Does a person need a writing degree to write a good book?

JK Rowling was on welfare and living in council housing, when she would schlep to a local coffee shop and sit there all day, (taking advantage of THEIR heat. )......and scratched out her First Harry Potter book.

She was turned DOWN by 27 Publishers .....who passed on her stupid story. But she kept trying....

the 28th one said.......Mehhhhh, we'll give it a shot.........

and the rest, as they say is history.

No.

I became published while still enrolled in my writing course. It helps, but it's not required.

Of course not.

Who are these 'every author' people that you say ALL have a degree? Plenty of writers don't have degrees in ANYTHING, far less a 'writing' degree.

The best writers are people who READ a lot.

Anyone who reads a lot, who studies the craft of writing, who puts the time in, who does repeated rewrites instead of thinking their first draft is a finished manuscript, will be doing good.

Taking the question from the other extreme, as a reader I have zero prejudice in favor or against a text depending on the author's academic formation (most of the times you don't even know or care about that piece information). I've found good and bad texts, both written by guys with academic formation and others who were almost illiterate. As a reader, I don't care so much about formal issues (punctuation, exquisite vocabulary), as about honesty and feeling that there's a real story trying to come out.

(But, of course other people do care about those formal issues; each writer in a way chooses his readers, too.)

Unless you want to write highbrow literary fiction,or non-fiction about an academic subject, nobody cares what, if any, letters you have after your name. Readers care whether you've written something worth reading. People in the industry care whether you've written something that might make them a stack of money.

I haven't bothered gathering any statistics, but every living writer I've looked at does have a degree. Not all of them studied literature or creative writing, at least not for their first degree. (Creative writing degrees are a fairly recent invention.) It's not that you need a degree to write a book. It's more that, to write a book that's worth reading, you need above-average intelligence and the ability to stay focused on a distant goal. Those are also qualities you need to get a degree. In other words, correlation does not imply causation.

I don't think it's worth going into debt to get a degree in literature or creative writing. So few people make a decent amount of money from writing that it's probably not worth it. If you do want to do a degree in writing, look at who'll be teaching the course, and what they've published. If you don't want to write books like that, find another course.

Apparently not from what I have read lately.

I guess you aren't very old and haven't read that much. I've read hundreds of books ranging from factual science to science fiction, history to adventure fiction, and a lot in between and very few of the authors I have read even had an English degree much less one in literature. Many didn't have a college education at all, and a few never graduated high school. Anyone can write a book, but not everyone can write well or get published. Three pieces of advice: Number one: Write from what you know. Don't write about things you have little knowledge or direct experience with. Number two: Start small. Don't attempt a book until you've successfully published some articles, short stories or essays unless you are a recognized expert in the subject you are writing about. Book publishers and agents look for a track record. Number three: use a manual of style, such as the Oxford or Chicago manual of style. Make it your bible, and keep a lot of other writer's references handy.

It helps, but it's not necessary..