I'm always in the process of writing a book. Unfortunately, it's always a different book each month and never finished. One of these days I'll have an idea without loosing interest before finishing...
While I've never been published, I always seem to be writing one short story or another. I tend to become obsessed with my character's background storys and end up writing entire short stories about their lives before the game began. I also have a habit of writing journals for my characters (from their point of view, of course) about the events that are going on in the game. I've always had this crazy dream about becoming a famous fantasy author, but I've never taken any literature classes, so I doubt it will happen any time soon.
I've always had this crazy dream about becoming a famous fantasy author, but I've never taken any literature classes, so I doubt it will happen any time soon.
Dude, I'm about to graduate from a small private college with a bachelors degree in English Literature and I'm just finishing up an internship at Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and I can tell you with total honesty that lit classes are not necessary to get published at all. So long as you have a fair grasp of grammar (editors like to edit the story not the words) and moderate readership of your chosen genre, you have just as much chance of being published as the next Harvard Doctorate-graduate. In fact, the more education you have the more your creativity is fried from all those monotonous essays, so you're more likely to get published than that guy. Write up!
Well, only one very tiny publication (an encyclopedia article), but I'm almost finished with a dissertation, which I should be turning into one of those boring and esoteric academic history books in three or four years, assuming that I want to get tenure. And I've started writing two fantasy novels in my spare time--I'm kind of pecking away at them when I feel like it and have time, so they're not likely to be done anytime soon, and who knows if anyone will think they're publishable when I'm done with them?
I think life experience, empathy, and imagination are the qualities that allow one to write good fiction of any genre. Last time I checked, you can't get any of those merely by going to school and getting a degree.
If you're young, seek out new experiences and write about them, even if it's just for yourself and your friends and family at first. If you're older, make use of the life experience you've accumulated--every bit of it is useful. (This goes for writing non-fiction as well). Some really great writers never got published until they were in their 40s (Tolkien, for example), but their experience gives their characters a human feel that some younger authors just can't duplicate. Read a lot--not just average stuff in your genre, but also the classics, which will add depth to your understanding of good writing, good characters, good plots, etc.
Many aspiring writers choose to attend MFA programs in writing like the very well known one at University of Iowa. But many don't, and some don't even have bachelor's degrees or high school diplomas. And some people who get turned down by such programs later go on to be very successful writers (e.g. Jennifer Roberson, whose writing sample for Iowa was rejected as "too commercial" but caught the attention of a major fantasy publisher instead.) I think a lot of the MFA programs see themselves as trying to turn out Hemingways and John Updikes, and take a very dim view of "genre" writing, especially romance and Fantasy/SF. Academic credentials aren't all they're cracked up to be anyway--the programs are really there to provide a structure for your development, and if you can provide it yourself, you don't need school.
Does Action Pursuit Games count?