The quality conundrum: is what you have written any good?
An extract from my book "So, you think you're a Writer".
There is one final question, ‘the elephant in the room’. It is a question we either ask ourselves too often — in part thanks to Imposter Syndrome — or perhaps not often enough.
Is what I have written any good?
How are you supposed to answer that? Or who is supposed to do so, because surely we are disqualified from judging our own work. And perhaps most significantly in the context of this enquiry, does the quality of what I have written (or lack of quality) make me ‘a writer’ (or disqualify me from being one)?
It’s the kind of question which will raise the hackles on the back of many necks. For some it will be taboo, one of the few questions that should never be asked i.e. don’t talk about sex, politics or religion — nor ask whether your creative work is actually any good.
does your writing need to be of a reasonable standard for you to be considered ‘a writer’?
What are the likely answers? These four might just about cover the major bases:
1 - How dare you! If you write then you’re a writer. Period.
Because this is the assertion of a philosophical position — a ‘belief’ if you like — it is an argument which cannot be countered. Quality doesn’t come into it. There is nothing you can say to dissuade those who hold this position. “If you write you’re a writer. Period” is almost a direct quote from posts I have seen on Substack, Twitter/X etcetera.
Talk about sculpting and painting, and about how badly you do them, and you’ll be told that, nevertheless, you’re a sculptor and a painter too — and who knows maybe a photographer, a dancer, a fashion designer, a builder… If you like to sing but do so really badly, would these same people call you ‘a singer’? I doubt it.
However, I want to suggest that there’s a possibility that people are confusing the act of writing — which is about production — with the merit of that writing, and which is surely where some notion of ‘quality’ comes into play.
when it comes to quality in writing, are we really talking about ‘merit’?
If you are attempting to craft a sonnet in order to convey a complex emotional feeling but all you produce is laughable doggerel, yes, you may have written something, but your work has failed to meet its goals. A tick for the act, but a cross in terms of merit.
In writing groups up and down the land, week-in and week-out, you will see people who engage in the act of writing. They produce slivers of memoir, poems about their family or nature or whatever, but for many their motivation — the ‘why’ they write — is predominately to pass the time, to be able to engage with like-minded people, to enjoy a hobby. Their efforts may be intended as no more than the expression of a personal memory or emotion; there is no attempt at ‘universality’. Many of these people have absolutely no desire to be regarded as ‘a writer’. It comes back to ambition, that initial ‘why’ with which we started this book. You tell me I’m a writer because I write, but what if I don’t want to be ‘a writer’? What then?
And it comes back to definition too. My definition of ‘a writer’ is undoubtedly different to those who proclaim that “if you write you’re a writer”…
2 - Quality must be a consideration, but who is the arbiter here?
Perhaps this is the response from an individual who recognises that quality plays a part; “we can’t all be Jane Austen!” they might joke. Or perhaps they have sat through painful hours of Open Mics and recognise that there is a gap between the act of writing — producing something — and that something being ‘good’.
But who is to say? Who makes the call as to whether this or that is good or bad? Where are the boundaries, the rules, the test cases?
And of course there aren’t any. Indeed there can’t be. You only have to think about competitions and the totally subjective nature of ‘judgement’: I think Z is brilliant, you think it’s rubbish. Who is correct? Both of us and neither of us, of course.
There is no arbitration. If you wanted to, you might make a case to say that ‘the readers’ were the only arbiters. If your book sells a million copies and mine only fifteen then surely that must mean your book is better than mine… But not really. It might be more commercial, better marketed, but of higher quality?
And what if, at that mythical Open Mic, while 95% of the audience is cringing at something being read aloud, one person is moved by it, thinks it is brilliant? What then?
we are each arbiters of quality against our own standards, preferences, peccadilloes
Occasionally there will enough people who feel the same, where there is a critical mass of common opinion to confer ‘quality’ on something and someone. There will be those who dislike Shakespeare and decry his work, but the bulk of popular and academic opinion will beg to differ. Not that there is any implication here that either tribe should change their minds!
3 - Without question, quality is a prerequisite for being a writer. There is too much poor quality writing swamping the market-place.
This is a complaint most likely to be uttered by someone who considers themselves ‘a writer’ — and who thinks many others who engage in the act of writing are not. Perhaps it is partly a defensive stance.
But the complaint is a difficult one to justify in relation to an endeavour which nowadays — thanks to self-publishing, websites and the internet, and to social media in general — is so fiercely democratic. To deny people the right to express themselves and manifest their thoughts through words and then send those words out into the void, is to touch on something far darker, something political and dangerous. This stance is answering the question about arbitration by saying “I know what good looks like; I am prepared to pass judgement; I am happy to disqualify your efforts”…
History is filled with dark periods where individuals or groups of individuals have set themselves up as judge and jury
And yet… Take a look at self-published novels on the Amazon Kindle store. You will find instances where — thanks to the cover alone — you might be tempted to question their merit. And if you were to pursue your investigation through to reading, I daresay you would find some books amazingly good — and some impossible to finish because they lacked structure, rhythm, rounded characters, a decent plot, creative flair etcetera.
But I’ve heard similar complaints against novels such as Anna Burns’ Milkman — and that won the Booker Prize in 2018!
So, if you want to differentiate quality in some way — and thus also the absence of quality — we come back to arbitration and judgement, and to freedom of expression.
4 - Does it matter? I mean, really, who cares?
Here is your ‘get out of jail free card’! If it’s too hard to take a position or to justify that position, or to quantify what you mean including the parameters according to which you would overlay your quality lens — and if it’s frankly dangerous to assume what might be regarded as an extreme position — then why not roll-over and duck the question altogether? Keep life simple. You could just agree ‘quality’ is entirely subjective and therefore not even worth talking about…
Who gives a shit anyway?
Fine. But if you make that statement, just take a step back and think about it for a moment. Do you really not care? Logically, if you’re happy with a free-for-all with an absence of judgement in terms of merit then surely you’re also saying that you don’t need your work assessed, you don’t want someone telling you that your writing is ‘good’ — because if yours is ‘good’, then, by extrapolation, someone else’s must be ‘bad’. And vice versa!
“Who cares?” Well, I suspect that you do
Don’t you want all those five star reviews, all those nice comments on social media, the followers, the large numbers of sales — because aren’t they all, in their own way, an affirmation of quality? Don’t you want to be regarded — if by no-one other than yourself — as ‘better’ than the next person? Honestly? Isn’t some positive differentiation important from the point of view of momentum and morale? And why do you enter those competitions if it isn’t to be lauded and presented with some laurel or other?
Minefield isn’t it? And all arising from a simple question as to whether or not what you have produced has any merit.
As the son, and grandson, of professional artists, all I ever wanted to do was to paint. Unfortunately, the results of my efforts convinced me by the time I was 10 years old at what I saw in my mind eye bore no resemblance to the image I made on the paper.
So, my efforts went into industrial design, where the ability to turn the image of a machine into a working artefact that would sell all over the world made my fortune.
It would take a family tragedy to turn me away from the company I had built to start a new career, writing the stories based on the childhood of my family.
I have spent half a lifetime trying to work out what beauty is, and what constitutes art, and have come to the conclusion that it's one of those things, like philosophy, but everybody has their own idea of, but nobody seems to adequately explain what it is.
I am disturbed by this line of thinking on a writing platform