Not an English Major: You Do the Math

I must be writing a lot about writing my novel on my Facebook, lately, because a very dear friend of mine asked an interesting question today. I’m not sure if I have ever completely covered this subject on this blog but I suppose I’ll cover it now. The question my friend asked was, “If you like writing so much, why aren’t you still an English major?”

I could give a very simple response to this and, then, I could give a very long-winded one. I think I’ll do both. We’ll start with the simple one. I’m not an English major the same way Michael Crichton was not an English major (RIP to an amazing writer). I realize that Stephen King taught English for a while (and one of the women in my NaNoWriMo group teaches an English language class) but it is not a necessity.

Now for the long one: I used to be an English major. All through high school, English was my favorite class. I did better than many of my peers, baffled many of my friends, and it was the one subject that I could proudly beat my ex-boyfriend at without trying (he was better than I at basically everything else). I’ve been writing since the 3rd grade so, naturally, English was what I thought I was going to get into as a major. I actually tried all the different areas of English in my senior year high school: I was a copy editor for the school newspaper, I was taking an AP English Literature class, I took a creative writing class from the local junior college during the fall, and I followed a professor at the junior college for my senior project (of what job we would like to get into). I decided early on that I didn’t want to teach, not because I couldn’t but because I would get bored with the repetition. When I started applying for 4-year universities, I applied as a creative writing major but, thankfully, due to circumstances, I didn’t go to any of those universities and attended the junior college instead. I ended up graduating with my AA in English Literature and actually applied for my current university in the Editing Literature major.

So, why then, you ask, did I suddenly switch my major? Why did I turn from something that I loved doing so very much?

The truth is this: I hated it. Sure, without my emotions involved, my resume is pretty clear: ENGLISH MAJOR. But, as soon as I got into college (and when I was taking those AP English exams), I despised every essay. It was really clear that I was done with the major when I was forced to read Crime and Punishment in Spring of 2009; forcing myself to sit down every day with the novel, a pen, and little pieces of paper to shove into the spine as I made notes about the plot, theme, ect; forcing myself to dissect every little paragraph, sentence, or word that I came across with; forcing myself to write about Dunya’s transformation as a result of Raskolnikov. For some, that might be heaven. For me, it was taking a wet towel and twisting it very slowly, until every last drop had disappeared. Those drops? The joy of writing. The joy of reading. I am not an English major because it took away the joy of sitting down and reading a good book.

I remember that professor telling my class at the end of the semester, “I bet none of you will never be able to sit down with a book ever again and read it without seeing the themes, noting the syntax, and finding chronotopes.” I didn’t reply to him but, by this time, I thought to myself, “Whatever happened to reading for fun? Just to get the joy out of the riveting experience of the plotline? Why should I have to dissect everything? Sure, it’s fascinating to learn the mother, Addie, only has one chapter (after her death) in As I Lay Dying, but why am I responsible for finding out why?”

And that’s why I’m not an English major.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still get the joy out of writing. I’m actually beginning to get the joy back after taking most of the summer off of writing. The negative effects of being a literature major are wearing away, which is awesome because I’m beginning to remember how much joy I took from writing in high school, before the whole English major thing started.

And, currently, I recommend On Writing by Stephen King. This book is freakin’ fantastic.