Education

Creative Writing Teach With No Book Published – Fine No Tenure They Said

Well, enter the world of publish or perish I thought to myself as a brilliant creative writing professor from the university told me her true life tale. You see, she taught creative writing at the University extension center, but she had not published any fictional works of her own after many years of teaching, and therefore could not get tenured, and since the pay wasn’t that great, she quit.
That’s really too bad I thought to myself, and as a writer, I think I might’ve gotten off my butt, realizing that my future depended on it, along with my retirement and pension, and come up with a novel, even if it meant slaving away and locking myself in a room.
Of course, I am on my side of the fence, and she is on hers, and it’s easy to make a judgment calls when you’re not in the middle of things. It makes sense that the university would want their professors, especially in creative writing to have published works, as those paying for those degrees, and their parents who may be footing the bill will want success of their own, and they will want to learn from those who have achieved. Even if there is a big difference between teaching and doing.
Now then, I have purchased the writer’s guide every year since 2002, and I have noted that many of the companies that were publishing fictional works in 2002 are no longer in business today, and it seems like every week or so I read about another publishing company, major newspaper, or even a textbook publisher going out of business or filing bankruptcy. This makes it very hard for those that need to publish or perish, especially if they need to write more than just research reports, studies, and papers. You see the point there, and how hard it would be today to get a publisher? Not easy, not even a little bit, and I don’t care who you know.
Having belonged to a rather large and well-known writers club in the past, I know how difficult it is to get published – I’ve heard all the stories. I’ve also talked to Screen Writer’s Guild members and the tough time they had selling their first screenplay. It’s not easy, and if you are teaching at a university, most of your mind and your time is taken up on other things – just think of the onslaught of reading all your student’s work – major time commitment, and that’s an understatement.
Thus, this additional burden to get published is going to get tougher in the future. Further, I imagine the universities are making the requirements tighter because they are having problems themselves staying within their budget, and trying to keep the tuition costs down. This means that bar keeps getting higher – ouch.
What does all this mean? It means that a good many University writing professors, and professors of literature may have a more difficult time in the future with the academia standard that we know as; Publish or Perish. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

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