The Path to Publication
If you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer, the plan is already laid out for you to follow. If you want to be an accountant, an Olympic athlete, an engineer, a librarian, a banker — do A, then B, then C. There’s never any guarantee you’ll be successful at anything — that’s the way the world works. But you have a set path to follow.
Want to be a writer? You’re on your own, kid. Good luck with that. Everybody takes a different route.
You can go to college, get a degree in English, or Literature. Get an MFA in creative writing or something similar. You could forget school altogether, sit your butt in a chair, write your heart out, and hope for the best. You could get a degree in social work, then write a book totally unrelated to your degree. Or go to school for awhile till  you run out of money, then write.
The truth is, there’s no right way to go about it. There are best-selling authors out there with doctorates, and there are some who barely finished high school. Unless a book is about a subject you can’t bullshit your way through, nobody gives a damn if you have a degree.
The Clan of the Cave Bear series could not have been written without Jean M. Aul having extensive knowledge of prehistory. It’s also interesting to note she holds an M.B.A., not the degrees in archaeology and anthropology you might expect. She learned all that stuff on her own. Honorary degrees followed, but her business degree isn’t what got her where she wanted to go.
I am by no means saying education is worthless to a writer. What I want to get across here is the lack of a path we have to follow. But there really is no degree program for getting a novel published. Knowledge of any kind is worth having, whether you get it from a classroom setting or crawling around in the woods looking at bugs in your free time.
Make your own path. Maybe it’s a winding path that takes you through college, marriage, kids, false starts, and ultimately lands you in a chair writing. Or maybe your path is straight and sure, writing a bestseller in high school, propelling you into a writer’s life from the very beginning.
The worst thing you can do is compare your journey to someone else’s. Get there however you can.
But do it your way.
That is exactly what I struggled with as I battered my way through my last year of college. After realizing what my degree would not do for me, I was angst ridden for a long time about it. Honestly it is what gives me cold sweats about pursuing an MFA. And is my biggest criticism about WU’s writing program is that there really could be more exposure to the practice of the craft. I can read what was successful for free at the library frankly. But I can’t have my notions about pacing, mood, color, plot structure and character development challenged by just anybody. Writers simply must write. Well, I could have stood some in class exposure to software like InDesign too.
The fact is most “writing programs” only prepare you (kind of) to enter the career world as a communications director or some such. But without being equipped with skills in layout, editing, and web design software we’re lack genuine marketable know-how. But that isn’t really about getting published as much as it is about getting a paycheck. Even an artist has to eat some how.
When I wrote this, part of me was thinking about the path you’ve taken and the struggles you’ve had with the decisions. WU is small, so your exposure is minimal. I’m grateful for what I learned from Tom and Amy. They pushed me out into the world. But I don’t know of any degree programs out there that teach you everything you need to know about the publishing industry, agents, how to build a platform, how to send in queries and submissions, the differences between the various types of markets, the differences between submitting an article, a short story, and a novel…
They simply can’t provide all that. It changes from one minute to the next. If they’d taught me all that when I was there, it would all be outdated now. E-publishing shifts everything. Even those working in the industry have to relearn as they go.
Still, everything you learn is worth learning, so don’t discount the degree you worked so hard to get. Do it for yourself, Justin, not for some mythical company that might hire you if you get another degree.