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Why I Lost Faith in the Academia

March 23, 2020

academia, change, criticism, ignorance, mediocrity, motivation, society

Quite a nice little series I seem to be creating… This is the second “why I became disillusioned” kind of post after that on making Android apps. I’ve spent 12 years at the university – as a student, researcher, and teacher. But it’s time to admit it: I’ve lost faith in the academia; perhaps irreparably.

If you visit the academic section of the Home for Fiction main page, you’ll see a little quotation there. It’s something one of my academic mentors once said.

We won’t change the world simply by reading literature a different way, even against the grain. It’s a matter of whether we want to be a part of communities outside the university, where issues of equality are the daily reality.

I also note there that “I have no interest in an academia that does not act this way, and every academic work I have produced has been a small but honest effort in that direction.”

Well, let’s reverse that somewhat.

Every academic work I have produced has been a small but honest effort in that direction, but I have no interest in an academia that does not act this way.

This has been a major reason why I lost faith in the academia.

lost faith in academia — The reasons I lost faith in the academia mostly revolve around freedom of thought and, mostly, around possessing the **capacity** for freedom of thought

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Do You Need a Degree to Be a Writer?

March 17, 2020

Writing

academia, creativity, writing

This question is silly – ironically enough, you maybe found this post googling that very same thing… Do you need a degree to be a writer?

As I’ve often mentioned, the answer to any headline ending with a question mark is “no”. This is the case here, too. No, you don’t need a degree to be a writer (as I said, the question is so silly that I feel stupid just answering it).

However (here it comes)…

This isn’t the entire story, either. No, you don’t “need” a degree to be a writer, in the sense there have been many writers who didn’t have a college degree and produced some stunning works of art.

Yet, I’d be a liar not to admit my PhD has made me a better writer – though probably not quite for the reasons you might suspect.

In today’s post I’ll take a closer look at what getting a college degree (say, in creative writing or English literature) does for you as a fiction author. Is it better? Could it be worse?

Ultimately, the proper question isn’t whether you need a degree to be a writer, but whether going through a (relevant) degree makes you a better writer.

do you need a degree to be a writer — A college degree relevant to writing can open a hole in the wall. But you still need eyes to see

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Affect in Writing: A Way of Feeling

March 10, 2020

Writing

affect, art, fiction, writing

If you searched Home for Fiction for the term “affective power”, you’d discover tons of results. I have referred to the concept of affect in writing in many of my posts – “Sounds in Literature”, “Writing and Reading Symbolism”, and “Narrative Exposition”, to name three.

I now finally decided to write a proper post about it, for two reasons: Firstly, it’s important to speak a bit more analytically about something I use so often. Secondly, I realized that some of my more academically inclined readers might think I make some claim to Affect Theory.

Let’s clear this latter part right away: Although perhaps some accidental commonalities might exist, the way I use the concept of affect has absolutely no connection to affect theory.

Rather, I deploy the concept of affect in writing to refer to emotions, thoughts, and states of mind. I’ll open up the concept in more detail, also explaining i) why it’s important for writers; ii) how to use it in your fiction.

affect, image of woman — Affect in writing is an expression involving emotions, thoughts, and states of mind

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