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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1650333" data-attributes="member: 5171">I believe this to be -- no offense, Chuck -- a load of garbage, and indicative of a mindset that isn't actually IN the genre writing crowd.Sure, you've got the people who want to churn out your stereotypical orphan-saves-the-world story (or "ugly girl gets mistreated and then learns magic and is revealed to actually be beautiful by some powerful masculine figure who falls in lover with her", for the stereotypical female set), and you've got people who are so knee-jerk against that they write stuff that isn't enjoyable, isn't comprehenisble, and isn't even really a story in an attempt to subvert the dominant paradigm.  But you've also got people trying to get their cool new ideas into print.Evidently, Chuck, you've never worked the slush pile at a major fiction publication.  Yeah, it's certainly possible for folks who've never picked up a pen before to produce a mega-hit -- like Ms. Rowling -- and good for them, but by and large, the slush pile is full of garbage.  The slush pile is full of people who don't realize that they're writing a tortured unintentional parody of David Eddings or Robert Jordan, because a) they're not very good writers and b) that's all they've read.  I wouldn't say that the genre writing crowd is immune to this effect, but they're more likely to cloak it a bit better (and they get their own special problem, "different for the sake of being different instead of good", which is the mediocre genre writer's version of originality, to compensate).In order to know what "different" is, you have to know what the field is.  Otherwise, you get people being "different" by saying, "Okay, wow, my new idea is that dragons are good in my world?" as if TSR, Mercedes Lackey, Melanie Rawn, and a host of others haven't had that one already.I'm not saying that somebody who's never written before couldn't be a really good natural writer, especially if they're a voracious reader who's been subconsciously studying how novels work ever since they started reading.  I'm not saying that someone who was rough around the edges but had great ideas couldn't write a perfectly good novel (likely with the help of a strong editing team and a ghostwriter for some parts, but hey, that's still in the realm of writing).  But saying "You aren't going to get something new by tapping the genre writing crowd or the guys who majored in creative writing in college," is just dumb. The idea that anyone who's been trying for awhile now to write a novel is going to automatically be worse at it than the people who've never tried or practiced their skills is... well, it's insulting reverse snobbery, and uninformed insulting reverse snobbery at that.</blockquote>

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