"I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses"
About this Quote
There is a sly defensiveness baked into Walter Jon Williams's offhand confession: yes, he’s educated, but not in the way the gatekeepers might prefer. For a working genre writer who came up outside the MFA pipeline, that clause after the comma does a lot of cultural work. It preempts the familiar credential-check ("Where did you study writing?") while quietly puncturing the idea that craft is best acquired through sanctioned workshops and literary institutional grooming.
The intent feels twofold: establish credibility without genuflecting to academia, and normalize an alternate route into the profession. Williams isn’t bragging about being self-taught so much as refusing to treat formal training as the central myth of authorship. The subtext is a writerly shrug: the important education happened elsewhere, in reading widely, writing obsessively, publishing, revising, failing, and doing it again. He signals that competence can be built through apprenticeship to the work itself, not just through curriculum.
Context matters because science fiction and fantasy have long existed in a parallel ecosystem with its own magazines, conventions, and informal mentorship networks. The line also echoes a generational shift. Writers born in the mid-20th century often entered the field when "writing courses" were less common, less respected, or simply irrelevant to the pulp-to-paperback ladder. The quote works because it’s modest on the surface, insurgent underneath: a reminder that art careers are frequently assembled, not bestowed.
The intent feels twofold: establish credibility without genuflecting to academia, and normalize an alternate route into the profession. Williams isn’t bragging about being self-taught so much as refusing to treat formal training as the central myth of authorship. The subtext is a writerly shrug: the important education happened elsewhere, in reading widely, writing obsessively, publishing, revising, failing, and doing it again. He signals that competence can be built through apprenticeship to the work itself, not just through curriculum.
Context matters because science fiction and fantasy have long existed in a parallel ecosystem with its own magazines, conventions, and informal mentorship networks. The line also echoes a generational shift. Writers born in the mid-20th century often entered the field when "writing courses" were less common, less respected, or simply irrelevant to the pulp-to-paperback ladder. The quote works because it’s modest on the surface, insurgent underneath: a reminder that art careers are frequently assembled, not bestowed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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