I'm about to wrap up my Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing.

I went into the Army for college money.  Between the GI Bill and College Fund, the Army was providing the most money for recruits (circa 1988) to continue on with their education, the most out of all the Armed Forces.  I spent 19 months in Fort Ord right before it closed down and was sold back to the state, two of which saw me fighting in Panama, and then one year in South Korea.

My family moved to MN while I was in training so I commuted to a Community College from my mom's new home and got my AA, before trekking up to St. Cloud where I drifted through majors and severe depression.  I moved to Minneapolis in '96 and swam through various temp jobs, enjoying the varied experiences, until Bush usurped office and the job market dried up.

After a pastiche season of dating I found my wife, who is herself quite educated and supported me returning to school.  I'm attending Metropolitan State University, which has what many people consider to be the most robust writing program they've ever seen, anywhere.  Seventeen years after the inception of my academic journey, I'm finally securing my BA, and believe me when I say it's been a long, hard grudge match.

I registered for Writers As Readers and conferred with a favorite professor to arrange an Independent Study course, Advanced Creative Writing, which will be my Capstone.  In discussing potential projects for development I decided to continue with my novel.  For Advanced Writing over the summer I wrote the first chapter of a low fantasy novel I've had in the back of my head for years; with this SDIS class I will write the second and third chapters, and I hope this will create momentum enough to continue with the book.

But a novel!  That seems arrogant of me.  In the bibliography I've arbitrarily formed in my mind, I feel like I'm supposed to work on journalistic articles first, maybe come columns and op-ed pieces, then amass a solid short story resume.  After that it will be acceptable for me to plot a novel.  I have that hierarchy in my head even though I know that's not how other people have done it.

Like I said, I hope the class instills me with the momentum I need to continue this project.  I've done some great writing due to these classes, but I've been deplorable at writing outside of these classes (blogs don't count).  If I could take classes ad infinitum, sure, I could necessarily produce enough material to paper my living room and carpet-bomb agents and publishers.

But if that's harder for me to do, entirely of my own volition, does that mean I'm not a writer?  I asked Neil Gaiman how to get over writer's block.  "Become a plumber," he said, "or a carpenter or a mechanic.  Take up any of these trades, because writers write."  I love writing, it's what I'm best at (better than anything else I do, not best in the world of writers), but I don't have that itchy-fingered compulsion to write all the time.  I don't feel suffocated if a day has gone by without my having written something.  I don't see in myself the passion and drive I've seen in others, all my life.

Does that mean I should  be doing something else?