Jackson Pearce's Blog, page 4

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

Helpful advice for your approaching school dance. Summary: AVOID PARKING LOTS.

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

I know a lot of other authors have done posts or videos or tweets or speeches about this, and yet it’s still something I see in my inbox almost every week:

Do I need to go to college if I want to be an author?

or, sometimes

I don’t want to go to college. I want to be an author!”

First up– do you need to go to college in order to become an author?

The short answer is no. No college degree will guarantee you publication. I have friends with masters degrees, working toward their doctorates who haven’t published anything beyond short stories in academic journals. I have other friends who dropped out of high school and have multiple books out by major publishers.

Forgive my soapbox for a moment, but I feel we– the US in particular– have started to see college as a means to an end. The idea that if you get a specific degree, you’ll get a specific job. That’s not what college is really supposed to be about. Don’t go to get a degree– go to get an education. A degree is a piece of paper that can be crumpled up and thrown away. An education is something no one can ever take from you.

The education you receive at college will likely help you become a better writer, which will help you on your path to becoming a author. And even if it doesn’t, having an education is pretty awesome. Have you ever heard someone say “DAMN IT. I just know TOO MUCH. If only my knowledge wasn’t so VAST AND WELL-ROUNDED”?

(No. At least, I hope not.)

I’ve known since I was about twelve that I wanted to be an author. I wrote my first book in high school, read voraciously, and began researching publication before I turned eighteen. I went to college and got a degree in English. I decided to pick up a minor in Philosophy while there.

I can say that without doubt, college itself did not make me an author. I became an author because I worked my butt off, wrote constantly, carefully researched agents and publishers, immersed myself in the industry, and wrote the right book at the right time.

I can also say, however, that had I not taken an adolescent literature course my sophomore year, I would not have recognized and embraced YA as my genre. Had I not read a ridiculous amount of Shakespeare, I would not have been inspired to write AS YOU WISH. Had I not taken a random elective and discovered Philosophy, I wouldn’t have written SISTERS RED. Had I not had five years of learning without the pressure of a full time job, I would not have had the time to participate in Nanowrimo.

So will going to college turn you into an author? No. But it’ll give you experiences, freedoms, and an education that will likely make you a better writer and definitely make you a more well-rounded human being.

And so, in short: Go to college, or in the very least don’t use “I want to be an author” as an excuse not to go. Not attending college won’t make you an author anymore than attending college will make you one. So the whole “I don’t want to go to college, I want to be an author!” argument always sounds a little silly to me. You want to be an author? Work toward being an author. You can do that from a dorm room just as easily as you can do it from your parents’ basement; but the first one comes with a BONUS EDUCATION, whereas the second one only comes with irritated looks from your father and Sunday laundry duty.

And now, a note on “backup careers.”

Many of the people who email me asking about college say their parents are pressuring them to get a degree so they have a “backup career” in case the whole author thing doesn’t work out. Typically these emails come with disdain and the scent of crushed dreams (which, for those wondering, smells faintly of vanilla and raisins). How dare parents not BELIEVE in their children? How dare they not have TOTAL FAITH that their child will become a bestseller, if only he/she were allowed to sit at home and write books all day?

Look. Odds are your parents DO have faith you as a writer. But they also are keenly aware of the cost of rent/food/power/lattes. And writing, while absolutely a valid career path, can be a rocky one. I had a day job when I graduated college because my first book didn’t sell enough to support me. Even now, with six books under my belt, I have very very lean times. My bank account has been in the single digits several times this year. (Single. Digits.) I can tell you from experience that it is very difficult to be creative while you are worried about the power company shutting your lights off. It’s hard to write a synopsis when you’re thinking about which flavor of Ramen you’ll have for dinner. Stress and creativity are enemies, and being broke is ridiculously stressful.

So there is NOTHING WRONG with a backup career, something to pay the bills until you make it as an author. You have not failed if you emerge from college or high school and take a day job; you’re merely biding your time until your books hit it big.

Relax. Get a degree. Try to find a day job you love, just in case. And if you want to be an author? Keep writing.

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

My short story from the ENTHRALLED anthology, THINGS ABOUT LOVE, is now available to purchase separately!

THINGS ABOUT LOVE is a companion story to AS YOU WISH, about Lawrence and a jinn named Juliet. You should read it. CLICK TO SEE MORE.

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

This is HAPPENING!

CLAIRE DE LUNE and NOCTURNE author Christine Johnson, ed.’s GRIM, an anthology of dark fairy tale retellings, featuring stories by New York Times bestselling authors Ellen Hopkins, Amanda Hocking, Claudia Gray, Rachel Hawkins, Julie Kagawa, and others, to Natashya Wilson at HarlequinTeen, in a nice deal, for publication in Winter 2014, by Caryn Wiseman at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (World).

Full list of contributors, unceremoniously stolen from Saundra Mitchell’s website.:

Kimberly Derting

Sonia Gensler

Tessa Gratton

Claudia Gray

Rachel Hawkins

Amanda Hocking

Ellen Hopkins

Shaun David Hutchinson

Julie Kagawa

Malinda Lo

Myra McEntire

Saundra Mitchell

Jackson Pearce

Sarah Rees Brennan

Dia Reeves

Jon Skovron

Jeri Smith Ready

Hurrah!

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

Alright, guys.

I love the liveshows. I do. But I am on an insane deadline for COLD SPELL, the fourth fairytale book. That’s why I’ve canceled more than a few liveshows in the past few weeks– I tend to write in the evenings, and breaking up that writing time with a liveshow usually leads to me losing a lot more than a single hour of productivity.

SO, rather than keep canceling at the last minute, I’m going to go ahead and call it: Liveshows are canceled for the remainder of October and will resume in November. I know many of you schedule around them, so hopefully this will make things easier!

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

Two things. One, vote!

Two, the fourth book in the retold fairytales series is OFFICIAL! CLICK to see!

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

So, FATHOMLESS is coming out soon. VERY SOON. September 4th, to be exact, though Amazon seems to be shipping early (boo). In case you didn’t know, here’s the FATHOMLESS spiel:

Celia Reynolds is the youngest in a set of triplets and the one with the least valuable power. Anne can see the future, and Jane can see the present, but all Celia can see is the past. And the past seems so insignificant — until Celia meets Lo.

Lo doesn’t know who she is. Or who she was. Once a human, she is now almost entirely a creature of the sea — a nymph, an ocean girl, a mermaid — all terms too pretty for the soulless monster she knows she’s becoming. Lo clings to shreds of her former self, fighting to remember her past, even as she’s tempted to embrace her dark immortality.

When a handsome boy named Jude falls off a pier and into the ocean, Celia and Lo work together to rescue him from the waves. The two form a friendship, but soon they find themselves competing for Jude’s affection. Lo wants more than that, though. According to the ocean girls, there’s only one way for Lo to earn back her humanity. She must persuade a mortal to love her . . . and steal his soul.

And here’s the cover, which looks SO AMAZING IN PERSON. Seriously. I confess that I had my doubts, and mourned the loss of the original cover style, but I am totally won over. It is seriously amazing in person.

So, as per usual, I’m holding a release party for FATHOMLESS. There will be talking and reading and signing and a few door prizes, and just general bookstore-and-book-themed-goodness. Here are the details:

FATHOMLESS release party:
Saturday, September 8th, 2012, at 7:30pm

Barnes and Noble

7660 Northpoint Parkway Ste 200

Alpharetta, GA 30022

Are you coming? Let me know on the Facebook page!

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.

Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.