[to fan whose book he’s signing] So who’s this book for?
For my friend at BYU-I.
My sister goes to BYU-I. She’s 24? She just graduated.
What’s her major?
Secondary Education with a Science Focus. In fact, I think she’s doing her student teaching this semester.
So you were originally a Chemistry major, right?
I was. And I really liked all the concepts, but the math killed me. The math was so hard, and I didn’t enjoy the busywork of it, and that was a big deciding factor for me. I wanted to do something that I enjoyed the busy work. And you know, no one likes everything. There are times in writing where it’s hard. And you get up in the morning and you’d rather just play video games instead of work, but it doesn’t matter what you’re going to do, that’s going to happen, but all in all, even the little stuff in writing I love, so I switched to trying to be a writer. And it worked out for me eventually.
The class you teach at BYU, is that only for graduate students?
No, it’s open to anyone, but grad students get to register first. And because of that, they tend to grab a lot of the seats. I do add a lot on the first day. What I usually do is I ask people how much they’ve written, and the people who have done the most writing will probably benefit the most from the class, so I let them have a place. So if you go to BYU, are you at BYU right now?
I’m at BYU-I, but I’m probably going to transfer. But he wants to take it. What’s the title of the class? Brandon: How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy. English 318. If you want to get in the class, take a year, write a book or two, and then when I say, who’s written the most books, most people have not written any. And so if you’ve written one or two, your chances of getting the slot in the class go drastically up.
Maybe children books.
Yeah. They can be children’s books. Not picture books. Picture books are too easy. [laughter] Well, not easy. But easy to write poorly.
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