IWSG: Dropping Out of Grad School Made Me Write Seriously

It's the first Wednesday of the year but also the first Wednesday of the month. And so the latter means that it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. So, Happy New Year everyone! Although I try not to dwell on my failures or shortcomings, especially at the start of a new year, and try concentrating on the now and to look forward, I thought I should answer the IWSG question of the month which is What's the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it? 

Before I answer the question, I want to say that when we look back on our regrets it should only be to remember not to make again the mistakes that lead to them. It should help us see how we can do things differently, to make things go by more successfully, including writing. So, when I answer this question I do so attempting to see what I can do better in the new year and what I have done better in the past year than I have in earlier ones of my writing career. Now to answer the question: I can say that I regret many of the early stories I wrote when I was in my freshman and sophomore years of college. Nearly all of them were crap. If I were to read them today after the 20-plus years since I wrote them I would become disgusted. However that 's a natural part of the writing  process and our growing as writers. 

So, what I really regret is having not taken my writing career seriously soon enough. I’m specifically talking about my fiction writing and journalism that deals with the science fiction and fantasy (particularly horror) genres. I listened to my family too much and shoved myself through grad school after having struggled to get through my undergrad studies to obtain my BA in English. For some reason, I came up with this false notion that my BA wasn't enough for me, that I'm a guy of academia and needed to go on to grad school in the same subject so I could teach it. 

So, I did that but it didn't work out so well. I was either barely passing my courses with the minimum acceptable grade of B or scoring below that. I was missing sufficient sleep each night just to get an academic paper turned in by the next day. I was finding myself forced to write to an institution’s agenda rather than to my own thoughts and beliefs. This took away time from my writing of fiction and about the topics I cared about most. I was miserable in all reality and it took me two grad programs to find out that I didn’t really want to teach for a career. 

It also took me a science fiction/fantasy writer's convention to find that out. When I went to my first full convention--and so a two-plus-day event that consisted of panels, cosplays and vendors--I met several people who were writers themselves, some who were aspiring writers and others who were simply serious fans of the genre. This culture made me realise what I really wanted to do for a living. After that, I dropped out of grad school and wrote a lot more in my genre.

Today, I’m still not writing for a living. Only for a supplement to my day job income. But in several ways my day job as library technician enhances my writing especially when it comes to scheduling and keeping on top of the writing process since my time outside of my day job is more precious than ever. But I still continue to write nevertheless, to write seriously and not just as a pass time. 

What event or events made you decide to write seriously or for a living (or semi-living)?

Today’s IWSG  is brought to you by these super co-hosts:  Erika Beebe, Olga Godim, Sandra Cox, Sarah Foster, and Chemist Ken! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels! 

Until next time . . .