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October 21, 2022
I am a writer and I will be the first to say that writing is (literally) pretentious.
To make it worse, there are a lot of writers who are snobs, or make writing into a snobby activity.
Today I overheard someone say that their friend interns for a literary magazine, and they save the worst submissions and laugh about them with their friends.
When I encounter writing I donât like, or that I find badly written â whatever that might mean â I share my critical suggestions with the author or among the peer group as kindly and as specifically as I can. If I find it funny-bad, sure, I smirk and I crack a smile to myself, but I keep criticisms that arenât fairly-phrased to myself.
Most of the time, when I read a piece of writing that I truly think is bad, I feel sad. Because often times â not all the time, but often â the author did put real effort and emotion into it, and they failed because their expertise is limited. They failed, but they did try.
Itâs like watching a baby toddle on their feet and fall over on their face and start crying. We can laugh because we know how to walk, and we know thereâs no real harm done, but the baby doesnât find it funny. The baby is upset with himself, and humiliated, and hurt, and so I donât feel like laughing.
Similar to the funny way a toddler hobbles around, newbish idiosyncracies can honestly be adorable sometimes. The kinks can be smoothed out over time.
Even when the author isnât in the room, it never sits right with me to shit on their writing, because they trusted me with their words.
Expressing ideas in words is not easy, or natural.
Another thing. I had a conversation recently, and someone said, âIf this poem does well in the peer review, Iâll submit it to a literary journal.â
I asked, âWhat do you mean by âdoes wellâ?â
âIf people like it.â
I didnât argue with them, of course. I just found it eye-opening, because I feel like being âlikedâ is one of my lowest concerns when writing.
It doesnât really matter if people like my writing or not. Itâs nice when they do, but this is my space. Iâm trying to express what itâs like to live life through my eyes.
Itâs not wrong to write to be liked, though I think that what most writers really want â what I want â is for our writing to be understood. We want our intentions to be reasonably clear; we donât want to be completely misinterpreted. Being understood is a validating feeling.
After a certain point, itâs impossible to control how people will respond to our writing. If we really want to demonstrate a certain meaning, we just have to keep revising based on our readersâ input.
Thatâs certainly more doable than writing to be âliked.â Because if weâre writing to be liked, who are we trying to be liked by? A person whoâs engaging with the words they encounter (even clumsy ones), or just some vapid, tactless asshole?
And what does that have to do with the craft that goes into our writing?
Nevertheless, to writers who write to be liked, and also to writers who donât give a shit if theyâre liked or not, and to anyone at all, really: Iâm a kind little stranger that likes you. As long as youâre using the powers you have for good, I like you.
tl;dr, via e.e. cummings:
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
.¡:¡. ⧠âŻď¸ ⧠.¡:¡.