I come up with my best ideas at night and like most folks who are just starting their adventure in writing professionally, I have a day job (pout). I have to wake up at 7:00, therefore my most productive hours are spent sleeping. Tonight is Friday (yay!) and hubby is out, so I can write something. I am pondering on a short story and reading Nancy Lamb's the Art and Craft of Storytelling. It's an excellent read and I would recommend to anyone who writes. Even if you know everything about style and technique, I think you'd find the book inspiring.
I have been thinking a lot. It is what I do. Recently, on and off, I have been thinking about education and how most people think of it as the academic process. I did too at some point. I went to a boarding school for gifted children on a different continent. It was my Hogwarts. Then I came to North America and went to university for two years. Crazy circumstances led to my scholarship being pulled (I was a good student, I swear!) and I found myself having to work crappy jobs for minimum wage. I had always loved to read so I kept on reading everything that I could find at the library sales.
I read about psychology, sociology, language, astrophysics (as much as I could wrap my head around it), anthropology, archeology, history, politics, genetics. You name it, I read a book, article or blog about it online. I am a self-taught graphic designer and I have been educating myself every day by reading, writing and practicing that, but not the rest of the stuff I read about. The more I learn, the more I forget. Knowledge is slippery: If you don't think about it or apply it, you will forget it or just file it away somewhere out of reach in your brain. That's why they make us write essays and take exams in school; to make sure we've learned. I don't want to get into the exam subject as I disagree with the way this is done in general.
Blogs are the essays and exams of the virtual education platform that some of us spend hours in. We are no longer only educated in schools, but online (via blogs, tutorials, etc.), and by our own efforts. School is a formality that employers want to see on a resume, but if you want to write an award-winning book, make a living at blogging or even become a great graphic designer, you now compete with a ton of peeps who have gone far and above what the academic system can offer them. Their minds have been opened by exploring many different points of view. They have been blogucated.
Why is being an all around well-educated person important?
For me it's because I want to understand as much as I can of the world, its people and its cultures and of the universe and its secrets. For you, it might be something else, but it's clear that knowing more won't hurt your writing. Life experience also helps (essential if you don't want your characters all to start sounding like you and your best friend/spouse/boss), so don't spend all your time on the computer. Go meet up some old friends. Tell them you've been writing a book and going to school; that's why you haven't seen them in a year.
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