What should I study to become a writer?

“Learning to write by trial and error not only calls for patience on the writer’s part, it also taxes the patience of wives, landlords, and creditors. Whenever someone, especially a young person, tells me of an ambition to become a writer, my heart goes out to him or her immediately—and my spirits sink. There is seldom a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, even for those who become established writers eventually—and a lot can happen between now and eventually, like broken marriages, eviction for non-payment of rent, and the like.”

– The economist Thomas Sowell, in “Some Thoughts on Writing” (2001)

Being a writer may have been my most-stubbornly-held childhood ambition. I had this dream from a very early age. I wanted to be a professional writer, and sell popular novels that I hoped would make me a fortune. At that time, I tended to imagine myself writing a science fiction novel of some kind. It’s not unusual for kids to have dreams like this, but it is unusual for people to ever realize such ambitions. Certainly I have never made any significant money from my writings, and I’ve been blogging for more than a decade now.

My interests have largely shifted since I was a kid, since I now tend to write more about history and politics. Readers of this blog are likely to notice this quickly after visiting my blog. It’s possible that my efforts (successful or otherwise) to write good fiction stories as a kid may have helped me in my later efforts to write non-fiction, even though these two genres (obviously) have very different writing styles. The sorts of things that you want to write … may influence your decisions about college. That is, your decisions about what to study in depth, what to study in passing, and even whether to be attending college in the first place. Many different kinds of programs can help you in this endeavor – or, at least, they’re fairly likely to do so if you study them in the right kinds of schools.

So, without further ado, I will now give my thoughts on what college majors (or minors) are most appropriate for aspiring writers. To be clear, there is no guarantee here that you’ll make any money with any of these majors – let alone that you’ll do so as a successful professional writer. But, if you’re interested in writing for a living, here are a few college majors to consider:

Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

What should I study to go into marketing research?

I should preface this by saying that I have a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, with a Concentration in Marketing. I don’t have the kind of personality to succeed in the sales end of marketing, but I never really intended to do that anyway. Rather, I wanted to go into marketing research, and apply my analytical personality to studying consumer behavior.

I believed that doing social sciences might be more appropriate for my personality, and studied marketing with this goal in mind. But for various reasons, this did not work out, and I ended up doing something else instead. Nonetheless, I do have some basic education about the subject, and might be able to advise people about what to study to enter the field. I have some inside information, at least with regards to formal education.

The First Amendment: Protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in a statement often misattributed to Voltaire (although the author rightly viewed this as an accurate paraphrase of Voltaire's sentiments)

The first thing many people think of about the Constitution

The Constitution is filled with passages that are of the utmost importance to this country, from separation of powers in the original Constitution to the Bill of Rights in the amendments. But if I were asked which passage may be the most important to the majority of Americans, my vote might well go to this part of the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." (Source: First Amendment) This is the Constitution's famous First Amendment, and it is indeed the first of the ten amendments that make up our modern "Bill of Rights." It is also the first thing that most people think of when they talk about what's important to them in the Constitution, since the rights that we have are easier to visualize than abstract concepts of separation of powers and checks & balances. (Although these things are vitally important, too, as I detail in another post that I wrote elsewhere.)

United States Bill of Rights

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the right to "petition the government"

The bedrock of American political life today may be the parts about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. These are both forms of a larger concept called "freedom of expression" - one in the spoken form, and the other in the written form. (Although I'm sure that sign language and other gestures would also be considered to be "freedom of speech" under this constitutional definition, and free expression on the Internet has long been held to be included under this amendment as well.) The right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances" is another specific form of this freedom of expression, which is usually written down on paper and other hardcopy material. But it is also sometimes found in the Internet form that I have mentioned as well; and it is well that this freedom of expression (in all of these forms) is protected by the First Amendment. It has been codified as a general principle in all political communication throughout this country - and other communication, for that matter.

Martin Luther King giving his "I Have A Dream" speech, 1963

My experience with communications

"The use of language begins with imitation. The infant imitates the sounds made by its parents; the child imitates first the spoken language, then the stuff of books. The imitative life continues long after the writer is secure in the language, for it is almost impossible to avoid imitating what one admires. Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about being an imitator; take pains instead to admire what is good. Then when you write in a way that comes naturally, you will echo the halloos that bear repeating."

– E. B. White, in Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style"

During my high school years, I had no idea what the communications major was. When I heard people talk about it, I thought that meant the study of communications technology; and I had the mental image of a radio and learning Morse code. Those who have taken a communications class are probably laughing right now, because they know it's a far cry from what the communications major is. Communications, in short, is about the art of communicating with other people. It's about the message rather than the medium, and about the humanities more than the sciences.

A classic radio, something like the mental image I had for the communications major

My positive experience with psychology

One of the great surprises of my education was how much I liked psychology. This would have surprised me in my younger days, as I thought of psychology in terms of counseling and clinical psychology - things that I would not have been good at. To be sure, those things are a part of psychology, but psychology was so much more than that, something I little suspected in my youth.