I'd like to suggest that it isn't the major OR the degree that matters as much as the experience of the education.

1--Connie Willis has said that if you are a writer, EVERYTHING is your business, and you should try to find out everything you can about anything that interests you, because it can and will play into everything you write.

So, it seems to me that education, formal or informal, other-taught or self-taught, that helps you learn about ANYTHING is crucial, because it gives you informational experience if nothing else. And it does you the most service if it teaches you how to find out what you want to know on your own.

2--Lawrence Block (when he had a column in WRITERS DIGEST--when I used to read it--they repeat themselves after so many issues, so you don't need to have a lifetime subscription) used to talk about the writer's "reservoir" and how writers have to keep filling it up or they will run out of things to write about (or they will just write the same thing over and over and over again). He said that writers have to be fickle in their interests (which I found extremely reassuring because I am very fickle in my interests) so that they can always be adding new and different things to their reservoirs.

If education, of any kind, can help you fill your reservoir, and can teach you how to find out EVERYTHING you want to know about ANYTHING, then it's all to the good.

3--As for degrees, Kris and Dean assert that if you are going to go to college and get a degree that will help you make a living as a writer, the best degree to go after is a BUSINESS degree, because making a living as a writer is, after all, a business. They claim that everything else you need to learn, you can learn informally as easily as you can learn it formally.

Having a literary degree does not lead one to become a good writer. Rather, many people who have writerly interests will pursue a literary degree.

For some, getting a degree will also help get perfect the mechanics of their writing (though for others it won't, as we've mentioned a few times in the thread already). Across the board though, a degree will help with writing because it is a way of learning more about the world and actively encourages you to read, read, read. And as far as filling the reservoir goes a literary degree and a math/science degree can accomplish that equally well. They will just provide different information.

Does this mean that a degree is the best way to fill your reservoir? Hardly, it is one of many.

I would also like to say I really liked the Connie Willis and Lawrence Block comments that KDW pointed out, especially the part about being fickle. It gives me encouragement, because I've always seen my self as a bit of a jack-of-all-interests, which I hope will help me become a master or writing.

Learning proper writing technique I do believe has importance, but I also believe learning about life and living it plays a very important role to a writer also. It could become easy to lock yourself away, and only research or imagine things but its far more fun to just get out. When standing in the ruins of a castle, western ghost town, port city, ancient monument, I've always noticed that especially the feel and smells are so unique, far more different than I could imagine, and if I had the chance to travel the world like Agatha Cristie and just write about the places I visited that easily could become a full life.

I'm agreeing with KDW that a writer's reservoir has to constantly be expanding, not just to fill up the writers bag of tricks, but so that writer doesn't forget that writing about life is not the same as living it.

2cents,

W.