On Good Writers

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I’ve read a lot of writing advice. It comes with the territory when you’re a self-published writer who’s serious about the craft and has a degree in Creative Writing. And one thing I hear all the time is that, well, quite frankly, you have to be a good writer.

This seems like a no-brainer. After all, if you’re not good, you’re bad, and if you’re bad at something, you shouldn’t do it, right? But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think this bit of advice needs to be qualified a bit.

First off, what is a good writer? Is it a writer who can create masterful prose, full of intelligent symbolism and metaphor that is praised by all the critics? Or is it a writer who can always touch something inside of people that keeps them coming back to buy the author’s books? Or what about someone whose work just makes you feel good after you’ve had a rotten day? Is it a writer who is successful by selling a million copies, or one who isn’t because they refuse to “sell out?”

The fact of the matter is, I’m not convinced there IS a single definition of what makes a good writer. And that’s why I don’t think, in all cases, the quality of your writing is all that important.

Sure, if you’re writing literary fiction and your goal is to win the Pulitzer Prize, of course you’re not going to want to write a book like Fifty Shades of Grey. However, most writers aren’t writing to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Most are writing because they enjoy it, because, as just about everybody knows, writing fiction is one of those industries where you have to enjoy it to stick with it.

And here’s another secret: art is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Something one person likes someone else is bound to hate. There is simply not a piece of writing in existence that doesn’t have its detractors. Not your favorite work, not Shakespeare, and not Twilight. Because everyone has different opinions, there really is no set definition of a “good” writer vs. a “bad” writer.

And even if you DO happen to be a bad writer: someone with no grasp of sentence structure, doesn’t know where to put a comma, no clue what a run-on is... It’s only willful ignorance that keeps you from learning and improving. People CAN learn the basics, and become at the very least serviceable, even if they have no natural talent. Because I think just about everyone has some miniscule amount of storytelling talent in them. It’s just something we do as human beings: we tell stories. From cavemen around the fire to filling your best friend in on what happened last night.

So maybe that piece of poetry is bad by nearly every standard in the book. So what? There’s likely to be someone who enjoys it, and if the author likes it too, I fail to see much of a problem. Since criticism of art is so subjective, I think it’s hard to say something is concretely good or bad. We all have our opinions, of course, and are certainly entitled to them. Publishers and magazines are of course entitled to throw out manuscripts with run-on sentences or tons of adverbs. But as a whole, art is art—even if it’s messy and ugly. There’s bound to be someone who will appreciate it, even if it’s not flawless.

And that’s why I don’t think the words and the sentences themselves matter as much as many would have you believe. What matters is whether someone genuinely likes it, and you make their day just that much better.

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