Artificial is bad in food. But why does it seem to be bad in fiction -- it's supposed to be made up? If you listen to Terry Gross, unless I'm wrong, it seems like a lot of writers are channeling or recording. There isn't a lot of creating, shaping, forcing into existence. A writer isn't supposed to say things like, John Updike has this scene in one of his novels and I wanted to do something like that too. You can say, I've always liked noir and I wanted to do something noirish. Genre is OK. You can write something because you like cowboys in general. Or you can write a funeral scene. But if you want to put a 1922 Peace dollar in your story you are looked at like a sham. Things have to be natural, organic, not contrived. Contrivance is bad. You aren't supposed to admit that you are sticking something into your book because you like the Blue Beard fairy tale. In historical fiction accuracy is apparently paramount. Reality is king. Unless you're Tony Morrison. But if you basically want to write realistically -- and so many American writers do -- you aren't supposed to admit that you concocted a scene so that you could mention V-2 rockets, I mean, that was why you had that character who drank V-8 in the first place, right?