It means, even under the worst possible scenario and you don’t get into the introductory course the first time, as a freshmen, you’re in no worse shape than you would be at the University of Iowa which is considered a top flight program.
I’m wondering if hedging one’s bets on a career in creative writing might be wise.
I get the attraction of the field. But I’m wondering if also pursuing a potentially more marketable degree would in parallel would be helpful. Could one do some type of education and creative writing? Or could one take some programmng at the same time as the creative writing?
Sorry, just to follow up on this.
I’ve just finished reading “The Undercover Economist”, so it is framing my thinking a bit.
I wonder if one of the difficulties in pursuing a career in writing is the lack of barriers to entry into the field. Essentially, anyone can write. Admittedly, fewer are able to write well, but there are still many, many people who can. If there is a lot of competition, the opportunities from profit are diminished.
However, someone who can write well and teach (for example) may possess a more distinctive skill set, and this could be more marketable.
@Mindfully, I agree with you. We have discussed the need for a backup plan. Teaching, clinical psychology and computer programming are all possibilities.
Many creative writing programs won’t let you write genre fiction. So do your homework!
For example see this post for things to think about and why: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/1313166-creative-writing-at-swarthmore-v-kenyon.html
@Mindfully I’m wondering if hedging one’s bets on a career in creative writing might be wise.
I get the attraction of the field. But I’m wondering if also pursuing a potentially more marketable degree would in parallel would be helpful. Could one do some type of education and creative writing? Or could one take some programmng at the same time as the creative writing?
I get what you’re saying, - very few will write the next great American novel - but writing is a skill so useful in a wide variety of other jobs, (and many people do it poorly) I say go for the writing degree. if it doesn’t work out or if you need a job while writing your novel, there are so many fields where writing is essential.
The obvious - publishing/media/news/magazines, but also grant writing for a non profit, corporate communications, public relations or social media for just about any company, advertising, speech writing, package copy, test prep/tutoring - the list goes on and on.
I’m afraid that there’s a real Catch-22 in this area: You can’t be certain that you will get into the courses you want if admission is competitive, and if admission is not competitive there’s a good chance you won’t want to be in that course. At the end of the day, creative writing, and especially fiction writing, is one of the most competitive fields on the planet. If you aren’t willing to face the competition at your college, you might as well start looking for another field now.
A few programs use the competitive screen right at the point of application. That seems to be limited to BFA programs, however. I thought Johns Hopkins used to do that for its Writing Seminars BA, but that seems not to be the case now.
My daughter gave a lot of thought to this when she was applying to college about a decade ago. She decided (with a great deal of advice from writers she respected who were then in their 20s) not to focus on going someplace with a strong creative writing major, because she probably would not major in creative writing. (According to them, the best career path was a substantive college major, followed by a joint MFA/PhD in some literature.) While she was in college and thereafter, she decided that the colleges with strong creative writing majors definitely did a better job of preparing students to be writers, but of course that did not remotely translate into guaranteeing them a career in writing. Ultimately, her own career plans changed – she got interested in other things, and learned that her ability to write well and to think well could earn her interesting, socially important work with steady pay and good benefits – things that were hard to achieve writing fiction.
According to her – and to others – the following colleges have strong creative writing programs within a BA-degree structure. This is a nonexclusive list – just everything I remember some meaningful discussion about:
– Princeton (amazing faculty, but you have to get into Princeton, and into their courses, and you have to resist the temptation to follow your peers into law, finance, or consulting)
– Penn (Kelly Writers’ House is a great resource)
– Columbia (the one in New York, not Chicago; one teacher with whom I spoke said the majority of her students there already had agents).
– Johns Hopkins (famous, longstanding program, one of the best, but you can’t enter until junior year)
– Brown (huge program, lots of faculty and courses)
– Carnegie-Mellon (there’s a reason Pittsburgh keeps cropping up in novels and films)
– Kenyon (one of the oldest, and still going strong)
– Wesleyan (much discussed already here)
– Bennington, Sarah Lawrence (lots of successful alums . . . )
It’s so tough to make a living as a writer, that pretty much any college that wants to, and certainly any college within a couple hundred miles of New York City, can have a roster of high-quality, brand-name authors to teach advanced creative writing classes. And they do.
That said, with one exception (a recent graduate of the MFA program in screenwriting at USC), the young people I know who have been able to support themselves writing did not major in creative writing, and do not primarily write fiction. And all of them had a period at the outset of their careers when they weren’t eating regularly, at least not off their earnings from writing.
@JHS, Thanks, lots of good info to think about here. She is interested in Brown and Penn. As discussed, there are many reasons why a double major might be a good plan so I am not sure whether Princeton would be a good option. Kenyon, she is also applying to their summer program so perhaps she will learn more if she attends that. I suspect she would not like Johns Hopkins if you can’t enter the writing program until junior year–you are talking about the writing seminars? Will look into the others.
Although she doesn’t want to be in a cornfield or cow pasture when she steps off campus, she does enjoy cross country running so between that and the expense of NY, not sure about Columbia. Does having an agent mean that you already have had some commercial success, or just that you hired an agent?
Yes, I realize that culture and cross country are rather conflicting desires. Hopefully some more campus visits will sort this out. She is not asking for an opera house, more like the sort of place where there are coffee shops where writers might hang out or independent booksellers that might host small events.
I’m not sure I buy the idea that she won’t make it in writing if she can’t get into creative writing classes at these top schools. Is it really much harder for a good writer to become successful than for a good student to be admitted to Princeton? The programs you mentioned have top notch students, but if the few writing instructors there don’t like her as well as that competition, does that really mean much? Suppose as a freshman she applies to 3-5 classes and doesn’t get in, should she give up at that point? I have heard that Harry Potter was rejected by 20 publishers, so evidently it’s not so easy even for professionals to identify what will be successful.
@mathyone : I think it’s much, much harder for a good writer to become successful than for a good student to be admitted to Princeton. Especially if you are talking about “literary” fiction, a field where, as a practical matter, “success” means getting someone to give you a day job that pays you enough to live on and leaves you time to write and think. The number of people who could actually support themselves writing literary fiction of the sort taught in creative writing programs is tiny, and I’m not certain the net number even increases year to year. If you open it up to include genre fiction (like Harry Potter, detective novels, science fiction, chick-lit rom-coms) and screenwriting you will get a number of others, but it’s still pretty small, and it’s not clear that alumni of quality undergraduate creative writing programs have much of a leg up. (Top MFA programs, like Iowa’s, pretty clearly do provide a leg up, for a very small number of people.)
It is not really possible to go out and hire a literary agent, unless you are already a celebrity. In most creative fields (music, writing, acting, art), agents are the first-level gatekeepers. The first step toward professional status is having an agent (or someone like that) decide that you are worth spending time on. And people at the next level – the publishers, producers, etc. – know that if you have an agent it means someone knowledgeable thinks you have what it takes, which is a big deal.
By the way, the exception I noted above graduated from the *BFA/i program at USC. That program pretty much promises, and pretty much delivers, 100% employment to its graduates. But it’s much more like an apprenticeship than like liberal arts college.
Princeton’s creative writing program began in 1939, one of the very first university-based programs. Here, from a 2009 article, is its brag list of alumni:
I note that it leaves out the person who is almost certainly the most economically successful graduate of the Princeton program, at least as a writer of books: Jennifer Weiner, '91. Still, that’s an awfully short list for a tippy-top program with probably over 1,000 graduates.
D1 is a writer. She does not support herself financially with the writing so is working full time as a server. She moved from southern California (where she went to college) to NYC late last year. She loved the great weather in Socal but wanted the cultural, especially literary, opportunities of New York. My advice for anyone wanting to become a writer is twofold: (1) write; and (2) learn how to market one’s writing. D has been published online (that is, other than on her own blog) a few times, including once in the Washington Post. D sometimes thinks that to become a well-known writer these days, what one writes is less important than who one knows. I try to encourage her through those moments, although I suspect she might be correct. I mean, I love Lena Dunham, too, but I suspect her connections have more to do with her success than that she attended Oberlin.
Maybe. As you noted, maybe they left off successful people who they felt weren’t highbrow enough, or didn’t want to list too many people who failed to win a prestigious award, even if they are selling a decent number of books. My daughter is not averse to writing genre books. I’m not expecting her to win the Nobel prize but I’ve seen plenty of books out there which I feel would not have been beyond her talent to write.
@rosered55, just curious, has she tried unsuccessfully to get into a more writing-related day job, or does she just prefer the sever jobs?
She has made some modest attempts to get into day jobs that might be more writing related, but she has found that she likes the social aspects of being a server and she makes a decent amount of money at it. She does not think she would be happy at all at an “office” job. One drawback of restaurant work, at least at a successful restaurant, is the intensity of the work. She has said several times that serving often leaves her too tired to write or paint when she’s at home. But she seems to be thriving in New York, despite the rigor and stress of her restaurant job.
@mathyone
NYC has some really great places to run, so don’t rule out Columbia for that reason
It is insanely difficult to make a living solely by writing ANY genre of books. I know a writer who, at the age of 55, just now makes enough money to support his family…and he’s been a published author for thirty years (he’s written books, book reviews, essays, opinion pieces, freelance articles, short fiction -you name it, he’s written it).
He’s told me more than once he never could have made it without a working wife and a very generous father-in-law. And this is a really good writer.
I have to agree with JHS: I think it’s much easier to get into Princeton than it is to be a “successful” writer - depending on how you define success. If your definition of success includes supporting yourself solely through writing (and especially writing fiction), then it’s really, really hard to do.
Oh, and this writer friend is pretty dismissive of creative writing programs. He says his best training was writing papers (lots of papers in lots of different subjects) and working on the campus newspaper…back when every college had a campus newspaper.
That list isn’t so highbrow! And I have been trying to find others, without much success. I think leaving out Weiner was more likely an oversight than a deliberate choice. You know who else is probably a Princeton creative writing graduate? Ellie Kemper, star of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Her bio just says “English major,” but her involvement with improvisational comedy during college makes it likely she was doing creative writing.
I don’t know who is “averse to writing genre books.” There are thousands and thousands of people out there writing genre books. Writing a successful genre book is a great accomplishment.
I had two friends who wrote published mystery novels. One won an Edgar for her first book, which was sensationally entertaining, good enough to have been re-issued 15 years later, although it never had big sales She self-published one other book in the past 25 years. The other had a series of seven novels featuring the same protagonist, published over 15 years. They were critically successful – deservedly so – won prizes, were widely distributed, and I think remain in print. They were groundbreaking in their day based on the protagonist’s identity politics. A couple were optioned for films that never got made. The author never made enough to quit his day job. He went dark for over a decade, but recently published a new, historical novel with an academic press (i.e., no advance, little promotion).
These are really, really fine books. It’s just a difficult way to support yourself, without a lot of luck.
Re: Lena Dunham. Her contacts certainly helped some, but fundamentally she got where she is because she came home from college and made an absolutely brilliant, funny no-budget film starring her friends, her mother, and her sister, and largely filmed at her parents’ apartment. Oberlin definitely punches above its weight for creative people, though.
For the purpose of this discussion I would define a successful writer to mean supporting yourself primarily by doing the type of writing you enjoy. Not that any publication isn’t a success, but if you aren’t at that point you need a day job and a student planning college needs to think seriously about what that might be.
A model I’ve seen work: do a great undegrad program in creative/fiction writing then move on to a quick 1- or 2-year masters in something like social work, education, sustainable business, etc. Or, do that great writing undergrad program but also double-major in management, etc. With strong internships, that can work well. Remember that for a fiction-writer, a day job as a professional writer (advertising, media, etc.) can scratch that writing itch just enough so there’s no ambition left at the end of the day to do the creative writing.