I write fantasy. I’ve pretty much exclusively written fantasy since I left high school, and though none of my professors ever told me that fantasy wasn’t worth my time, there was always a bit of a disconnect between the syllabus and my writing. Like you might assume, I read almost exclusively literary fiction throughout my college career. This was especially true of my writing classes, which had some of the most boring reading lists me and my classmates had ever encountered. Mostly we read historical or realistic fiction, and if there were any fantastical elements they were usually meant to be read as an aspect of the human psyche. We had some classes on genres, but it was more or less a lottery based on whatever the professors were interested in. The closest I got to a fantasy writing class was a course on the history of children’s books where we had to slog through some downright boring Victorian era literature to get to Howl’s Moving Castle and Harry Potter.
There’s this unspoken fear that someone is going to look at my work and say “you’re not a real author.”
Now again, none of my professors ever looked down on my because of the genre I wrote in. I had some really supportive professors and a lot of my peers wrote YA fiction, high fantasy, and mystery. However I always felt awkward submitting my material for workshop, and I still feel weird telling people I write fantasy. There’s this unspoken fear that someone is going to look at my work and say “you’re not a real author.” And that’s ridiculous right? Thousands of well-known authors write genre fiction. But you probably know what I’m talking about.
The truth is, we don’t really think genre fiction needs to be taught. It’s “formulaic,” “unimaginative,” and “escapist.” We think genre fiction is something someone can pick up in a weekend and get published without really making any new contributions to literature. But why is that? Look I’m not saying that every book needs to say something new to be good, but the genre you write in doesn’t stop you from saying anything worthwhile. Literary fiction is full of the same damn book being written over and over again. Here’s a run-down of half the books I read in college: the main character is a sad because their life is normal and they have mundane problems they can’t solve because that’s how life is. And the narration is confusing because it’s a statement on how we only really know what the narrator tells us and so they don’t use quotation marks. Now go write an essay about how deep it was.
Again, I don’t regret getting my degree. I don’t regret any of the courses I took (okay maybe one or two). Reading all that literary fiction taught me to bring my experiences to my writing and it taught me to push my writing beyond what I thought I could do. Writing isn’t all about plotting out that nice clean narrative arc we seen in middle school English classes. Good fiction is good because it creates an experience that the audience can relate to and be affected by; and that’s one hundred percent obtainable in fantasy or any other genre you write in.
Good fiction is one hundred percent obtainable in fantasy or any other genre you write in.
So I write fantasy. Sometimes I write fantasy just to feel good and to create some fun story. Sometimes I write fantasy to explore themes of gender and race and mental health. Whatever I’m writing it for, genre fiction is just what I like to write, and that’s what’s important. So write what you like, and be proud of completing something. And remember that whatever you write, you are allowed to enjoy it. Not everyone has your tastes in literature and that’s okay.
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