Colleges Don't Approach Creative Writing Properly

Yes. I went to college for an English degree, and my goal was to focus largely on Creative Writing. That is what I love most and what I’m best at. I figured college would connect me to people with publishing experience, provide courses that would show me the right routes to take, and overall, make my publishing journey easier.

Man, was I wrong.

I will say that the English Professors I had were typically very good and I have loads of respect for many of them. My writing improved drastically after my time at college, and I have to give them credit for that. They really pushed me to improve myself.

Unfortunately, none of them knew anything about the publishing world outside of academic publishing. The professors that did were always unavailable because their classes would fill so quickly. The few classes I had in Creative Writing were very easy and didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know.

I graduated realizing I’d have to teach myself everything.

• Editing

• Formatting

• Where to find literary agents

• How to build query letters

• How to use KDP

• Alternate publishing platforms

• Retail platforms like Digital2Draft and IngramSpark

• Newsletters (I was fortunate enough to meet a college professor later in life (after graduating) who has been extremely generous in sharing information and taught me the importance of newsletters.)

• Marketing Tactics

• Arcs

• Social Media differences

• Algorithms

• Kick-starters

• Book-funnel

• Website Platforms

• ISBNS

• Copyrights

• Ads

• Amazon Keywords

Teaching yourself all those things is EXHAUSTING.

It also made me wonder: why are there NO college courses that teach any of that?

I feel that many Indie Authors get a bad rap because…

1. The market is saturated with people who publish and don’t know what they’re doing and the knowledgeable authors get lumped in with the less knowledgeable ones.

2. People view Indies as writers who didn’t make it the Traditional Route so not good enough.

I could be wrong, but as far as I’m aware, a Creative Writing Degree (which I didn’t get by the way) is different than a typical English Degree (which focuses more on the academic side) but even then they hardly touch on subjects in my above list. Again, MIGHT be wrong, but to my knowledge, that is typically true for most colleges who offer creative writing courses.

I think they should change that. Being an Indie Author could and should be considered a respectable career instead of not professional as one girl happened to mention to my face 4 years ago.

What do you think?

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