How To Tell What's "Good"
How do you get "better" at writing when no one seems to agree on what "good" is?
Has this ever happened to you? Have you been bowled over by a book only to discover that a close friend hated it? Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe you read a book that you thought had almost no redeeming qualities and found that someone whose opinion you respect claims it as one of their favorites? And what do you think when that happens?
I suppose most people just shrug it off—but if you're a writer, it sends a shiver of unease through you. At least it does for me. It makes me think, Why am I working so hard to write good books when the very idea of "good" is so subjective? It feels like trying to reach a destination, and suddenly you find that not only is your map wrong, but there's no such thing as north, south, east or west. The direction keeps changing depending on who you ask. So how do you get there?
Because of this maddening subjectivity, trying to improve your own writing often feels very much like building a house on quicksand. At any point the ground could just give way beneath you... and people wonder why writers can be so insecure.
I was a freshman in college when I had my first real encounter with the baffling subjectivity of writing. At my (liberal) high school the top choices for colleges were Brown, Yale, Harvard, and Wesleyan. Almost no one applied to Princeton. I was planning on applying early to Brown—until I heard about the creative writing program at Princeton. I'd been saying I wanted to be a writer since I was ten, and this seemed to be an opportunity to finally to do something about it. So when I got in, I was excited; the first thing I did when I arrived at school in the fall was to apply to the creative writing program. The only problem was I didn't get in.
At the same time, I had also applied to a non—fiction writing seminar taught by John McPhee. It was only offered once a year, and out of more than a hundred applications, only twelve were accepted. That year I was one of the twelve. But the really fascinating part is that I used the same writing sample for both applications. I was rejected from a program that was relatively easy to get into, and yet I was accepted into a much more rigorous and selective class, and in both cases I was being judged on the strength of the same piece of writing.
It turned into a trend. Sophomore year I was accepted into the creative writing department, but I got in by the skin of my teeth—off the wait list. The very next year I won a creative writing prize, and I was chosen by Toni Morrison to be her advisee for my senior thesis. A few years after graduation I wrote another novel, and I spent months trying (and failing) to get an agent—but then an editor read it, loved it, and bought it in a matter of days. However getting published doesn't mean it stops. Then you've got critics and sales numbers and the very real threat of not being able to sell the next book...
What did I discover from all this? Well, I found out that if your opinion of your writing depends on what other people think, then you're destined to feel like you're on a perpetual roller coaster. What then? Do you then ignore what other people think? It sounds like a good strategy, but it raises some perplexing problems—or at least it did for me. My goal in writing has always been to produce something that other people will enjoy reading. I think that is the goal for most writers. Not all, but most. So doesn't that mean, by definition, that we have to care what other people think?
If you are a writer—especially if you want to do it for a living—I think this is one of the most crucial issues you have to face. I believe it's more important than dialogue or character or plot or any specific element of writing. I also think it's the most difficult to resolve. My goal was to develop a sense of my own writing but also to allow for other people's opinions as well. The first part—developing a sense of my own writing—was the hardest. It wasn't like one day I woke up and said to myself, Now I know what I think about my own work. It was a long slow process. But I think the first crucial step was coming to terms with the type of writing I wanted to do.
What kind of book do you want to write? What is your personal style? What are your goals in writing? These aren't things that you necessarily "decide". I think more often they're things you discover over the course of time. I think something that John Updike said explains it best. He said, "Fiction is a little like handwriting. It comes out to be you no matter what you do." And that's the first step—finding out what your "handwriting" looks like and making peace with that.
The most important result of coming to terms with my own style is that I don't beat myself up about the things I don't do, but there's nothing to be gained by this. Forgive me the cliché, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. They're both fruit, but you're not going to grow an apple from an orange tree.
Does that mean you can't change your style? Sure. You can try it. Some people seem to be able to master any style they set their minds to. But you may find that you'd prefer to stick with what comes most naturally. Either way, once you identify the parameters you want to work in, it will make it easier to get your bearings. Once you do that, you'll find a lot of the feedback you get, unfortunately, isn't very helpful. A lot of the time people aren't responding to what works or what doesn't work—they're responding to what they like or don't like. That means their critique probably isn't going to make it a better book. It will just make it into a book that they'd like better. There's a big difference between the two.
However, I think it's critical to have a number of people read your work during the editing process. There's a distinct advantage to having a group of readers. If you hear the same critique cropping up more than once, it's a good indication that's an issue you want to address. The only problem with having a group of readers is that the individual advice can be very confusing. I find that sometimes the people who know the least about books are often the most valuable because they don't tell me what they think you should do. They just say how the book made them feel. That's the information you want. It's much easier to evaluate that kind of feedback. Of course there's also the people who are true editors. They seem to understand exactly what you're trying to do and actually help you figure out how to make it better. If you find someone like that, hold on to them. They're worth their weight in gold.