How to Know When Your Writing is Good Enough
On Instagram a few months back, someone asked me, "How do I know my writing is good enough?"
This question, of course, raises the question – good enough for what?
For publication?
We live in a time when we no longer need gatekeepers to become published writers. We can simply launch a blog, self-publish a book, or write an article for Medium to get our words into the world.
But whether writing is published or not isn't always the best indicator of "good writing."
I have a feeling there are some beautifully written stories and essays out there saved on someone's decade-old Mac gasping for a chance to live out its purpose and be seen.
On the flip side, there's plenty of published work that harsh critics might say is, um, is not so great, but the authors believed in their vision enough to put it out there.
Here's the wonderful but hard truth: At this moment in time, the biggest obstacle to becoming a writer is you.
Still, I pondered this question a bit.
Is perfect grammar crucial for good writing?
Sometimes we lump good writing in with good grammar — to be a good writer, you must always write correctly, right? Sure, proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling help readers with the ease of reading and flow. When your writing is correct, readers don't get distracted by mistakes.
But to err (on the keyboard) is human, and someone shouldn't be deemed a "bad writer" for the occasional typo.
Plus, there are plenty of great writers who have dyslexia. People with dyslexia notoriously struggle with spelling — so writing "correctness" and the skills of great storytelling don't always go hand-in-hand.
If you typically make lots of spelling and grammatical mistakes, consider asking someone to read your work before your publish or run it through Grammarly.
Don't I need to write literary fiction to be a good writer?
Other times, we hold up literary fiction heavyweights like Jonathan Franzen or Jhumpa Lahiri as writer ideals and compare their polished work to our beginnings. We have a taste for good writing but just… can't…seem…to get there, so we feel like failures before we even start.
Ira Glass famously talks about this phenomenon, which he calls, The Gap:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It's not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it's not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.
And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.
I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It takes awhile. It's gonna take you a while. It's normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.
—Ira Glass
I feel this gap — some people call it resistance — every day. I feel it now. I feel it with every project I do. Sometimes, I lose the fight and silence myself and make myself small. I say things like, "I'm not really a writer. Just a food person." Or "I'm more of a project manager."
Other times, like now, I'm punching on through. I'm writing things to put out in the world to see what sticks.
Redefining what it means to be a good writer
What's helped me write more words and publish them more often is redefining the idea of what it means to be a good writer.
Instead of obsessing over my writing from an ego-centric view and wondering what the most critical eyes might think about it, I now try to write from a place of service.
I've decided if my writing:
helps someone,
inspires someone,
makes someone feel something,
teaches someone,
sells something, and/or
entertains someone,
then, yes, it's good enough.
In the end, that's what I told my friends on Instagram. I hope they take it to heart.
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