awesomeflotsam:

northstarfan:

Also that the Tolkien estate is making ridiculous loads of cash off of elves, while, despite your tenure, your book about people in coffee shops talking about dead sparrows and metaphorical sodomy will never make it further than the bookshop of the university that published it.

*raaazzzzz!*

Oh God. This. So much. When I was working on my B.A., every single fiction workshop prof had a strict “no genre pieces” policy. The last prof in this series was a complete tool, the very definition of the disgruntled failed author who despises everything up to and including the fact he’s been “reduced” to teaching. Despite the fact he didn’t want us to write fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc., our VERY FIRST FUCKING ASSIGNMENT was some inane writing exercise about what kind of tail we would have if we were animals.

I’m not even joking.

I dropped a class where the CW professor, first day, said that there was no point in us trying to write genre fiction because “Really, how many of you are going to be Asimov?” Yeah, sorry…I have enough bitterness of my own without steeping in your failure, lady.

One of the fellows I stayed with was actually a very good professor and helped me strip a lot of the fat out of my writing, but I still wanted to throw a brick at him when he said that genre fiction wasn’t worth using classroom time for because he could “bang out a fantasy novel in a week.”

Well, I’m sure you could, sir, but it would be crap, just like any other novel tossed off in a week. Ugh.

I spent the entire class turning in the origin stories for my superhero characters, and he spent the whole semester praising them to high heaven. So it’s promising literature now, but the moment I add spandex and superpower, it’s pablum? Get the fuck out, sir.