I would like to write in Historical, Fantasy, and general Fiction genre. I am currently researching about the Tudor period for a novel I would someday like to write. Also I am considering graduate schools. Do you have any advice on good programs for my interested genres?—Melanie Lambrecht

Ask your BA professors first. They know more about who’s working in academia and where than anyone outside that sphere.

Grad school is a place to hone your understanding of your chosen field. So who do you want supervising you? The people in your field you admire! Lots (and lots and lots) of publishing authors these days teach grad school. Research your favorite authors and find out if and where they teach.

Personally I’d love to take classes from Elizabeth Tallent, who is now teaching at Stanford—I’ve been reading her since the 1980s.

Grad school is also where lots (and lots and lots) of aspiring writers make useful contacts with professional authors who can help them break into the field. So once you get there be aware: you’re there for the sake of your career, not as an extension of dorm life. Work really hard. Do whatever you have to do to become really good at this craft. Successful authors who teach can’t possibly give a leg up to every single student they see in their classes, so they watch only for the ones who look like they’re going to make it even without help. Those are the students with the commitment and skills to make an inch of assistance go a mile. And being able to give each one of them an inch gets a lot of talent a whole lot of miles without burning out the teacher.

Don’t get caught up in the competition to be Teacher’s Pet, just do your work and prove it: you’re worth paying attention to.

Can you succeed as a writer without grad school? Absolutely. I don’t have an advanced degree. Hasn’t stopped me from teaching myself more about the craft of fiction than almost anyone I know and developing a thriving business as a high-level indie editor based on that knowledge. All it means is that I can’t teach at an accredited college, so some of the smaller, less visible writers conferences won’t invite me to teach workshops. Bummer for them—those folks won’t even invite critically-acclaimed authors who’ve been nominated for PEN awards and the Pulitzer Prize. (Seriously. Then they complain about the trouble they have attracting enough writers to make their bills every year.)

Proving your commitment and skills, being respectful of others’ gifts of their time and attention, taking the limitations of certain aspects of the industry in stride—this is how you’re going to have to behave to succeed in the world of publishing, anyway.

You might as well get started now.

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I have reached a sort of writers block where I want to write, but when I get to the paper nothing comes out. I feel like I’ve lost the inspiration I used to have. Any tips on what to do?—Melanie Lambrecht

Yes.

Get up.

Go outside.

You have nothing to write about because you’ve run out of experiences that stimulate your imagination. This happens to aspiring writers a whole lot more these days than it did in the old days before the Internet came along. I mean, what are they going to write about? Sitting on the computer all day? Reading random blogs that they forget two seconds later? Tweeting about having nothing to write about?

You’ve lost your connection to the physical world from which all storytelling comes. You’ve run out of the wonderful, real details of your senses that make up three-dimensional scenes, which are what fiction is.

So turn off the computer and go spend some good, rich, complex time out in the real world being alive. Wander the streets and neighborhoods. Wade through the fields and creeks. Put on your mudstompers and walk in the mud. Go downtown and watch people, ride a bus and eavesdrop, hang out in coffee shops and cafes doodling, sit on a park bench and breathe in the summer. This is the only summer of 2011 you’re ever going to get.

Buy a notepad and cheap, useful pen (I like black Pilots) and record life as it goes on around you (leave the computer at home!)—everything you see and hear and taste and feel and smell. It’s a vast, vast world. You’ve got five senses. Use them.

Far too much is made these days of producing written works. But what are you going to write if you don’t have a life to write about? Or if you don’t have time to pay attention to that life as you live it? If you’re constantly being pressured to make wordcounts, to write stories, novels, only things you can sell?

Forget all that stuff—you’ll have plenty of time to turn material into stories once you’ve practiced until you’re an expert at finding and appreciating and recording material.

Go pay attention. To this moment. And the next, and the next, and the next.

In great, fabulous, meticulous detail—write that.

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