It never fails. Every time I talk to a group of teens, I get asked if I went to college to be a writer. And when I tell them, no, my major was Psychology and I only took the minimum required amount of English classes, they follow up with, "Well, then, do you need to go to college at all to be a writer?"


Ah, how do I answer that question? Personally, I feel that most if not all of my writing skills are skills that I had mastered by the time I left high school. Some of them I had probably mastered in elementary school. Most I had mastered by being a constant reader throughout my entire life. And, yes, some are just... there.


But if I'm being honest, there are also non-writing skills I learned in college that come in very handy in a writing career. For example, research skills. And organizational skills. And the ability to finish long projects. Responsibility. And maturity. Just happened that several of my college courses, especially toward my senior year, were Independent Study courses, which basically means you create your course and are pretty much on your own throughout the entire semester. This taught me a lot about time management and scheduling. It also taught me how to find answers myself and how to know when to seek help from someone else who has the answers I need when I can't find them.


Not to mention there's the confidence gained in college, and self-reliance -- both important when it comes to being an introvert stuck in a career that requires much extroversion -- and also the opportunity to have your work critiqued, sometimes harshly. And then there are the books read in college -- the great literature in addition to other textbooks which give you a working knowledge in a broad range of subjects. Who knows when you might want to write a book that makes references to, say... Calculus? (don't say never; it might happen)


So, yes, college is useful to a writer... even if you're not majoring in writing.


But what if you didn't go to college? Or what if, like me, you went to college, but you majored in something other than English?


It's true, when you step into the writing world, you feel a bit behind the curve. There's so much to learn! So many tricks of the trade and written and unwritten rules about submitting and publishing and writing for various genre (genres? This is a sheep/sheeps thing. I never know what the plural should be), you feel like you'll never catch up. I get a lot of emails from adults who want to write, but don't know where to begin. And it's made even tougher by the fact that, while you're learning, you're not getting paid a penny.


When I first began trying to figure out this writing thing, I whined to The Hub about the fact that all I was ever getting was rejections and that it'd been months (years?) since I'd gotten a paycheck, and surely this was insanity, working so diligently with no monetary reward.


"I have a degree, for goodness sake," I'd say. "I should be out there earning money."


That's when The Hub gave me some of the best writing advice I've ever gotten:


"You're not in the job market yet," he said, "because you're still in school. Consider this your graduate program. You're not earning credits, but the knowledge you're gaining now will result in you getting a career in writing just the same."


He was right.


I started studying writing as if I were in a college course. I read (and examined closely) literature. I read more books on how-to write, how-to submit, how-to prepare a manuscript than I can count. I took online courses and asked questions. I wrote and submitted and learned from rejections. I went to conferences and workshops and picked up ideas.


I went to school.


So my best advice to teens who want to be writers is... yes, you should go to college and learn the things that writers need to know, even if it's not, technically, writing. And to adults who want to be writers but didn't study writing in college... create your own graduate class. Go after it doggedly. Treat it like you're being graded.


In a way, you are: Pass or Fail. You either break in or you don't.


Now, go study!