College -- and kids, I will tell you this only this one time -- isn't necessary if you intend to follow any sort of creative career. Writing, of course, is what I'm gonna focus on here.

Now I went to college for about a year. Stupidest year of my life to date. It was a waste of time and money. There's nothing they told me that I didn't already know, and though that can change from person to person, my point is even simpler.

You don't learn about writing by hearing what someone thinks about writing. You don't earn respect as a writer because you have a piece of paper saying you can write. The only, and seriously here, the only piece of paper that earns you respect as a writer is one with your fucking byline on it.

Everything else is pretty and shiny and makes a certain type of person nod at you. It makes conversation at parties easier, I suppose. "Yeah, when I was writing my thesis on Twain's use of hedgehogs I totally had to grasp his use of secondary modality in fiction." There's a place for it. It isn't your career. Your career path is to write, learn, and write more.

So do it. Don't worry about the paper, the wasted promise that you know what you're doing. Editors won't see it when you submit. They'll see your work, judge you on it, and pay you based on it.

Now, sure, college could, I suppose, teach you how to write and show you things you might not pick up on your own. To which I say you aren't trying hard enough. If your life is going to be telling stories, then why the holy fuck aren't you reading them, taking them apart and digesting each part of everything in order to see it in your own light? Why aren't you playing more, trying new styles and types of story? What is wrong with you that you think you can do this for your life but you don't care enough to eat it alive on your own? If you need your hand held and your ass wiped to give a shit and deconstruct your own field, then you probably shouldn't be there.

You should also learn to drink. I don't say that because I'm a drunk who loves company. I mean I am, and I do, but drinking while writing helps kill inhibitions that will otherwise freeze you up some.

So drink enough to loosen your head up, but not enough to really affect you, and sit down and write something. Then write something else. Then read some. Then think about it. Watch some movies, some TV, listen to music, people watch, read a comic, whatever. Take it all in, because your stories will need every bit of life you have scooped up in order to breathe.

But you can't scoop the pure shit in school. You have to get past that and away from it before you learn that honesty in fiction sells. Academic honesty doesn't because it isn't honest.

It's people doing what their teachers tell them to do. It's people learning how to follow orders, and a good writer can do that, sure. But they can also follow their own orders and screw the rest of the world. So be wary of training yourself to listen to other people too much.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. Maybe I'm wrong headed and that slip of paper counts tons towards a career. It's possible, I suppose. Lots of things are. They just aren't probable at all.

So put down the study guide, and go live some life. Earn it. Work your ass off for yourself, and don't pay someone ungodly amounts of money to tell you that you can write.

The idea here is that they pay you while telling you how good you are. That trail of money is kinda key to the whole career thing.