Subtext is Everything

[leahbobet]

It seems there is a new FAQ at the very top of the SFWA home page, titled "Why Should I Join SFWA?" and featuring responses from the current president to "real letters" asking this very question.

I browsed through and found one of the questions/answers notable.

Q: I've heard there's some tension in SFWA between the old crowd of established writers and the "newbies" like me. Will I feel uncomfortable?

A: A good rule to follow is: Never give too much weight to a few strident voices. For as long as the organization has existed, a few loud voices have always declared that the Old Farts should dry up and blow away and make room for the Young Writers Who Really Have Something To Say. Most new members' experience is of how open to questions and how generous in giving advice the more established members are.

I find the subtext to this answer -- and the very existence of this FAQ -- interesting in the extreme.

Discuss?

Comments

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot more to it than blanket insecurity -- our society is still a really hierarchical one, and there's this idea ingrained that experience is well, valuable, and the old should teach the young, the young respect the elder. Honour thy father and mother, right?

And there's also an idea that "youth" is the time when you're supposed to be radical, so if you come out with something like that people figure you don't really mean it? Because you'll get older, undergo retrenchment, and settle into society as it is?

I mean, this was a lot more overt fifty years ago than it is now. But a lot of the people trying to deal with the changing paradigm were raised or around fifty years ago or raised by the people around fifty years ago, so they don't quite know what to do with it.

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

In terms of writing, it is even more complicated than that -- some of us (me) started writing well in our thirties; thus, in terms of publishing experience/taste some of the chronologically older people might find themselves ideologically closer to the twenty-something set. They're also the newer SFWA members who are often in disagreement with the old guard -- even though they might be not that different age-wise.