SIAP: Title

If I'm giving out real advice, don't think about deciding a path now. If you want to make a career as a writer, then you just need to enjoy writing regardless of the subject. You have plenty of time to find you preferred subject matter. In the meantime just start writing. Write about anything and everything. Take classes writing about every in every subject. You'll find inspiration out there, but first just write.

If you can already write well and love it, then you have some liberty to take different classes, or a different major, perhaps with a a technical focus. By doing that, and continuing to write, say for a school paper, creatively, etc, you may end up having more doors open later. There are always good writers. There are not very many good writers who have science, math, or engineering backgrounds, and of those who can, not many are interested.

Work out you numerous other issues with your counselor.

Don't muddy the waters with career advice.

check out http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/. Some very creative ideas and a good way to challenge yourself with different ideas and styles. I don't write, but enjoy reading some of the different styles.

I been down that road, and have some thoughts I'm not going to bother to organize much at all:

It's one thing to be able to write well for your classes, another to produce material that people want to pay to read, or that people want to pay to put advertising around. Writing for a living is a job. It's work, and shitty paying work too. Don't do it for free, at least after a point. For a lot of pubs, the business model revolves around getting the raw material for their product free of charge from kids who think they are one great piece away from being the next Hunter Thompson. You gotta buld your clip file, right? Fuck that.

It takes one fucking hell of a lot of drive to do it. And just as happens for a camera man in the porn industry, the novelty wears off surprisingly fast. I'd first advise pitching all romantic notions. It's better than having them beaten out of you, not that that's not going to happen anyway.

If you can produce copy that doesn't have to be rewritten by an editor on deadline, you can find places to get paid -- the wasteland of community newspapers, for instance. Jesus, if you can consistently spell your own name correctly, you can get some very small checks and loads of clips and experience there. The number of times in my life I've had to replace "would of" with "would've" in copy by people who fancy themselves writers is why I have occasional hissy fits about that on this forum. Just seeing "would of" and "should of" gives me hives.

Every hack out there read the 6th grade speech at DARE graduation. (Probably never mention that again, at least until you are sending your clips to Newsmax.)

As one writer put it, writing is the one job where you can spend an hour staring out the window with a beer in your hand and still legitimately consider yourself to be working.

I like to believe there is room in any field for the talented and driven.

Do you have anything to say? This is sort of an important part of being a writer.

When I was at the stage of things you're in now, everyone around me advised that I should have something practical to fall back on. I succumbed to that pressure -- that discomfort those around me had about the thought of watching me struggle when I could be on Easy Street -- and got a degree in computer science. It has been a mixed blessing. How can you do something as longshot hard as becoming a reasonably well paid writer -- there's a 99% chance you think you don't care about the money now, a 99.5% chance you will be pretty desperate about it by the time you are 40 -- if you're not all in?

I think it's still true that it's useful to be able to shoot your own photos, too. Pics sell the words. If you're trying to break in, being capable of dropping the whole package in an editor's inbox is solid strategy.

If it's sportswriter you are aiming for, think hard about getting the fuck out of academia immediately. Unless someone else is picking up your tab at U-M, the main thing you are getting out of that is debt that is going to push you toward some other profession. In five years, you'll be taking realtor classes at night at the community college.

Try drugs but be careful not to develop any dependencies on the really expensive ones.

 

Since you're a freshman take chances and try a broad array of classes. Many people don't truly decide until after Sophomore year. You can be whoever you want to be. Work hard and the sky's the limit. I will say graphic design is a great skillset but if your heart's not in then explore other options. Hope you love every minute of college it goes by too fast.

Is another possible career path.  My wife used to be in public relations and it involved a lot of writing. Most news articles just take a press release written by a PR person and then modified.  My wife got to write a variety of subjects from people pieces to science pieces.

OR

Write a Harry Potter like series where you become a billionaire.  If this happens I demand 5% for giving you the idea. 

I've seen your writing and you wouldn't be getting 99/100 in my class.

I kid I kid, honestly you should start your own blog.  I would read it and maybe others here would as well.  If nothing else it would be good practice.

love you,

jdon

 

Those first 90 seconds in the ring with him were the scariest moment ever.  One punch and to the mat!