And well put, Camille.  I basically feel the same, although I do let certain critics get the better of me sometimes.  I know I shouldn't, but I'm human.  I have feelings.  And I'm proud of my work so far.

Some have suggested that I would have a hard time with bad reviews, but I see that as different than some of these fora critters.  Feedback is good, even negative feedback, but I think some discussions are just plain toxic (not here, elsewhere).

Richard, I can relate a recent anecdote that may be relevant to your question.

A couple weeks ago two of my poems were accepted for the summer issue of an online literary zine. I was quite excited, though my wife couldn't at first understand why. It's a non-paying market, and I sell work to online zines all the time.

"Literary validation," I explained. "These editors are discriminating and particular--they run work by poet laureates, don'tcha know."

Which is not to say that genre editors are not discriminating and particular! But the thought had occasionally gnawed at the back of my mind: "Am I only capable of writing publishable material if it features spirit dogs or reanimated corpses or disembodied brains or screaming skulls?"

If that were the case, I guess I really wouldn't mind. It's what I love to read, and it's what I love to write. I have an added consideration, though, being a college professor: I don't list Weird Tales on my curriculum vitae. The lit mag is something I can add to my CV.

However, I didn't immediately start thinking, "Hey, maybe I could be the next James Dickey or Billy Collins or Robert Bly!" Rather, I felt like I'd thrown a sop to the "literary merit" types, and now I could go back to writing what I love to write for an audience that appreciates and enjoys it.

I write what I write. If I'm telling a story, I tell a story. If I'm writing a poem, I write the poem. The rest of those considerations are very seldom in my mind when I write. I'm told repeatedly that my writing is too literary . . . My question, then, is 'what, precisely, do you mean by too literary'?

As for literary writing: it's not some elitist game, and I resent the accusation. It's a serious fault in understanding audience most of the time. People write about things that are on their minds. They write analogies that are familiar to them at the time they are writing. In the case of a great many collegiate writers, the allusions can get bizarrely obscure because that's where they are at the time - or it's something that bubbled up from their compost swamp of a subconscious. Believe it or not, most of that crap makes sense to the writer. My question is why in the world so much of it gets published. If I don't understand a poem, I'm certainly not going to waist page space unless it's my own work - and then only if there is another reason for it going in.

In the long run, the literary quality of your writing is likely to determine your longevity in print. But this brings up more nuances: vogue literati crap, serious literature, and popular writing. Vogue literati crap - crap so gawds-awful it only get published by NEA grant money, is likely to be seen as fad crap in under a decade; 99.9999999% will be completely lost within 20 years. Serious literature is a crap shoot due to the shear volume. And pulp is likely to survive only if you sell more than half a million copies in hard back.

So it comes down to this, really:
1) do you want to feed your family with your writing skills
or 2) do you want your name in a widely-published text book thirty years from now?

Pay now, or pay later in an immaterial manner that is very unlikely to keep you in beer, let alone decent wine?

SFF is different from mainstream fiction because of the importance of being able to invent imaginative plot ideas. That doesn't mean that writing skills are unimportant, but that they don't dominate as much as in the mainstream.

As far as I'm concerned, provided that an author has a reasonable standard of writing skill, it's the plot and the ideas which matter. Very literary SFF authors tend to write books which are bigger, slower in pace and somewhat lacking in tension. I find them admirable but not so much fun!

I agree with those who say - write what you enjoy reading. It's the only way you're ever going to enjoy your writing. Don't try to be what you're not.

The literati tend to sneer at popular fiction and hold that only high-quality literature stands the test of time. Well, Edgar Rice Boroughs was no literary master but his books are still read and loved today. I'd settle for that!

Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

It's been my experience that genuine literati are too busy reading, researching, and writing to be disdainful.

I opine that the true culprit here is wanabeism. It's not those who are in the academy, nor those on the bookshelves who tend to quibble over these things with invectives and pejoratives. It is the failed in either category - or those who are not yet mature in their art/craft and are simply frustrated with their own lack of instant progress.

I myself tend to be quite abusive, verbally, with pulp writers, editors, publishers - heck, the entire industry - any time I get another rejection with either "Too Literary" or with some lame critique on what was wrong with the story that made it unpublishable. Most of the latter come from incompetent or lazy critics/readers. The former tend to come from honest folk who are too arrogant to assume that maybe the reading public can comprehend more than the label of a box of cracker jacks!

I love it!  I think you hit the nail right on the head with that statement!

Yes, I have the personal belief that this discussion arose because the person I was dealing with was exactly one of those "wannabe literati".  I imagine that the "true literati" don't have to work so hard to try to impress with their "edjumacation".

Many of us read what we like.  Sometimes it's as simple as that.  Me?  I like Shakespeare, Blake, Poe, and Dunsany, as well as Lovecraft, Tolkien, Stoker, and LeGuin.  Some real blurring of the lines with at least a few of those.

Amazingly enough, Lovecraft breaks many of the modern literary rules for fiction.  And some people blast his works because of it.  And yet, and yet, Lovecraft seems to be enjoying a lasting popularity.  The man's been dead now for seventy-one years, but people still read his works and talk about them!  Not too shabby an accomplishment, if you ask me.

So maybe some of these rules aren't quite as important as some people make them out to be.

Just a thought.  

Just look at the books which make it onto the shortlists of the literary prizes (Man Booker etc). How many of those are from any genre, let alone SFF?

The literati disdain most genre fiction by ignoring it.

And when some established literary authors do dabble in genre fiction, they almost invariably reject the genre label and pretend it's mainstream.

Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

Do you have any idea what drives those prizes? Mostly it's money and essays submitted by the editors/publishers of the work. That has nothing to do with the literati. The literati doesn't decide who's nominated. They choose from what is nominated - and that is the micro-minority who is even involved in making such decisions. Before anyone starts going off on the literati, I'd recommend they look into the qualifications of the prizes. Take the Pulizer for instance; need only submit a number of copies of the work and a few hundred bucks to claim to be a runner-up. And then the judging panel only judges from what people were audacious enough, and had resources enough, to submit for judging.

It's more driven by commerce and industry savvy than it is even touched by literary talent!

I didn't say "nominated". I said "shortlisted".

Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

I don't know what kinds of books the publishers nominate, but the fact that genre fiction rarely makes it onto the shortlist (unless written by an established literary figure) suggests to me one of two possibilities:

1. The nominations include genre fiction, but these are all rejected in preparing the shortlist.

2. The nominations do not include genre fiction - presumably because the publishers know that it stands little chance of being chosen, so they focus on the books they think might appeal to the judges.

Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

Excellent points, SJ.

Michael Chabon is one of the more preeminent voices currently railing against this literary categorization and overclassification (with writers as diverse as Joyce Carol Oates, Ursula Le Guin, Susanna Clarke, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem, and Cormac McCarthy lending a hand--or a hammer, as the case may be).