Stewart, my only point was that good match IS important. Obviously, this teacher was not a good fit for me and that affected my experience. That does not mean she had nothing to teach me, or that I was a terrible writer. It just meant that our interests did not click. I was not capable interested in the kind of writing the kind of writing she prefers so I should not have been in her class. As for your assertion that a creative writing lecturer would never suggest Dan Brown or Danielle Steele as a template, that is patently not true. Have you ever read Donald Maass? He is a literary agent who suggests just such a strategy. Whether Brown or Steele are to your personal taste or not, the fact remains that they have sold many, many books. People like their stuff. Whether you personally do or not is your decision. I see nothing wrong with saying "I want to write popular fiction successfully, so I will study the works of people who have done this." Steele is not to my personal taste, but there are plenty of successful genre writers. And there are plenty of genre readers who also read classics and literature. I do not at all see why the two have to be mutually exclusive.
As for this writing teacher, my only point was that I personally did not like this implication that only one kind of writing is acceptable, and that for this reason I did not get along with her. I recall one assignment where a guy int he class wrote a perfectly nice gangster story. Instead of saying something like "This is a great example of a solid, well-written gangster story" she instead made him feel bad that he had not written Great Literature. Now, if he had written a BAD gangster story, that would be one thing. Imho it would be perfectly acceptable to say "here is how you could improve your gangster story" or "here is how you could add interest, or develop characterization, or dramatize setting in a way suitable for a good gangster story." But to say "one should not be writing gangster stories" is something completely different, and that what was about her I objected to.
