were you 'taught' or did you learn to write on your own?

So far self-taught, but I'm about to start a fiction writing course with Gotham which I'm looking forward to. I don't think the course is necessary by any means but I hope it will be fun, and beneficial in some way.

I don't have any statistics on successful authors' educations, but having quickly googled some authors I've read recently (all contemporary) it looks like many of them have done creative writing courses, either at degree level or short courses (one actually taught a course also), or have a related creative/arts-based education - Haruki Murakami studied Theatre Arts, for example.

 

Taught myself. Still wish I had the cash to do a creative writing course or go to some writers' conferences though.

However, maia, having an English degree doesn't mean you were taught how to write. At least in England, an English Literature degree focuses you on analysing texts in their cultural and political contexts and you're dissecting the book's message more than anything else. You write essays, but that's about as much writing as you'll ever do.

And as for English Language - I'm not even sure you can do it by itself as an BA? I'm not too sure but I think that would be focused on syntax and punctuation etc - still not actually writing.

A more accurate higher education course for your poll would be Creative Writing or perhaps Journalism - but not English.

 

Learned it all on my own.

 

I've never had any fiction writing classes - it's just been something I've always done.

And I'd agree with Mckk about the English degree - one of those doesn't teach you how to write any more than a Maths degree teaches you how to do sums.

 

Both? I've taken writing courses, but nearly everything of value I learned on my own.

I have been writing since I was probably ten or so. I took a few "creative writing" camps during the summer of middle school, but it was mostly parents with books of writing prompts sitting kids in front of computers. There weren't any creative writing classes offered in my high school.

In college, I took a "Writing Poetry" course which was awesome. I had never written poetry before and thought I didn't like it, but it turns out I was just reading the wrong things. My professor was brilliant, and the other students in the course were really knowledgeable and gave great feedback. So, in a way, I guess I was "taught" poetry.

But, this past semester, I took a general "Creative Writing" class. It was open to all majors, and most of the other people in the course were freshmen (I'm a senior). That's not inherently a bad thing, but most people had never really written before, so workshops just meant I got comments like "well done" and "I like your character." I'm not even really sure that I would have benefited from that course as a new writer, anyway. It was really poorly organized and the grading was strange.

So, most of what I know about writing I learned from reading and writing on my own. I really wish there was a group of writers who got together near me where we could read and comment on each other's work. So, instead, I came here. I feel like how to critique (from reading other comments that were not helpful) was really the benefit to me taking the writing courses (well, that and my Concentration).

 

my apologies for not having made the choices specific enough... i was mainly just wondering how many here 'went to school' to 'learn how to write'... and obviously should have worded the poll better...

however, it still got you all thinking about how you learned to write and enabled you to share your 'paths' with each other... and that is a good result from a poor poll, imo...

thanks!

love and hugs, maia

[now, does anyone have reliable stats on the percentage of successful authors who have any sort of english/writing degrees?]

 

I'm curious - what are you hoping to understand once you've got those stats?

 

Where do you live, Blenderpie? Have you tried googling to see if there are any groups in the city near where you live? Also, try searching meetup -- I found a few in the Philadelphia area that way. I'm sure most larger cities have groups of writers who meet. It is really nice to meet in person with other writers.

 

This is a hard thing to gauge. It depends on what you mean by 'successful.' One book traditionally published? Two? Five? Ten? Does one or more have to be a NYT bestseller? Top ten? On the charts for 6 mos, a year? two years? Or book award winners? MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipients? Or having made some minimum amount of money? (Also, I'm assuming you're limiting your question to fiction writers. It's going to become murkier for writers of non-fiction, and the percentages with specialized writing degrees would plummet.)

John Grisham's written over a dozen commercially successful books. Is he more or less successful than Harper Lee, who wrote only one? How do you compare Lee Child, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Michael Crichton, Janet Evanovich, Nick Hornby, J.K. Rowling, E.L James, Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, Jonathan Kellerman, Scott Turow, etc. They're all 'successful' but for different reasons. And what of authors like Fitzgerald and Hemingway? How do you compare them? Or authors with one large success, like Yann Martel, whose biggest success was Life of Pi, which is now a movie?

So, it's a tough group to even categorize, let alone determine who had specific degrees directly related to writing. (Plus what would be required -- MFA? Degree in English? Specifically literature or specifically writing? Would journalism count?) Clearly Diaz and Wallace do/did and even teach/taught writing. Martel does not. Crichton was an M.D. Grisham and Turow were (are) lawyers, who have J.D.'s but I don't think either has a writing degree.

I really appreciate your inquiry, Maia, and I actually enjoyed reading the responses everyone had -- it was very interesting to see the different paths. But I'm not sure there's an easily ascertainable answer to your question of how many authors have some sort of academic writing pedigree. It seems like there are too many variables involved to get an exact percentage.

 

Most of them are communicating which doesn't have a lot to do with writing.

 

I was always taught writing was communicating.

 

Is there such a thing as "reliable stats"? Even if you know the details of the sampling methods used?

 

My degree is is Graphic design, and nearly all the classes I took had to do with art and illustration. I have taken English classes, of course, as they were requirements, but very rarely did I enjoy them. The one that got me hooked on writing, though, was my in my Junior year of high school, when we were assigned to write a short story. LOVED IT. I kept writing after that, but devoted my few precious tuition dollars to art classes.

 

I would call myself completely self taught. I was born and raised in Holland, and until the age of twenty-two did not even visit an English speaking country. I've never followed a writing course or workshop. First I started to write in Dutch, but for the past twelve years I've been writing in English. Right now I'm working on the last chapters of 'The Queen's Trilogy', my first work.

 

I've basically taught myself by reading, but I have taken college English classes. They really helped me polish up my grammar. Style wise though, I've taught myself.

 

I

I get that. And I agree that writing is communication. I never said it wasn't. But communication doesn't always have a lot to do with writing. Obviously if you write you are communicating something to someone. Writing is the act of putting pen to paper, or quill to parchment, or stone to wall etc. Communicating is making someone understand what you are trying to say. Getting the message across. Writing, smoke signals, sign lanuage, even eye contact are all communication.

My point is that those people on social networking site reeling out the 'Hey yous' spiel, couldn't give a damn about writing, as we know it. All they care about is communicating their message. And as far as that goes, they are successful, no matter how poor their language skills.

I did put both 'communicating' and 'writing' in italics because I thought that way that no-one would take the words in their basic literal sense. Seems my writing skills are (hopefully) o.k., but my communication skills are lacking.

 

Of course I learned writing in school, at least as long as you talk about simply writing. I doubt there is many people who learn to write by themselves.
However, I do consider my creative writing rather self-taught. I've loved writing stories since I was about 9 or 10 and never stopped writing stories in school.
On the other hand, though, almost all my stories has been corrected and read through by either my parents or a teacher, which has helped me a lot. And I've also grabbed a great lot from this forum, the short time I've actually spent here.

(Though what I recommend the most is simply reading other books. A greater source of knowledge and inspiration cannot be found on this side of life.)

 

nothing specific... a new member's intro post just made me curious... an all-encompassing curiosity is one of my lifelong blessed curses...

 

I am a mix of the first 3 options. First I was self taught and very poor at it but I loved it and I was encouraged by teachers to keep writing because of the ideas I had. In high school one teacher took me under her wing and really focused on teaching me how to write poetry during that same time I met real life authors like Stephanie Gertler and Johnathan Rabb through one of my mother's friends who is an editor. Mrs. Gertler helped me polish a few poems and short stories really teaching me how to set them up properly. Then in college I chose to minor in creative writing.

 

I was completely taught writing by reading alone.

I have not pursued an appropriate path in a college,
and did not hire a tutor or online courses.

There is really one way to learn writing.
Reading and practice; in that order.

 

Um, no. When it comes to writing, the only thing that can effectively be taught is the basic mechanics - though this is true of almost anything. For writing, it's essential to learn good grammar. I don't really care where you learned it, but as a writer I hope that you do learn it, and not merely by reading because there's a lot of crap editing out there. Take the basics seriously if writing is what you want to do.

Voice and style, on the other hand, are only "learned" and developed with practise.

 

I took Eng Comp, Surv Eng Lit, and American Lit in college. I don't regard myself as self-taught.

 

I was taught Grammar in school, actually.

Sorry for not mentioning that.

What I had meant by practiced learning was voice and style.

 

It drives me a little crazy when there's an insinuation that the basics can be learned intuitively. I know that grammar is still a weakness for me after several English classes, writing workshops, and published press releases. Our toolboxes need to be filled with more than the knowledge of where a period goes. Whole books are written on punctuation alone. Could be a bit of an inferiority complex for the moment when someone explains that I used a dangling modifier in a piece of writing, and why it's wrong.