Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

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Its possible OP is trolling us because I can't think of any famous or good novelist who went to a top writing school.

The concept of for profit school obviously is recent compared to the idea of writing a novel so the class of novelists who didn't go to novelist school obviously contains everything before the student loan boom.

Stephan King, former English teacher and janitor.

Issac Asimov, former biochemist

Umberto Eco, former philosophy degree followed by TV/Radio editor

J.K. Rowling, former BA in French who preferred to read English Lit and worked as a secretary, clinically depressed and unemployed

Hunter S Thompson, former high school dropout, journalist with some audited journalism classes

Ernest Hemingway, former high school grad, served in WWI, journalist with no higher education.

I'm sure there's someone out there with best sellers or Nobel prizes AND went to a writing school, but an anecdote or two proves little.

List of Iowa Writers Workshop people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iowa_Writers%27_Worksh...

And that is just one school. If you throw in all the other top programs you are looking at thousands of writers who are pretty much all top earners in their field. Sure, you might be the next Ernest Hemingway or Hunter S Thompson but I think in both cases what you are looking at are writers who filled a certain ideological void in Cold War america that perpetuated certain myths about creativity that were politically fashionable and the market for presenting yourself that way in a now highly professionalized writing world (after the student loan boom) is very very small. People just aren't looking for another Hunter S Thompson to wander around drunk spouting scandalous opinions and having counter cultural experiences. Same with Hemingway: we get it... Men struggle to grasp the duties of masculinity in a world that is fraught with danger. Yawn. There just isn't any material left to write about in those areas and you have to go to school to learn how to get out beyond those bare bones topics by studying past writers and meeting good current writers. Same with "Art" in my opinion. I mean sure you MIGHT be another Basquiat or Banksy but it's been done.

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