How often do instructors hear students say, “I’m just not a good writer”? The idea of the genius author perpetuates the bad idea that some people are just born good writers while others are not.
Many institutional reasons exist for holding on to an untroubled concept of genius authorship: degrees, jobs, grades, salary, promotions, tenure and awards often depend on it. And writing is hard work; we feel a sense of pride at what we have accomplished and having our name attached to it. However, Bruce Horner writes in “Students, Authorship, and the Work of Composition” that the genius idea is also “linked to the removal of writing from the social material world, redefining it from a socially located activity to an aestheticized, idealized art object -- from writing as an activity engaged in to writing as an object produced for the sake of ‘art.’”