What makes a good writer
What makes a good writer is what makes a good comedian. Not that you have to be funny, necessarily. But you have to find the connections. You have to hold up two seemingly unrelated events, look at them, compare them, obsess over them a bit, then try to fit them together like puzzle pieces and make the new whole greater than the sum of its parts.
All humans crave the comfort of knowing that the random, everyday occurrences of their lives are building up to something. Stories give us that. Stories give us evidence that things happen for a reason. Stories help us believe that our lives are narratives, not bingo cards.
But good writers don’t accomplish this by talking about “what it means to be human.” Most people already know by instinct without being told. Has anyone ever tried to tell you what it means to be human? Did you not want to run far, far away when they did?
The thing is writers don’t need to remind people how to be human. Forget the existential musings that we writers are so prone to fall into. This blogpost alone is proof of that tendency.
No, people don’t need my musings. Most people just want someone to see them in their everyday. To walk with them on their way to work and whisper in their ear, “See that guy wearing the funny blue hat? You’ve passed him every morning on your way to the office since you started this job 9 years ago.”
They’ll say in amazement, “I never noticed.” They’ll stop where they are and watch the blue-hatted man walk the opposite direction, and suddenly, today is different. Suddenly, today isn’t just another workday.
I’ve always said I don’t need to write fiction. There’s enough crazy, heartbreaking, inspiring stories in real life to write about. Maybe I’ll still write fiction, I don’t know. But whatever I write will color the grey space between the black and the white. Whatever I write will have eyes, at least I hope it does anyway. Whatever I write will remind people that they’re living stories, and it matters.
One day, when I’m a better writer than I am today, my words will lift my brothers and sisters higher than before.
Alessandro Magnasco, Hermit in the Desert, 1700-1740