Anyway, the whole 'litfic or CanLit vs.specfic' debate was why I had kind of a terrible time at the Banff Institute this January. It was me (1 bugge) and fifteen (15) creative writing MFA or PhD attendees.
They were all perfectly nice but they let me know VERY CLEARLY I had nothing to contribute.
I was the only person there who had published multiple books, but I was systematically excluded from everything they were doing -- group writing, crit sessions, even just people going into other people's studios to ask questions, brainstorm, bounce ideas. It was a pretty lonely three weeks. :\
The main thing was, they all saw it as this AMAZING, LIFE-CHANGING thing and I just saw it as three weeks of being constantly reminded that litfic people really, truly, unquestioningly (even after meeting them!) think that genre authors are just... not good writers.
Wow I'm looking at my notes from that time and feeling sorry for Me From Six Months Ago... I was feeling rejected and lonely BUT ALSO bewildered that I had been trying to be pretty nice and approachable and "Ask me anything!" and they were like "Why would we bother? No offense. :)"
I think when shit like that comes from other writers, as opposed to the randos it usually comes from, it's just so egregious and it makes me livid. They should fucking know better.
Any time I mention that my experience was similar in grad school - I get angry young academics storming into my mentions, insisting that it’s not that way ANYMORE, CHERIE, JEEZ, GET WITH THE TIMES YOU GEEZER and I’m like 🙄🤷🏼♀️
It's among the reasons I decided to go into grad school in classics, not comp lit as I had originally planned. I went back to community college to get back into the swing of things, believing the opinions in academia had evolved, and discovered in a creative writing class that they... had not.
Yes, this. I got my creative writing minor back in the 80s. The only break in this was my senior advisor (not my 1st choice pick, sadly) wrote academic papers about Stephen King. But it was from a "this time has passed" perspective. Only 1 SF/F class in all the English department offerings.
I did the MFA thing twenty-five years ago, and I evangelised to every writer I stumbled across for *years* afterward about how rewarding it was even though, following the degree program, little writer Jess very much Did Not Thrive. I feel like I want to apologise to all those other writers, now. :/
*sigh* Will always remember my writing instructor loudly telling me--in front of the entire class--that I was just wasting everyone's time if I was going to submit genre stuff.
I'm telling you... We just need to write about being a middle aged university professor who has an affair with a student, or just really WANTS to, and experiences a Profound Insight about youth, age, and mortality. Instant credibility!!
[not really your point, but having *become* a middle-aged college professor this trope has gone from annoying to viscerally repulsive, like wyd wtaf NO
also come after my students and watch me *turn into* a space warrior lady with lasers]
The middle aged professor returns to his family home after parents’ death, reuniting with estranged siblings, meets and has the affair etc… but in space! Very hip and genre aware!
Back when I was still working at the peepshow my best friend was dating a litfic guy, and I went with them to a litfic party, and when people learned I wasn’t working at the peepshow to get material for a book, it was very much like the party scene in Serpico
Alma looked out at the prairie, as Joe went down the road to town, wondering how their lives had spun away from each other, here on the broad, desolate, highly metaphorical plains, when suddenly a shining sphere landed by the barn
Uh huh, uh huh, and then the eldritch horrors consume the professor's mind for a bit but then they meet the immortal fish lady of their dreams flee beneath the ocean to the R'yleh. In my experience that's how most stories set in universities go more or less
honestly, it seemed like it would be for a very short while in the late 00's early 2010's. But no one really talks about Chabon and Junot Diaz and their scifi/fantasy dabblings anymore, and the literary crew moved on. Because of course, they didn't count. They were just lit writers slumming it
I think Atwood even finally admitted some of her most significant work (Handmaid's and the MaddAdam trilogy) was SF, but I guess that tide's gone back out (and possibly left her stranded).
