The Empires of the Inkwell

The Empires of the Inkwell

I was talking to an old friend not to long ago, and she and I came to a bit of a disagreement over the quality of a certain author’s writing. You may have heard of this author... JK Rowling? (note sarcasm) My friend, a brilliant intellect and avid (to say the least) book reader, remarked that JK Rowling wasn’t really that good of a writer. She’s “a really good storyteller, but her writing is simplistic…her first couple of books aren’t really written that well”. I respect my friend’s opinions in the utmost manner, but there was something about this particular statement that bristled my back hairs and curled my lip. I took it a little personal. I believe that JK Rowling’s writing style has raised the bar in literature so high that writers nowa days are scrambling to get their talents together in a panic fit of, “Damn. How do I compete with her?” I know I was one of those writers immediately after I read “The Boy Who Lived”. Now don’t get me wrong, she’s not the only author that’s made me shake in my boots. Tolkien, Barrie, Alcott, Austin, Dickens and so on and so on. But that’s just it: only good writing, excellent writing, can make a fellow writer question their own skills and talent. And Rowling did that for me. A good story teller is a good writer.

I decided that taking someone else’s opinion personally was just stupid, and that to settle my own emotions about it I should do what I normally do: write about it. So, here’s my own personal opinion on the art of good writing:

Storytelling, in whatever medium one uses to tell a story, is about entertaining an audience. Writing, in a personal sense, is for the author and the author alone. I’ve devoted years of my life to projects that I know deep in my heart will never see the light of publication, but satisfy my own esteem in the mere completion of them. But when I think about sharing with the public? I consider the market, I do. I consider the elements of what has made past blockbusters a hit, and the magic behind a great story. It all comes down to entertainment. This doesn’t negate an author’s soulful endeavor, and it doesn’t mean that an author’s personal story can’t be entertaining, but a good writer has to have more than just a good background in English. Anybody can have good grammar. Anybody can string together sentences in an orderly, sensible way. But not just anybody can sell their well written story by the millions. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.” Poul Anderson

“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs

“Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators.”
Albert Camus

“The virtue of books is to be readable.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.”
Samuel Johnson

The empires of the inkwell have been built with nothing more and nothing less than a creative use of words, and a good, meaningful, entertaining story, and an author’s ability to move people’s emotions with the simplicity of writing what they know.