Don't Forget to Write About It

- Intermezzo -

What does it take to be a good writer?

The reason I'm asking is not because I consider myself one. It’s just one of those questions that keeps gnawing at me and won’t go away until I write about it.

It’s almost impossible to answer because it’s so subjective—unlike chess, where your score is a transparent indicator how good you really are.

It’s easy to pretend or lie about good writing, because it's not objective at all.

You can write something clever or grammatically complex and have that masquerade as talent (unless you actually think that's good writing, in which case you've already stopped reading this).

The people who are impressed by this kind of writing are numerous—I know because I used to be one of them. I suspect these people continue to be impressed because they don’t read that much or stick to the specific authors, who are numerous themselves, because of the so-called Impressive Aura.

Well, the only thing I can say for sure is that writing has made me a better reader. Specifically, it’s taught me to spot bad writing more easily: writing whose sole purpose is to impress; writing that is too clever or grammatically complex.

The ones who like that sort of thing might point out that the previous sentence is faulty due to the fact that 'writing' isn’t a person and that 'whose' is not the appropriate modifier-whatchamacallit.

Whatever. Who really cares? It sounds normal to me (a subjective opinion) and language is an ever changing thing anyways. Besides, did you even notice until I pointed it out?

The other way to tell a person is a bad writer is when they incessantly tell you that they are a very good one. They get away with it because they happen to have written, maybe, one decent piece that did well and used that single anomaly to build credibility as a Teacher Of Writing. It's that feeling you get when you have a hunch this person's writing is actually bad but you choose to ignore it because they've been able to make a living talking about being a Good Writer.

So apparently, the key is to talk about it more than you do it. Meanwhile, good writers get ignored left and right because they're too busy doing actual writing.

I’ve just now realized this is why I will never call myself a good writer, which seems to be all the more reason I’ll never become one.

So what is good writing? I assume you’re interested in my opinion, because, well, you’re still here.

To me it’s writing that’s alive or writing that’s so damn good, not in the clever or grammatically complex way, that you find yourself wishing you could write that way.

(see: Bukowski, Fante, Moore, Berlin, Didion, DFW, Kristóf.)

Yes, I know this is a completely subjective answer based on who I like to read. I could say more, but that’s the main gist of it—plus I’m no expert and I've more than overstayed my welcome.

But basically, read a fuckton. Read so much until it becomes obvious a lot of books you used to like weren’t actually all that good to begin with. Then promise to never ever read those books again.

Oh, and don’t forget to write about it.