Last year I was disheartened to find that there is a large bias against genre writing at the college level. This bothered me for a long time, and to a degree it still does. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that some people could be so hung up on the rules some old dead white guys threw down ages ago. Since some professors resented fantasy and science fiction work, I developed resentment towards them. I won’t go into my long list of run ins with this mentality, but I promise you it is indeed long. In fact, it’s still growing.
This semester I took a class called ‘imaginative writing’. I immediately ran into the usual attitude about genre work. Not only did the teacher seem not to care for it, but the students were afraid to like genre work. During the first week’s ice breakers, I heard many students saying things like “I know they’re horribly written but I like to read Harry Potter”. Horribly written? I don’t think so. Yet these students were afraid to admit they thought genre work was good. I’m not saying this was true of all students, but I’d say at least 5 in a class of about 25-30 said something negative about an author they like to read. Academia already has these people in the corner and is mashing their ribs.
At first I was a little angry about how some of the material was being presented, especially when the instructor sent out an email recommending that students not write fantasy for a short story assignment. I tend to be a very stubborn individual and at first I butted heads with the instructor quite a bit. Then one day he wrote something in my creative writing notebook that made me stop and think. I had written something down about a bad experience I had with one of the presenters at Winter Wheat last year. This person had bashed genre work pretty hard and was of absolutely no help what so ever. In response to the page or so I had written, my instructor wrote “Remember, If you can write literary fiction you can write anything”. At first this just made me mad, but after a while I started to think about it a little more. My grandfather always told me that advice is free and you should always listen. Listening doesn’t mean you have to use it. After thinking it over, I dropped my instructor an email and asked if he truly believed what he had written in my notebook. I also asked if he thought it would strengthen my genre writing or if it was just another way to go about doing it.
My instructor did believe that writing literary work would be a great help and about a week later I had a talk with him about it. He explained to me that literary fiction is where fundamentals are built and that made it the best place to start. This in itself seemed like good advice. He told me that young people who write genre work tend to focus on creativity as opposed to the fundamentals. This can make their writing weak. In addition to what he was telling me, I had noticed that I could hammer out memoir much faster than genre fiction. In 15 minutes in class I wrote about two pages in my notebook of memoir. I try my best to write 2 ½ hours a night and usually end up with about 600 words of fantasy or science fiction. Memoir was coming to me much more rapidly. This made me think of the old saying, “write what you know”. So, I have. I have since started to focus more on literary fiction and nonfiction. I am even working with my instructor on improving my skills, although he doesn’t seem to have much time to help me out. I thought, If this is what I need to do then I’ll do it.
I was happy with my new found interest in literary writing. Truth be told, I was pumped. Then, one day in the bookstore, I ran into something that tipped the scales back in the other direction a little. I picked up a book called Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber. It was a star wars novel which, despite being a star wars fan, usually didn’t interest me. What caught my eye was the cover. A stormtrooper helmet with blood oozing from an eye socket hung on what looked like a meat hook. It was reason enough to take a look. Upon examining the inside flap, I discovered the book was about zombies. Star Wars + Zombies = Amazing. Needless to say, I bought the book. It was short, the writing wasn’t spectacular, and it was cheezy. I didn’t care about any of that though. It was FUN to read. That’s when I realized that I needed both literary and genre work. I need fundamentals and creativity. If taking that writing class did nothing else, it showed me that.
A few days ago, I was waiting for class to start along with a few other people. These people proceeded to rant about how much they hated the nonfiction assignment that was due later in the week. According to them, nonfiction is awful and they have nothing to write about. I told them that everyone has something to write about but they didn’t want to hear it. When I tried to defend the assignment they started to criticize the instructor and then brought up a disagreement I had with the guy about writing fantasy for a short story assignment. The funny thing is, a month ago I would have been right there with them. Now I see how stupid it was. I never hated literary work, I just preferred to indulge myself in reading and writing genre fiction. These students seem to hate it. If so, that’s just as bad as the people on the high horses of academia looking down on genre work. Maybe they don’t like it because of the instructor. That’s also a problem. Just because you don’t like how someone teaches doesn’t mean you should throw everything they say out the window. Our instructor likes literary fiction, so I try to get him to teach me about literary fiction. I’ll pick up the genre elsewhere. Good writers are good listeners, and just because you listen to advice doesn’t mean you have to use it.
Lombardi on Power
6 years ago