Hello,
I've just joined this community and want to ask a question that might seem obvious.
When you start your first novel, can you just do it, or do you need to do some kind of degree or creative writing course? Is there some magic secret? I suspect that I need to build my confidence as a writer, because it feels like people who actually write seriously are in a different world from me. What has helped you develop your confidence?
Let's see:
Cervantes had a creative writing degree from Princeton.
Dostoyevsky attended summer writing workshops in Swindon (and later in Basildon).
Thomas Hardy studied "The Meaning Of The Novel" at Oxford.
Steinbeck and Bellow were both regular students at the Cape Cod Summer Writing Camp.
Kafka was more of a Winter man. And Doris Lessing was a Winter woman. Both attended "Auntie Jule's [pronounced Yula] Xmas Novel Workshop" in Venice. (Auntie Jule was herself from Denmark.)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a bit of a disappointment to her Cambridge tutor, the one who coached her through "Sustaining Side-Aching Humour In The Longer Novel". ["She got A+ on that course," he later lamented. "And what did she do with it??? What a wasted talent!"]
Little known facts. (Mostly because they're not true.)
It IS true that Dickens worked as a journalist before he became a novelist. But note: he was WORKING as a journalist, not studying Journalism at university.
Writing courses and degrees might help. But they're certainly not necessary. If you want to write, as Gigi has pointed out, you write.
Best of luck!
Hi Gigi,
Thanks for your message! Like you, I started writing at a young age, and it was my childhood dream to be a writer! But later on, when I started university and then work, I got out of the habit. Now I'm 32 and am reassessing what I really want to do in life, and want to do writing more seriously now, and it seems like I somehow need to do it differently as an adult, but perhaps I just need to do it without thinking about how, the way I did it years ago, before I started to worry about how to do things 'properly'!
Thanks for your thoughts.