4. Get a Job (not an MFA)
This is pretty controversial, and will most likely earn me the enmity
of writing professors, students, and MFA graduates everywhere. But I
think if you want to be a writer, you're probably going to be better
served by going to work (or by traveling, if you've got the financial
wherewithal to do so), instead of spending two years and tens of thousands
of dollars getting a degree that announces to the world that you are
an official, academe-sanctioned, card-carrying practitioner of fiction.
When I was finishing up with college, lo these many years ago, I had
an English degree, which meant that I was qualified to do precisely
nothing, except compose lovely paragraphs, and speak knowledgably about
French feminist literary theory (don't laugh. I'm going to kick ass
on Jeopardy! Someday. Maybe). I was lucky enough to have John McPhee
as a professor, and he was generous enough to give me the best piece
of advice ever - go into journalism. "You'll see a different part
of the world. You'll meet all kinds of people. You'll be writing every
day, on deadline" - which, of course, turned out to be invaluable
when it came time to write fiction. Best of all, you'll be getting paid
to write, instead of paying someone to tell you that you can.
So off I went to Central Pennsylvania, where I spent two and a half
extremely instructive, occasionally frustrating, desperately underpaid
years at a small newspaper called The Centre Daily Times, where I covered
five local school districts, plus the occasional car crash, fire, zoning
board meeting, and wild-bear-on-the-loose story. Looking back, I think
I was a fair-to-middling news reporter. It just didn't interest me,
the numbers in the budget stories confounded me, and I always wanted
to be way more descriptive than the space, or my editors, would permit.
But I was a darn good features writer, because in my years at the paper,
I learned how things looked, how people talked, how people interacted
with each other, how they looked when they lied (cover politics, even
in the micro level, and you'll get to see plenty of that).
I'm now a convert. I think that journalism is just about the perfect
career for aspiring young writers. It's not especially remunerative,
nor, in spite of what you see on TV, is it particularly glamorous. But
it's great training. Like John McPhee said, you write every day, and
you write on deadline, and you write to fit the space available, which
means you don't grow up into one of those writers who gets sentimental
over her sentences or overly attached to her adverbial clauses. And
writer's block? Heh. Try telling an underpaid, pissed-off assistant
city editor that your story on the school board meeting isn't done yet
because your Muse hasn't spoken, and you will quickly, perhaps painfully,
come to the understanding that writer's block is a luxury no working
journalist can afford - which will help you avoid it when you're a working
novelist. Journalism, particularly at the lowest levels, will knock
the F. Scott Fitzgerald right out of you…which is something many
recent college graduates - myself included - could use. It also means
that when you finally write your novel, your New York City editors will
adore you, because years of journalism will have taught you the fine
art of being edited - of how an impartial reader can suggest changes,
cuts, additions and amplifications that will make what you've written
even stronger. Plus, you will not whine about your deadlines - you'll
meet them. You will not be offended if someone suggests that your second
chapter's dragging and your title's ill-conceived - you'll fix them.
This willingness to be edited, and ability to meet deadlines, will make
you different, and easier to work with, than a great many novelists.
Your editor will adore you.
And if you can't be a journalist, or aren't inclined, or can't get
hired? Go do something that's going to take you out of your comfort
zone, putting you in contact with different kinds of people, perhaps
in a different part of the world. Be a waitress at the snootiest boite
in town, and pay attention to how your customers look, how they talk,
how they tip. Lead bike trips through Italy, making careful note of
the countryside. Be a camp
counselor, be a cook, be a nanny. Just do something that takes you out
into the world. If at all possible, avoid working in a bookstore, or
in publishing. Remember, the point of this exercise is to take you out
of your comfort zone, out of the comfortable life you've made inside
your own head, out of a workplace full of people Just Like You. You're
looking for challenges, for adventure, for new faces and new places.
Plus, if you've followed Part Two of this plan, you're most likely single,
and will want to get out of town anyhow.
"But if I got an MFA, I'd get to spend two years just concentrating
on my writing!" True. But remember: a writer write, whether or
not she's in school for writing.
And I think that in the end, staying out of writing school gives you
more to write about. Saves you money, too.
Voice of Experience 
