There's no such thing as good writing

This morning I was running late to work, had a splitting headache, and had enough different things going on in my head that I was in a constant running-through-mental-lists state of mind in order to ensure I didn't forget anything important.

Stumbling out the front door while kissing my wife goodbye, I was greeted by an unpleasantly cold morning with frost all over my car representing yet another obstacle preventing me from getting immediately on the road. I really didn't feel like digging out the scraper and clearing the windshield so I climbed into the driver's seat, turned on the engine, and bundled myself tightly against the cold while waiting for the car to defrost itself.

I figured it would be at least five minutes or so before I could get moving, so I grabbed my book -- I'm always carrying around some novel or other for times such as these -- and started reading from where the bookmark indicated I had last left off.

The novel in question was Confessor by Terry Goodkind. The present events were unfolding in the middle of a vast army (the bad guys) laying siege to the last bastion of freedom and hope in the known world. Kahlan, our heroine and the Confessor of the book's title is a captive of this army and is simply following her captor around and thinking to herself about recent events.

Well I was riveted from the first paragraph. I forgot about my headache, my lateness, the cold, even where I was. I couldn't stop reading even well after the car had warmed up and even now am not quite sure what external event broke the spell and allowed me to continue on with the day's (more important?) activities.

So was this good writing? Apparently, based on the title of this post, I'm going to claim that it wasn't. But on one level of course that's absurd. Clearly the author did an amazing thing here. And not just for those few paragraphs. In Kahlan, Terry Goodkind has constructed a character that has come fully to life for me. I love her. I care about her. I'm terribly distressed about her current situation and am desperately seeking for some sort of reassurance that everything is eventually going to be ok. Terry Goodkind is therefore, in my book, a great writer.

Great writers are like great fishermen, but since I really only know about fly fishing I'll restrict the analogy a bit. Being truly successful at fly fishing requires different tactics for different fish. One can't simply choose a fly at random, tie it to a line, go out during an arbitrary season, in arbitrary weather, to an arbitrary location and expect results. One has to know exactly what sort of fish one wants to catch.

And then one needs to really understand that fish. When does it eat? What does it eat? What sort of water does it like (temperature, flow, oxygen level, etc.)? And so on.

But even deciding on what to catch (choosing an audience), and learning everything you can about what you've decided to catch (being in touch with your audience), are not enough to make you a great fisherman. The last and most important piece of the puzzle is of course the craft itself. And part of that craft (for a fly fisherman) is tying flies.

Now admittedly this isn't the tightest of analogies, but lets say the author is the one tying the flies and the written words and collections of words are the flies themselves. To finally get to my point, all I'm saying when I say that there's no such thing as good writing, is that there's no such thing as a good fly. A fly can be made of the best material and the most immaculate construction, but if it never lures a fish, what good is it? Or it may lure plenty of fish this year, and then never again. Would it then be correct to say it was a great fly, but only for that one year? Or a fly may be perfectly capable of tempting hundreds of fish consistently year after year, but only minnows or so-called trash fish. What can we say about its Quality-with-a-capital-q in that case?

In my opinion? Nothing. Its simply wrong to point to any arrangements of marks on paper and say: "Now that's great writing." To do so is essentially meaningless. Or, rather, if you find yourself expressing that sentiment, you're really making a statement about the author and not about the writing. And what you might be saying about the author is still completely unclear at that point. Did the author say something original? Did they tell a great story? Did they write down something which moved the authorities of the day to track them down and march them to the gallows? Or did the author simply made you fall in love? If the latter is the case then say it. Its much more precise, and a hell of a lot more impressive.