For the Love of the Craft

    So, over time, I grow increasingly happy with and confident in my own writing. I am by no means an expert and I don't consider myself an amazing author, but I definitely try to put the time in to refine my work into its best possible form; as far as I can tell. So when I look at what is popular currently with the peoples of the internet, I often get very frustrated at what appears to even my eyes to be pretty substandard prose.

    Please don't take this as some kind of tired "literary fiction" verse "genre fiction" argument, no matter your genre or field of writing your actual writing should be good!

    I've heard it said that good writing is like a window, it should disappear as the viewer looks at what it allows them to look at. If you're writing is stodgy or stilted, bland or broken, then the reader will waste their time looking at your words rather than experiencing the world your words describe.

    I'm not going to call out names, but I recently sat for a good few minutes debating whether I should leave a comment on Facebook because some author "the algorithm" showed me had posted a page from their book that had just functionally incorrect word usage. Beyond that there were definitely more critiques I would have made but ultimately I decided it was best to stay silent. Still, I was left with the bitter taste of frustration. Why, why did this person not see the blatant error in the text? Why did their editor (It looked to be traditionally published so I assume they have one) not bring them to their attention? And also, why, OH WHY, does the reading public have such a poor understanding of language and of quality that they continue to support this low bar of artistic merit from their authors?

    I realize of course that this whole rant will sound bitter. At this point I am an almost entirely unknown author with only a single published novella to my name and it would be perfectly understandable for you to assume that I'm just jealous of the success of other "inferior" writers. To be fair, I'm self aware enough to admit that there is likely some of that swimming around inside me; however, I'm also being genuinely honest when I say that the bulk of my frustration comes merely from the what I see as the state of current popular writing.

    Perhaps it has always been like this. Perhaps the stuff that moves a bunch of copies has always been dreck of one kind or another and I'm just screaming into the wind, but I'd like to think that given the laborious and time intensive and intentionally personal craft that is novel writing, that my fellow writers would want to do the absolute best they could. If just for the love of the craft.

    Also, don't get me started on the "BLANK of BLANK and BLANK" title trend, that crap is ridiculous.