Collegiate course possibilites for young writers

I think I should have done art and music in college.. that was where I would have felt most at home. Just a day or two ago, I was going through a christmas/chamber music station at pandora radio, and harmonizing along with the songs... and I had perfect and well developed harmonies to songs which I'd never heard before.

There are certain levels of safety... a singer who sings someone else's words for a living, has a really good niche. He can bring out all the nuances of meaning in that poem, and communicate it to the audience. He can have the limelight, and yet never be responsible for the product at the heart of his work. He never has to answer for his ideas. A photographer has the same wonderful niche. I have had tears of joy so often in church while singing.

I feel as exuberant about photography... I have no compunction about making a career with that skill

However, writing essays is the other end of the spectrum. There, you are producing a product - and fully responsible for the meat of it. People habitually treat writers despitefully - moreso than they treat owners of companies badly, who make a physical good.

And in the middle, of course, is fiction, and song... ambiguous forms of writing, which you yourself created... I always hear songwriters on npr, talking about how hard it is for them, because of how much guts it takes to express an idea - even in ambiguously worded way.

Further towards the safe side of the spectrum, is the modern art road... when a person actually creates something - but the symbology is very ambiguous - and doesn't even involve words...

And so you see - "stagefright" or being "shy" - is not an irrational feeling. It's based in something very real. You are adopting a vicarious relationship with many many people out there, that day. And if you are doing that, with your own ideas and your own words... you may have hell to pay someday, because of that.

Even Oscar Wilde - who decided to do fiction... had a serious problem, eventually, because of his immaturity. I look at those writings today, and I see them from that personal level. I know the inner passions behind them... But, I know that in general, people would look at them from a different persepective... his fairy tales are about the injustices of child labour - and it's very poignant. His novel - "the picture of dorian gray" is about vanity. And there isn't anything there, beyond that.

I understand the passions that went into those works. And passion is behind every good bit of literature... and these passions which make the best writing, are often about taboos, and controversial topics.

In our society, sadly, People will always make a game out of drawing into question the person's character who is writing. But that is a game, and they know that they're speaking a fiction. Certainly, a prosecutor making theatre in a courtroom around a famous person, will bring that sort of social game into play. I'm sure it happened with Michael Jackson. Neverland would have been a big topic in the prosecutor's theatre. And, of course, it was so with Oscar Wilde, too.

So, really it seems best for a young person with an inclination to be a writer to find a different profession for the first half of his life... perhaps elsewhere in the arts... making a living with singing or photography, or even a small internet business doing anything - perhaps making software. In the latter half of his life - in the 35-70 years - he can do his published writing, then. When you're going out the door, rather than coming in the door, you have less to lose, from infamy. People who think deeply, often develop passionate stances in regards to issues which are controversial or taboo - and these ideas are often outside the main.

And so, given my personality type, and the scope of my hopes and dreams in my early twenties, I realize I should have gotten the bachelor's in art and/or music. I was convinced I should get a degree in some aspect of writing composition. And eventually, I dropped out, without getting any degree at all - daunted by the prospect of a mountain of debt. I didn't feel that there was a writing program being offered in the early 1990s, which was worth the cost of that burden of debt.

I was talking with a young writer friend, the other day, who is wondering about his course of life at college. I told him that he needs to get a bachelor's degree in something. Do it in music, or art, or something fun and easy, if he likes. Young people would definitely be thinking, that credentials are what they need for the thing, which happens to be their greatest skill. The reality, however, is that if you want to have a broad life experience in many areas - you should focus on many things that interest you, in college; and the cold hard fact, is that for any job which requires using your mind, you need a bachelor's degree - that's the first filter in any hiring process... even if you have a magnificent resume - the person who's looking at it, will not think you're being honest - if you are that prescient and don't have a degree to show how you got that way.

But it is entirely irrelevant for any jobs which require the skills of a generalist, what your bachelor's of arts was in.