I believe I’m bad at writing. It doesn’t matter what others have told me about my writing, though I’ve made scarce few things for people to comment on. It doesn’t matter if I know I’ve reached my goal for any given project, or if I know that I made something the best I can make it. I will still believe I’m bad at writing, and I think that feeling will persist in perpetuity.
I think I’m bad at writing. I have a thin grasp on the tools of the trade. My prose isn’t worth writing home about. My rhythm with which I write is stilted and weak. I’m not good with imagery, metaphor, or simile, and my vocabulary definitely leaves something to be desired. When I read my friends or families writing I am constantly reminded of how much I am lacking, and how much I still need to learn.
I’m afraid I’m bad at writing. The years will keep ticking away, and I will have nothing of worth to show for it. I won’t have made my magnum opus, nor would I have made a cent from anything I’ve written. These fears feel real to me. Almost inevitable, and the silhouetted shadow of my eventual failure as a writer looms over me like a predator ready to strike. I’m afraid I’ll never make anything good, but the instinct to make something good is the same instinct to not make anything at all.
I’ve never seen Cats, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, on stage, but I have seen the 2019 movie 4 times—twice in theaters. There’s something about that movie that fully captures my attention. Rebel Wilson picking up those children in mice costumes and eating them will live in my brain forever. The fact they got not one but two people who have been knighted to be in this god-forsaken movie is a mystery that will stump future historians until the end of time. It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s one of my favorite movies of all time.
I don’t know if the writers of Cats (2019) know that people love their movie, and I don’t know if they care, but if I had written it, I would be comforted by that fact. I would be elated that someone found joy in my work; that he had been showing it to all of his friends and family, looking intensely at their faces to see their reactions as Taylor Swift enters, sings a song about Idris Elba and promptly leaves, never to be seen again. If I had written it, I would have made something of value.
My friend is a huge Star Wars fan since before Phantom Menace, and he knows The Rise of Skywalker is a beyond bad movie. It’s also his favorite Disney Star Wars Movie. My dad loves trash CW shows. Tik-Tok loves Colleen Hoover. And I could go on and on about pieces of media that I love, that I would consider bad. A Cinderella Story (2004), Eragon (2006), the 39 Clues, or Magic Treehouse. But ultimately they make me feel something, and the form of the thing falls away to make room for the function of the media in my mind. In other words, the quality of the pieces doesn’t matter, if someone gets joy from the finished product. I would be proud to have made them, because that means I would have made something, rather than nothing.
I’ve always heard from artists to make something with the intent of making it bad on purpose, and you’ll find you can’t help but make something good, but I haven’t given it a real, sincere try; because the people who say that are already good at what they do. People like Stephen King make things “bad”, but what was bad was actually just a natural part of writing without an outline. He still has 50 years of experience with his method under his belt. I don’t think I would be pleasantly surprised at how good my writing is if I tried to make something bad on purpose. More than likely, it would be the opposite.
Right now I, and a lot of other people who just haven’t finished a piece of art, live in a quantum superposition. We are Schrodinger’s cat, simultaneously great, and god awful artists. As soon as we create something real, we’ll collapse into one of the aforementioned states, and most of us will fall into the latter category. The good news is some of my favorite artists are in the god awful category, and I would count myself lucky to share it with them.
I’ve never finished a poem that I’ve worked on seriously. It’s always bad, meaningless, or cliche, but a finished poem is infinitely more valuable than a poem that will never see the light of day. So I’ll end by writing a bad, meaningless, cliche, finished poem.
I've never seen the sun, or felt the grass, or defied the wind. Instead, I exist to eat the crawling things that have seen the sun. I drink the labor of things transformed a thousand times. I trample on sacred ground and I drool on the people who maintain it. I don't Cry when the ones I love wave, Illuminated by the sun, Incensed by the grass, Stanced to brave the breeze. I turn.
If you keep writing I’ll keep reading. This may not meet the quota of “enough” but I’m here for it!