How To Tell If Your Writing Is Any Good - Part 2

(Read Part 1 Here)

I have had the most interesting experiences with my writing as of late. The most exciting experience has been what I like to call THE RIFT in feedback. Among many, many other reasons why I self-published my novella, Cinders, one reason I did so was to get feedback on my writing - writing I felt was the best I had done up to that point. I knew without at doubt that by keeping the book unpublished and handing it only to people I had some sort of connection with, that I would never find absolutely honest feedback. My way of thinking was that I would never know if my writing was truly any good. I thought it was good, but what did I know? Readers are who mattered.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

I see now that my way of thinking was terribly wrong. Although I would have never put my own work out there without feeling it was really good, I still ultimately put all my hope in the opinions of others more than in my own. Every time I read a crushing review or received less than 4 stars, my heart sank and my opinion of my own work withered. Then, on the other hand, every time I read a 5 star review by someone who really seemed to understand the work the way I intended, my heart soared and my opinion of the book blossomed. Talk about a roller coaster.

This is THE RIFT, and it will happen with every single word, sentence, short story, and novel I ever share with others.

If I'm not careful, I'll fall into that rift and never emerge. This is one of the reasons I don't feel reviews are for writers. It's good for me to know how readers react to my work, but one of the things I learned very quickly - all those reviews were the exact same reactions I received from beta readers and friends who read the book, just on a much larger, more dramatic scale.

So, with no further babble from me, let's look at the paragraphs from yesterday's experiment. We're the Literary Lab, after all. We like to experiment.

#1
The owl lives behind my home in a tall pine that is bald on one side and heavy on the other with frost-laden boughs that groan with every snow fall. At night, when flakes gather in drifts and heaps against my back porch, the owl plunges from his hunting perch, his sooty brown feathers driving tunnels through snow until all that is seen are whirlwinds of white—feathers and snow creating silence in chaos. I strain to hear any sound at all, but only succeed in finding the crashing thumps of my own heartbeat. Solemnly, after I know the kill has taken place, I enter my cabin, assured in the warmth of my small, but necessary fire.

This paragraph comes from a long short story I wrote in college titled "Sounding Light." I wrote it at the brink of my awareness with language, and decided to experiment with merging prose and poetry. I was really happy with the end product - a literary, quiet story, which oddly enough, was part of the inspiration for my spy thriller novel, Monarch. "Sounding Light" was published in the literary journal, Touchstones, in 2002.

Hmmm, there were 15 solid votes for this paragraph as the best written and liked. It came out as the winner. General consensus:

• easiest to read
• too generic
• good imagery
• both poetry and prose
• strongest writing
• grammatically wrong
• good technical quality
• sentence structure is strange
• style over narrative
• compared to several classic authors (not in a good way)

#2
They questioned him the day after Naomi’s disappearance, although he didn’t know anything. Naomi hadn’t shown up to his house the night he asked her to, and that was that. “You were the last to speak to her,” the police kept insisting. “And you’re her best friend. Can’t you give us some clue to what could have happened? Would she run away?” Brad only shook his head, fear clawing at his heart. He was most likely more frightened than Naomi’s own parents, who believed she had just not come home for awhile. She was frequently away from home, but when that happened, she was with Brad. She was not with him now.

This paragraph was written somewhere between 1996 and 1997 while I was in high school. It's the beginning paragraph of my novel, The Breakaway, which I've rewritten more times than I can count. I am currently working on this novel to submit for representation. The paragraph above no longer exists, even remotely, and the beginning is now much altered.

This paragraph came in 2nd place at 12 votes as the best written and liked. General consensus:

• felt like newbie writing
• good sense of plot
• felt flat
• too telling
• was in the character's head strongly (in a good way)
• easy to read
• immature
• strongest story
• immediate hook
• author isn't trusting voice
• confusing narrative

#3

I buy a snakeskin bag today, lizard green and shiny patent leather and the silver accents catch the sun on a sunny day before the clouds decide to come. When they do, they split open and rain all hell down for five minutes, plaster my hair to my skin, soak through my white shirt so the boys on the corner smoking pot whistle and lick their lips and yell, “Nice tits!” and I roll my eyes and think immature and wish I’d remembered to bring my long jacket that goes down to my calves. At least my green bag looks good with my green skirt, my six-inch green heels and green toenails that are starting to chip and I need to schedule another pedicure tomorrow and pull out my phone to punch in a reminder. I feel like a walking lime tequila.

This paragraph was written in 2010 as part of Loren Eaton's Six-Birds prompt. It is from a flash fiction piece titled "True Colors." You can read the entire pieces on my author site, if you're interested.

This paragraph came in as the third best written and liked with 11 votes. General consensus:

• strong voice
• great sense of voice and confidence
• too much description, sentences too long and run-on
• felt flat
• great sense of character
• style over narrative (not good)
• last line was cheap
• last line was too cutesy
• last line was a treat

I think the most interesting thing was how several readers mentioned that they hated #1 or #3 because of the present tense or first person POV, yet didn't say that this bothered them in both of the paragraphs. This confused me. Did you not notice that both 1 and 3 were both in present tense and first person POV or was I misunderstanding what you said?

Moving on, I think it's quite clear from the general consensus lists that feedback overall (on anything) is extremely subjective. I don't wish to focus on that today, though. I want to point out that each of these excerpts was taken from a different period of my life. #2 was from when I very first started writing novels, #1 was from college when I started experimenting with language, and #3 was from only a year ago when I was really starting to feel confidence in my writing. I think from the general feedback given in the comments that many of you picked up on these things in my writing. Many of you seem to favor plot and a good hook over technique or prose - at least in a small excerpt like this. All of this tells me that feedback is helpful to hone my writing, but I should never rely on it to direct my writing, or even worse, tell me if my writing is good or not.

One of the most important things I have learned over the years is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to judge a writer's worth or abilities from a short excerpt, maybe even from a whole chapter or short story, or even an entire novel. I have read absolutely amazing pieces by authors I truly admire, and then read something else of theirs that fell completely flat for me. Overall, though, I still admire their work because I have read enough of it. What does this tell me? Simply that I must turn this around and see if from the other direction. If I get feedback that rips me to shreds, does that mean I'm a bad writer? I think the answer is obvious, and it leads directly into the question: How can you tell if your writing is any good?

If you can't answer that, go back and read this post again.