The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

The third novel I finished, after a six-year misery of serial running into the dust, was my Great Fanfic Novel. It was worth the eighteen months I spent on it, by and for itself. Further, not only the writing of it, but the feedback I got from the fanfic community in question, taught me a lot of the things I needed for when my original worlds started crowding the fan-stuff out again. So I have good personal reason to agree with pretty much all of the above.

An interesting parallel here. When I was a kid, art lessons were little more than 'finding the kids who could draw, telling them to do so, and ignoring the others' all the way up through high school, up to the level at which I was allowed to bale out. These days, the students are learning the real deal from an early stage - and the results on the walls of rich schools and poor don't half show it.

What has changed? As early as possible, the teachers have their pupils imitate the styles of the best, so they can learn what's going on, and develop their skills within frames that seriously talented crafters have created already.

If the students were actually art fans acting on their own initiatives, and got to pick the genres that called to each of them individually, they might be doing even better. And they'd be producing something even more like Magritte fanfic, Picasso fanfic, Frazetta fanfic...

Frankly, I'd rather see a good piece of fanart than fifty more 'original' turds in jars of turpentine. It doesn't matter if for some artists, it stops at there. For others - it won't, that's all.

It's not a perfect analogy, but I think it's got some legs on it.