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03/09/2008: Bills, Bills, Bills
Mail Bag! First up, a letter from Gentle Reader Bill in Houston. He's an aspiring prose writer in the Sci Fi genre, who is looking for a Sci Fi writers' group in which to participate, perhaps long-distance. Sorry to say, I don't know of such a group, but I'm certain they must exist, certainly online, no? I suppose it's a hopelessly old-fashioned answer, but I suggest you ask at your local public library. If they don't know a group, I bet they'll still know how to help you find or start one.
Bill mentions, in his note, the familiar scourge of the Sci Fi writer -- the perception among others that Sci Fi is somehow unworthy or not respectable. I sometimes wonder if those people are aware that (off the top of my head) respectable works like 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid's Tale, Dracula, and Slaughterhouse-Five all contain unabashed Sci Fi or fantasy elements. And that's not even including popular juggernauts like those Oz, Lord of the Rings, Narnia and Harry Potter series.
Write and be proud, Bill!
The same batch of mail includes a letter from Gentle Reader William in Delaware, who is also interested in writing Science Fiction, more specifically TV Sci Fi. William is about to select a major at his liberal arts college and wants my advice on what to pick -- should he definitely go for the "creative writing" minor? Psych? Anthro? Short answer: doesn't matter.
My undergraduate degree is in Computer Science and that's never hurt me a bit. I know many writers who studied film in college, but more who did not. Writing is a skill and a talent that can be engaged in and studied without benefit of classroom instruction. In fact, the more you become really good at other things, the more you have to offer when you arrive in Hollywood and have to compete against all those other people who can write, too. If you also know something about the law, or history, or technology, or government, or, man, anything, then that can be a selling point. Take writing courses, certainly -- I did -- but you can do that starting from any major.
(By the way, William, Bill, from the first letter discussed above, works for a living running a Space Station simulator for real live astronauts. Now that's a nice background for a Sci Fi writer. Don't know how you major in it, but as an illustration of how experience can mean more than writing experience, it can't be beat!)
So, in school, pick something that inspires you, take loads of courses outside your field for breadth of experience, and -- get this -- don't be afraid to be practical. It's not a sign of an unartistic spirit to keep an eye on future earnings.
My favorite picking-a-major technique was the one employed by a friend of mine who went to her campus job-placement office and asked which major produced students who always got hired upon graduation. When they said "engineering," she went to the Engineering Department and signed the heck up. It can be hard to get a writing job in Hollywood, and it's not crazy to have something else that you love and that can also pay the bills while you're polishing those spec scripts.
Have fun in college, William! You're gonna do great!
Lunch: ground-chicken loaf with embedded vegetables
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