one’s expectation (at least in the professional writing world) that the idea person is also the everything person, when it comes to writing a book.
A book is a team effort, and if you have something to write about and if you enjoy writing enough to stick with it, you can absolutely write a book.
Not only that, but sometimes Writers with a CAPITAL W have nothing to write about except writing (I write this, painfully aware that I am writing about writing about writing).
That’s because writers whose whole thing is being writers spend all their time thinking about writing, and talking about writing. And that’s actually boring (again: I am quaking in self consciousness here).
The things that have made me a writer, in no particular order:
going to therapy
experiencing conflict with friends and feeling uncomfortable about it
failing
moving to Chicago and knowing no one
loving books
having way too many feelings to process without writing them down
reading Anne Frank’s diary at 10
the American Girl Library books
and most importantly, WRITING.
That last one is a little tongue in cheek: like, yes, obviously you need to write to be a writer. But actually, I’ve been surprised to learn how many self-identifying writers hate writing and actually rarely write.
Anyway, my point here is this: if you want to write a book, you’re already in a vast minority of people (many, understandably, would rather spend their time doing something easier and/or more lucrative and/or more fun).
So don’t censor yourself out of writing a book for reasons such as not having a formal degree in writing. Education has very little to do with it. I, personally, am interested in people. And if you’re literate, and a person who wants to write, you absolutely CAN write a book. Maybe even a good one!