Ever since elementary school, you’ve always been a writer. You’ve found that the best way to express yourself is through writing, be it poetry or short stories. So, in college, you thought to yourself, “How can I ensure that I will never get a job ever?” The next day, you declared a creative writing major. We writers are a little (read: a lot) neurotic, intensely sensitive and self-critical. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. Here are the 25 signs you’re a creative writing major. Oh, and once you’re done reading, get back to that blank Word document you’re avoiding. That story is due tomorrow.
1. When friends and family ask what you’re doing after graduation, you’re just like:
If you major in something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Because that industry is not hiring.Â
2. You know what you’re good at, and you stick to it
Don’t talk to me about my math SAT score.Â
3. You might not have final exams, but you have something even more daunting: The Portfolio
4. Your approach to beginning a new piece is like this:
5. When you go into your workshop, you’re like:
6. Once your piece has been workshopped, you feel like:
No, YOUR story is clichĂ©.Â
7. MFA applications got you feeling like:
8. Â To everyone else, Iowa is a random (and boring) state in the midwest. But to you…
9. You strongly support Ernest Hemingway’s famous philosophy/slogan
Write drunk, edit sober.Â
10. Your writing instructor manages to make everything sound sexualÂ
It’s USUALLY not intentional.Â
11. When your professor tells you your poems have to be in iambic pentameter you’re just like:
Ain’t nobody got time.Â
12. You go to readings actually for the reading, not just the free food and wine
The wine doesn’t hurt, though.Â
13. Your department has awkward tension with the English departmentÂ
14. The successes of Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight are actually offensive to youÂ
15. That said, you’ve definitely written fan fictionÂ
SNAPE & LILY FOREVERÂ
16. That one time you got published, you were like:
17. Every time your piece is rejected, you’re like:
18. Lugging your Norton Anthology to class is the bane of your existenceÂ
But for real, you can find all of those poems online…
19. When you read work you had written the year before, you’re like:
20. Everyone in your major is either insufferable or amazingly talented and kindÂ
The greatest people you will ever meet. And the worst.Â
21. And actually, you prefer books to peopleÂ
Your squad consists of e e cummings, Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck and David Foster Wallace.Â
22. Though you’re super turned on by people with excellent vocabulariesÂ
Oh, you got an 800 in Critical Reading? Want to be my boyfriend?Â
23. You’re obsessed with developing “a voice,” and you have a couple of go-to moves by now
24. When people think your major is easy, you’re like:
Let me see YOU write sestina, then.Â
25. And even though writing sometimes seems impossible, you truly love what you doÂ
Cheers to my fellow poets and writers out there!Â
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