Is a Creative Writing Degree Worth it? (Transcript)

Well hello everybody, welcome back to my YouTube channel real talk with Rory where we breakdown everything about the writing process from getting words onto a page, doing social media and marketing, school aspects and also some inside tips for those home school parents who are looking to help their new creative writer; so let's get into this.

I hope you guys have been writing this week and you have been reaching your goals. This week I got the first chapter of ravenwood rewrites done and I'm very excited about that because that is going to get us a little further, and a little further to publishing and it's it's real it's happening.

This week's video we're covering; is a creative writing degree worth it? If you guys don't know, if you haven't been following my social media I am just about to finish my bachelor's degree after three years and I am so excited and I'm actually in my last two classes so yeah so this is a brand new topic and I really wanted to break this down of is it worth it or not.

Now, let's get into this. So is the creative writing degree worth it, yes and no?! I think before you enter into a college degree any college degree you need to ask your reason why. Why am I here? Why am I pursuing this degree, and what am I planning on doing with this degree? Now if you are a creative writing student and at the top of your list of why to pursue a creative writing degree is to become a a published author, then you might want to reconsider. This is the reason why.

You do not need a degree to become a published author. Most people don't have a creative writing degree, heck if you think of David Baldacci, he was a lawyer and he then became a published author, so his degree was not in writing, but he learned how to do it on his own. Now if in your creative writing, in wanting to pursue a creative writing degree is because you want to pursue every other career in in writing, such as; being a journalist, writing for a magazine, editing, copywriting, social media communications, then a creative degree is worth it.

So let's talk about that. The school I go to is Southern New Hampshire University, and I went to their bachelor's program. How I kind of found them is kind of based off of a Google search of finding out that their career courses in the program fit what I wanted. I was originally wasn’t going to Southern New Hampshire University, I was going to go to University of East London, but I got accepted in 2020, we all know how that went. I really liked the creative writing program at SNHU, because it had a lot more of the professional classes, the true writing classes, unlike other creative writing programs that I found in such a short period of time, where a lot of them were just literature based classes because the thing about a Creative Writing bachelor's degree is that most of the time it's Creative Writing and English, so it's gonna prep you a lot more to become a high school teacher for composition or literature classes so that's kind of the background of the degree.

At SNHU we had four concentrations with three classes each of fiction, nonfiction, screen writing, and poetry where there was like an introduction, an intermediate, and advanced fiction so we got a lot of that detailed information about the writing process. We also had a lot of the classes of professional writing where like marketing yourself, learning how to write for writing a query for an agent, an editor or publisher, and then also getting your website up; so actually I developed my website through that class and here's a link to it on the bottom of the page. I'll also be linking to it in the description if you want to see what I learned doing that. I also have a lot of the short stories that are on my website are actually things I wrote for class that I later put on my portfolio so that people can read it.

So, can you… pursue OK actually let's back this up a little bit. What can you do with a creative writing degree? With a bachelor's degree you could be a high school teacher you could be a copy editor you could be a content editor, Blogger, copywriter, working for a magazine, and working in several other aspects of the industry. With the masters you can do all those previous jobs, but also having the college professor aspect added on top of that, so that is the masters degree.

Now, if you're looking for additional jobs look at Occupational Outlook Handbook even if you're pursuing any degree this is a great resource, and I'll have it linked in the description below is you can see job outlooks on that, and seeing how much an average, how much you can earn on average or in certain areas, which areas will be better equipped for those jobs. I will be putting that in the description below.

Can you get a job in the industry without a degree? Yes and no. Like I said, if you want to be a publisher author you do not need a degree for that you can learn based off of videos like these, additional articles, or also joining writing associations, such as like in your local area that specializes in workshopping and helping beginning writers so that you can get out there and also joining conferences and workshopping conferences and things like that where you will meet people in the industry and learn how to look at your story as a writer.

Now, can you do the other careers like editing and stuff like that? We are slowly moving away from that ability to do that without having a degree because before you used to be able to get a job in these fields with knowing the right people, you could get a job knowing the right people and also showing your merit as a writer and an editor, however, as the years go on we're going further and further away from that so most people will not accept you into the industry without having that bachelor's degree, or masters degree behind your name, so it's getting less and less like that and even some of my friends who are editors are having to go back to school to get a degree to be able to continue in their field even though they've been working for 20 to 30 years, so it's kind of a toss up.

Here are some of the aspects of the creative writing degree, and also careers outside the degree program, I hope this was helpful. I, in future videos. we'll be talking more specifically about things that I've loved about school, what I disliked about school, and some of the things that I wish people had told me, along with talking about how you can best take advantage of this Creative Writing degree as you move forward.

So, I am now turning it to you guys. What did you guys think? Are you guys pursuing a Creative Writing degree? Where do you guys go to school to pursue your degree? And also what has been some of your least favorite and favorite aspects of the degree or things that you wish people had told you? Please share that in the comments below because I would love to read them and also maybe I will mention some of those things on these videos.

Hey guys, if you like this video and want to see more of it please like, subscribe, and share, so that you could be notified when I drop new videos and you can also grow this channel to help more people in this journey of writing. If you want to suggest some topics that we cover in the writing process please go to my social medias linked in the description below and drop your questions and also some topics that you don't really know about writing and I will try to cover all of them as I can.

On Thursday we are going to be covering more of the review of the Publishing-and-Go publishing program, as I work to publish my first book ravenwood institute and we are going to go into week 3. This Saturday, I am posting another video to make up for last week's this video where we're going to be covering the hierarchy of characters, and starting to develop that writing we're we're going to start doing the pre-writing and because I believe the more we know the further we'll go so I'll see you guys next week, bye!

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