Colleges Need a Healthy Dose of Simon Cowell

Posted by Lorren on September 18, 2008

My husband is a college student, with a major that is something along the lines of creative writing with a concentration in novels and screenplays.  He’s written at least 5 novels, and 2 of them have been published through small publishers.  One was published digitally, the other one can be found on Amazon.com and other book sellers,

Because my husband has been in the writing industry for so long, he knows how difficult it is to get the publishers to look at you.  It is extremely difficult to get a major publishing house to look at you if you are an unknown, and we have a stack of rejection letters to prove it.  You have to be <i>good</i>.

My husband’s experience in the University writing program does not give you a grade based on how good your story is.  I realize that writing quality can be somewhat subjective.  Some stories that one person thinks is great can be boring to others.  However, there are some qualities that all good writing has in common.  Like correct grammar.  Proper word choice, as in using the correct homophone (e.g. way or weigh).  An organized storyline.  In certain stories writers might choose to have the characters use improper grammar to insert realism, but the author should at least <i>know</i> proper grammar and make the choice to use the right one.

In my husband’s writing classes (he’s currently in an intermediate creative writing class, not the beginning one), he is asked to read other people’s stories and critique them.  Other people read his stories as well.  Now, there is a place for reading and critiquing other people’s work.  The problem is, you can not tell any of your fellow students that their work is crap, even if it is.  You have to say constructive, nice things about their work without being negative.

Unfortunately, many of the students in this intermediate creative writing class can not write well.  They use poor grammar, incorrect homophone choices, and stories without a plot.  My husband critiques these stories, but he can’t tell them that they can not write.  He can’t tell them that their grammar is atrocious.  He can’t tell them that their story is boring.

From what it looks like, this college is going to graduate a class of students that have creative writing degrees, but are incapable of ever writing for a living.  When they get out into the real world, the world of rejection slips and of bosses that will only hire <i>talented</i> people, they will be disappointed.

People like to watch <i>American Idol</i> and watch all the people that think they are talented singers, but can’t sing.  When they audition in front of Simon Cowell, he tells them the truth.  He tells them that they are incapable of singing… using some pretty harsh words.  They might get angry, but perhaps if people tell them the truth, for a change, they will realize that singing is not for them, and they will look for another line of work.

My husband’s school needs a good dose of Simon Cowell… someone honest enough to tell them that their writing is not good.  If my husband could not write, he would want to know.  There’s no use wasting your life trying to write a novel if you had no talent.  It’s hard enough for someone getting started when you actually <i>do</i> have talent.  Colleges and Universities that give degrees to creative writers that can not even put together a grammatically correct sentence are not doing writers (or publishers, for that matter), any favors.