Writers, Readers, and Critics

I have read a great deal in my mere 27 years. I consider myself a lover of books, and I feel lost without a book close to me. My husband can tell if I haven't picked a book up for awhile, apparently I start speaking less educated or something. I have read Great Books, Good Books, Okay Books, and Lousy Books. I have been surprised by the beauty of a story, and I have wondered how an author ever got published.

I have noticed that most of the Prize Winning Authors are depressing, inappropriate, and not worth the paper they are written on. Best Sellers are a different matter entirely. I think that this clearly shows the difference between whether a writer is considered a good writer, and whether they what they write touches people. Many of the Prize Winning Authors are considered (by some unknown writing judges) to be excellent writers, they are applauded by the uniqueness of their stories and get little awards they can print on their books. I never read them unless a dear friend tells me they are good. I have a friend who used to think that the only books worth reading HAD to be in this category, and she tried over and over to find one. She would buy the book only to find she couldn't handle more than the first chapter. (I might be exaggerating, but it sure seemed that way to me.) She finally gave up, and began reading what really interested her instead, and I think she found a lot more value in those books.

I have a friend who is a writer. I love everything she produces, but most of the things she does she feels is crap. I have learned something interesting in my years of reading, that there are critics and there are lovers. The critics of writing will pick a piece apart: it is cliche, overdone, everyone writes like this, the grammar was horrible, etc. Then there are the lovers, they take a piece of writing as it was intended. They know good writing when they see it, and allow it to touch their hearts. There is no such thing as a topic that has been explored too much, a plot that has been overused, or a feeling that has been pursued too deeply. Great writers evoke emotion in their audience. They bring you into their stories and you embrace their characters like old friends.

I think it is silly that there might be too much written about a topic. There is nothing new under the sun. In our hundreds of years of writing every human (and some non-human) emotion has been explored. Does that mean that we should stop? Can no one tell us more about love, or share a plot that hasn't been done by someone else? I hear all the time, "That story was just like the Lord of the Rings. Same plot, what is the point?" If by same plot they mean that Evil is rampant and a group of people set out to fight it, then most Fantasy is old and boring. Most Westerns have a bad guy, a good guy, and a gun fight. Yet I watched my Grandfather Logan passionately read everything by Louis L'Amour. I have read dozens of financial books, and many of them repeat the same principles over and over, but I find each one brings a new perspective that helps me. Every Romance involves a couple who discover through the story that they care for each other. (And while that particular branch of writing is filled with things I would never read, there are some wonderfully clean and enjoyable ones that I love.) Every poet discusses love, pain from rejection, and the emotions of life. Even my Grandmother Brown's favorite, Edgar A. Guest whose poetry embraced the beauty of a good life, had some like that.

The biggest point I want to make in this blog is to never take critics too seriously. If your passion is writing, then write. Improve yourself, definitely. If you listen to a critic with only half an ear, you might learn something useful, such as "the word you should use in that instance is borrow and not barrow." Do not be afraid to explore the depth and breadth of human feeling, and never be worried about writing an overdone plot. Anything written well will be re-exploring an overwritten emotion and an overdone plot.