But What If My Writing Isn't Good Enough?
On Asking the Right Questions
Next week we begin our weekly exploration of the videos Maile and I created for our Nine Month Novel course! If you’d like to join us on that journey and continue receiving these Friday posts (which will include a video and a discussion in the comment section) simply become a paying subscriber, something you can do at a 40% discount for the next few days.
I remember sitting down for a coffee with my friend the Artist, and we were talking about the ways that people reach out to us, people who want to write or do art for a living, and how they want to share their work, and how they want us to justify it (and in some ways justify them) by telling them that what they’ve created is good enough.
“You know,” my Artist friend said, “most of the time, the art that people send me is actually pretty bad. I hate to say it but it’s true. And I don’t know what to tell them.”
I nod. I, too, have been on the receiving end of unsolicited submissions, emails from acquaintances or barely acquaintances with a Word file attached, where they ask me to read their work. It’s not that I mind it—I just rarely have the time to give their writing the consideration it deserves, and I don’t think it’s usually productive to give writing advice outside of a writing community or a structured editor-writer relationship.
What they usually mean when they ask if it is good enough is, Will this get me an agent? or Will this get me a contract with a publisher? or Will this make me rich and famous? And what they’re hoping to get back from me, most of the time, is unfettered praise and enthusiasm for their writing skill.
Beyond whether or not the work is any “good” (the definition of which is another post entirely), the main thing I wish they knew is that they’re mostly asking the wrong question(s).