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shallownessThis is Not for You. Good Wives. PG. Josephine March, Professor Bhaer. 244 words. Modern day AU. Inspired by the prompt 'writing a book' at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
comment_fic.
Summary: Jo March meets a critic at a literary festival.
This is Not for You: shallowness
Josephine March writes books about complicated women. She’s imbued them with a touch of Marmee’s kindness, Hannah’s perseverance, Meg’s sweetness, Amy’s ambition or Beth’s big heart. They all stumble sometimes, but pick themselves up and get things done, so for this man – a professor of the ‘literary fiction by men is good, genre fiction by women is bad’ school - to tell her that what she writes isn’t true and she should limit herself to what she knows sticks in her craw. Jo smiles at him with a smile she gave to her latest protagonist, Lou, before she aimed and shot her nemesis with a crossbow.
“With all due respect,” Jo says, because she has been brought up to be polite, after all, “have you even read my books? I’ll be doing a reading at three if you’d like to attend. Room 4. Down the hall, to the left.”
He’s not the first to fail to see beyond the vampires, the hunters and the occasional werewolf, and to think he can judge her for the creatures she writes about, but she’s at this literature festival to meet the readers who tweet her, write fanfic she doesn’t always want to think too much about – especially about the piano-playing werewolf who just wants a pack. Oh, how her readers love him. But they get it. She writes for them, for the people listed in her dedications and for herself. Having delivered her invitation, she walks away.
comment_fic. Summary: Jo March meets a critic at a literary festival.
Josephine March writes books about complicated women. She’s imbued them with a touch of Marmee’s kindness, Hannah’s perseverance, Meg’s sweetness, Amy’s ambition or Beth’s big heart. They all stumble sometimes, but pick themselves up and get things done, so for this man – a professor of the ‘literary fiction by men is good, genre fiction by women is bad’ school - to tell her that what she writes isn’t true and she should limit herself to what she knows sticks in her craw. Jo smiles at him with a smile she gave to her latest protagonist, Lou, before she aimed and shot her nemesis with a crossbow.
“With all due respect,” Jo says, because she has been brought up to be polite, after all, “have you even read my books? I’ll be doing a reading at three if you’d like to attend. Room 4. Down the hall, to the left.”
He’s not the first to fail to see beyond the vampires, the hunters and the occasional werewolf, and to think he can judge her for the creatures she writes about, but she’s at this literature festival to meet the readers who tweet her, write fanfic she doesn’t always want to think too much about – especially about the piano-playing werewolf who just wants a pack. Oh, how her readers love him. But they get it. She writes for them, for the people listed in her dedications and for herself. Having delivered her invitation, she walks away.
