I’ve mentored a few writers, and most have their MFAs. They contact me because they say, “Okay, so I have an agent, and I have “this” many books to write…but they aren’t books I want to be writing.”

The most difficult part is to get them to stop trying to please the __#__ professors they had for their college and graduate school classes, and find their own voices. They are so paralyzed by the very education in which they invested so much time and money, they can’t do what they wanted to do in the first place: write. And I’m not against getting the formal education at all — in fact, it’s a good thing, but it can cloud and hinder some people’s ability to take a chance and go outside convention. There’s also a tremendous amount of “anxiety of influence” that really *&%#s with their heads.

I used to be ashamed that I wasn’t able to even finish my BA. I’d sustained a serious TBI that forced me to drop out of college. I lost my ability to read, among other challenges — ones with which I still deal, daily. So I went to a brain specialist, and I re-taught myself how to read. I taught myself how to write, paint; I taught myself photography and Photoshop. I taught myself all forms of poetry — basically, everything I do — I learned on my own, and on my own steam and yes, it was hard. But what’s really difficult is to be summarily dismissed in the literary world because I DON’T have that piece of paper.

Autodidacts, in my opinion, are people who want “it” (whatever “it” is) so badly, and they want to do what they love so much, they soak it up outside the classroom. They do it at 4am, when they are single mothers with 3 kids to feed and clothe, like I did. They do it despite everyone telling them they can’t. They do it when their older brothers, all PhDs, tell them “until you earn money at it, it’s a ‘hobby.’” They do it and never give up. (a couple of years back, I asked my brother how he thought my “hobby” was going, after I’d won a state-wide and city-wide award for my work. Yeah, I admit it. It was kind of awesome.)

I’m often asked to be a keynote speaker for local university events and their the English departments. They teach my short stories in fiction writing and literary fiction classes. I guest lecture in classrooms all the time. One local writer here in my neck of the woods constantly berates my lack of formal education w/r/t writing. She has her BA from a prestigious local college, and an MFA from a university dedicated to writing. Guess how many books she’s written in 10 years compared to me? Two. And me? Let’s just say…more than that. ;)

The passion to learn the skill and craft, or as you addressed things in the world of business, is the fire that drives us. The ability to do it and do it well, subsumes the conventional route of formal education — when done properly — and in my opinion, that individual emerges with a much more well-rounded, unconventional skill-set, one that surpasses those who simply do what they’re told.

A piece of paper cannot give you passion. Yes, perhaps it gives you an edge w/r/t the conventions of getting hired, or accepted in a journal no one will read, but Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours? I’ve doubled that. :)

Thanks for the great read and thoughts. — JA