What If You are Actually Not a Good Writer?

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ReflectedGray

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I think its really dangerous to start thinking about writing as a career before you make any money. Until you start getting those royalty checks, you are not a professional writer, and you should not consider yourself so.

I write because I truly, purely, completely enjoy it. Even if professional writing wasn't a thing, I still think I would do it. I have a career which I love (maybe 3/4ths as much as writing) and I’m developing that while I write. It doesn’t feel like any kind of cop-out because I still get to do both.

If one day I make money, wow won't I be lucky. Getting paid to do something i'd do anyway? Sure i'll take that.

There is no risk in being a "bad writer" if you enjoy it. Writing isn’t like playing basketball. You can’t be edged out because you were born short. You can always get better.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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I think its really dangerous to start thinking about writing as a career before you make any money. Until you start getting those royalty checks, you are not a professional writer, and you should not consider yourself so.

I write because I truly, purely, completely enjoy it. Even if professional writing wasn't a thing, I still think I would do it.


This is pretty much my attitude.

It's easy to say the untalented should give up, but the thing about having talent is, how the hell do you know for sure? I'm sure there are writers out there who've rarely been rejected and have been lauded as supremely talented by every single person who read their work. Jonathan Franzen, perhaps. (His girlfriend, also a writer, wrote an essay about how hard it was to hear everyone gushing over him while her work was rejected.)

And then there are those of us, probably far more common, who get mixed reactions and contradictory messages. When I was a kid, adults gushed over my precocious writing talent. Then I grew up and started getting rejected and winning the honorable mentions instead of the first prizes. I went to college with someone my age who was already getting published in national magazines (Allegra Goodman), and I realized that at eighteen I might already be a nobody, an also-ran. I sat on the board of my college lit magazine and listened to people discuss my work candidly. Their opinions were all over the map, though they published my work. I kept writing and genre hopping and experimenting. I got jobs writing, though not the kind of writing I really wanted to do. Today, decades later, I still haven't published a book.

Does all that mean I'm "not talented"? It's certainly a possibility. But I honestly don't see whom I'm hurting by continuing to write and developing whatever small talent I may have been born with. As long as I don't force my loved ones to give me feedback, and act professionally with agents and editors, I think I'm OK.

I know a guy who had 200 stories rejected by magazines. Today he's a bestselling novelist. I've read his novels, and I don't think he's an especially talented writer. But his many fans do, and that's all that matters. Somewhere in the course of writing all those rejected stories, he found a way to reach people and make them eager for his work.

A success story like that is the exception, not the rule. Not everyone has an equal chance of breaking through. But, considering how many different possible paths there are to success, I don't see how you can know all those paths are closed to you until you try. And if you love writing, you lose nothing in the process.
 

Avatar_fan

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The way I do it is I compare what I've written with other writers especially your favorite authors. Not the great ones but the current bestsellers. It's just like a benchmark or something like that.
 

mailtime

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I think about this all the time. And I realized something -- the answer won't matter, because it won't stop me from trying. I'm going to read more. I'm going to study writing styles. I'm going to keep submitting. I don't have a choice. This is the career I told myself I wanted since I was little. I let every opportunity go to focus on this one thing.
 

Mack Moyer

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I think a lot of writers have a habit of being overly critical of their work. And like another poster touched on, I think that habit is a sign that you have what it takes to be a decent writer (through hard work, practice, and maybe a nugget of talent).

For me personally, no amount of good feedback can make me NOT criticize everything I write. If you tell me that short story I wrote was awesome, I'll probably find a reason why I think it sucks.

It's better to be overly critical than think everything you write is awesome.
 

Ken

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Sometimes one does get feedback from editors or agents. That helps. If editor X says a writer's stuff is good (etc) then maybe he/she isn't as worthless as he/she believes :)
 

celticroots

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At some point, after much reading and writing, and reading and editing, and reading and writing and editing and reading some more, you should develop enough objectivity about your own work to say whether it's good or not.

Not because it's YOURS. That's amateurville.

Because you've learned what good writing looks like and how to apply that knowledge to your own stuff.

I think getting smacked around by a couple-three hundred rejections helps, too, so long as you neither take them as proof that you suck nor as proof that you're persecuted. Take them as proof you're in the game, and keep playing. Harder.

If you want to keep playing more than you want to do anything else, do it. Always harder.

Then you'll succeed whether you make the majors or not. Or the minors. Or Little League.

Success is doing what you want to do most.

As hard as you can do it.

The rest is beyond your control.

I only have 2 rejections in my collection so far. (Both were for short stories). I have three novels in various stages of development. It took over a decade of writing until I could read my own work and believe it didn't suck. (Not to say that I don't edit and rewrite.And there are times when I still hate what I've written.)
 
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J.S.F.

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To answer the OP's original question, what if you are?

You won't know until you try. A lot of people have chimed in with their own experiences, so here's mine. I was told a long time ago I had no talent. I was told by various junior and senior high school teachers I wasn't smart enough to go on to university. About the talent thing, that's debatable. Going on to university, they were wrong. I did, and graduated with honors.

Point of this little digression is if I'd listened to those naysaying POS, then I probably wouldn't be here today, telling you my thoughts. I'd be working in a dead-end job and cursing my life. Or I'd be dead. Either way, I wouldn't be here.

Now, as for you not being a good writer, you have to give yourself time to develop. As someone said before, not everyone is a writer from birth to earth. While there are always exceptions ("writer makes stunning debut!" or some such crap like that) more often than not, writers struggle. I've been published, but I'm still struggling to make a name for myself and can only hope for the best. And even the better writers out there who ARE good still have to work day jobs, so there it is.

Study how it's done. Read, write, ask for criticism. Get it, use it, learn some more. That's what it's all about.
 

Cranky

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I'm doing a Bad Thing and admitting I've not read the rest of the comments. :D With that out of the way:

I can't worry about whether or not I'm any good, or if I'll never be published. When I started worrying about it, I stopped writing. For almost two years. I kept trying and all I ended up with was a lot of crap that got tossed and time wasted staring at my blank screen and berating myself. I'm just now coming out of that dark tunnel. I keep what I call a "Stupid Tally" -- I keep a blank sheet of paper next to me when I'm writing, and anytime I think anything negative about the writing or myself, I make a little tally mark. The first couple of times were enlightening...I had something like 20 hash marks for just a half hour's worth of work. And almost nothing written. When I started keeping track, the tally started getting smaller. And I GOT WORK DONE.

Maybe this is a silly thing, but it worked for me. So maybe it might be wise for you to take your eye off the ball -- in this case, the ball being "good". Let editors worry about that. You just keep writing. You'll more than likely improve just from the practice. Write. Finish what you start. Send it out. Rinse and repeat. :)
 

Cybernaught

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Don't worry about it. Bad writers can still make a living selling books. Look at E.L. James or Stephanie Meyer.
 

morriss003

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I'm a better writer in 2014 than I was in 2008. If you keep writing, it's hard not to get better. But I do run across a lot of badly written ebooks, and I don't mean the grammar or the spelling, they are just badly written.
 

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How, as an amateur writer, do you know if your writing has merit or if you just aren't talented? Agents and publishers won't say "you shouldn't be a writer," they simply send you a generic rejection form, if anything at all. So how do you know if your writing is worth pursuing or if you should do something else with your free time?

I'm not throwing a pity party here, I just wonder if some of us might consider the very real possibility that we are not meant to be writers.

Maybe every writer has thoughts like this, but certainly there are people who try and try and try and probably should have seen the writing on the wall and given it up. After all, plenty of eager players show up at spring training only to never make the team, you know?

Well, I think its good to wonder about this. I don't think you get better by just assuming you are great.

I will say that I do not think I am a very good creative writer. I have written one book, and I like the story, but still think the writing should be improved. I think I'll always think that.

However, I'm quite sure that when I write my next project, I'll do a vastly better job.

Don't you think you improve a lot by doing the actual writing, and then writing some more and some more and some more?
 

AbbyBabble

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Every decent writer has strengths and weaknesses. You might be an awesome storyteller, but your prose will never rise above a mediocre level. Or you might have amazing prose, but you're unable to come up with a coherent plot.

If you truly think you suck in all of the necessary categories: Storytelling, Prose, Character, Plot, Setting ... then why did you even start writing? :-D
 

SquirrellyGirl

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There is value in writing, beyond the validation of praise from others. If you enjoy writing, then write. Even if no one ever reads or enjoys your work, you will have the joy of having spent time doing what you love. If you are only writing because you think you can make money from it, then you probably should find a new career plan.

The idea that the value of art is defined by the reader/listener/viewer/etc bothers me. On American Idol, when someone botches their audition, the judges tell them to never sing again. But why should you only be allowed to sing if you can make money off of it? The same goes for writing, or any art form.
I love what you said about singing!
I love writing, whether anyone else ever reads it or not, whether anyone else thinks what I've written is good or not.
But your comparison to American Idol struck me, because I love to sing, and I'm absolutely horrible! My own kids used to beg me not to sing lullabies. But I still sing. I just turn the radio up louder.
 

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In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with being a bad writer. Not all of us can have MFAs in creative writing or be literary geniuses.

The truth is, the majority of published authors today are bad writers. They are, however, good re-writers. Learn as much as you can about revising and editing and you can turn even the most poorly written story into a good one, as long as your story was solid to begin with (and even then, you can fix bad stories in the revision process).

This is what I struggle with as well. I'm a computer science major and I write software for a living. I made Bs in english class in high school. I still don't know all the grammar rules by heart (I mostly go on instinct, and a lot of rules I had totally forgotten in 10+ years of writing and were only reminded of recently, such as not ending sentences with prepositions). But I enjoy coming up with stories and writing a novel is one of the easiest (but still difficult) ways to produce those stories into a format digestible by the masses.

Look up Susan Dennard and her blog posts on writing and re-writing and it should give you a lot of hope.
 

Katrina S. Forest

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How, as an amateur writer, do you know if your writing has merit or if you just aren't talented? Agents and publishers won't say "you shouldn't be a writer," they simply send you a generic rejection form, if anything at all.

Personally, I think anyone who does say, "You shouldn't be a writer" has no clue what he/she is talking about.

I refuse to believe that anyone (even a pro) can read a single piece of work, look into the writer's future, and go, "Oh, this one. Nope, never gonna make it. I can tell." Maybe it's because I've written such drivel in the past that I have to believe that, otherwise I know I'm doomed to rejection. ^_^

I think you keep writing until you either achieve your goals or going after your goals no longer interests you. And even then, you might take a break from writing only to try your hand at it again later.

We're human. We don't know the future until we get there. :)
 

sooshi

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If you want to write, then write. :) and don't worry about what others may think.
 

Heretothere

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected by 121 publishers, which was more than any other bestselling book.

To date, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has sold over 5 million copies worldwide.
 
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