Writing Advice #10 *DO YOU SUCK?*

A step-by-step guide to evaluating your work.

This week, the characters from “Reality Bites” asked a pretty good question.

Dear Ottessa,

How do you know if your writing sucks?

Love, Troy and Lelaina

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Dear Troy and Lelaina,

If you think that your writing sucks, it probably sucks.

But if you think it doesn't suck and you just want to make sure it doesn't suck, then I think you need to hold it up next to the strongest piece of writing that you know of and ask yourself, “Compared to this amazing thing, does my writing suck?”

If the answer is, “Yes, it does suck,” then you might feel badly. But that's fine. The point is that you identify what you value in a piece of writing and how you define sucking.

Someone very close to me (J.K. Rowling) uses the “1-10” scale. A “10” would be the score of an incredibly masterful and genius novel, one that seems to have been written effortlessly, perfect and simultaneously surprising and moving, a work of art unlike any other. “1” represents horseshit that an asshole wrote while scrolling through BuzzFeed, drunk, on a toilet, while eating cold spaghetti and yelling at a small child or--even worse--a puppy.

I personally don’t find the “1-10” scale very useful, because 2-9 are not clearly defined. And I don’t feel that “scoring” art is all that meaningful outside of competitive ice skating.

Here’s what I propose you do. It’s easy; just ask and answer a few technical questions...