SPOTLIGHT AUTHOR IWACA
20 | IWACA
WHAT COUNTS AS GOOD WRITING, ANYWAY?
WHATCOUNTS
AS GOOD WRITING, ANYWAY?
by Charlotte Cuevas
Image courtesy of:
SD Neeve
What Counts as Good Writing, Anyway? is a short story that emulates the struggle of an aspiring author, the consequences of which are all too familiar to those who have faced a barrage of critics.
S
he never had grand designs on fame, didn't give a damn if
anyone ever read her work. The problem was that she wrote well and they all knew it.
Nobody is allowed to be good at anything without being expected to share it with the world, that’s a generally accepted fact. “Sharing,” however, is often a clumsily-veiled excuse for cutting a profit, and so they found her scribbling away and they praised her up the left and down the right- “You’re such a good writer,” they said, “you’re so good.”
“Write more, write more, write more,” they said.
At first they all showed up for her coffee-shop poetry readings, and that
was good enough. They clapped and they cheered but then they had suggeeeestions and requeeeests and constructive criiiiiticism. And they had said, “We like what you’ve got to say” but the day came quickly when the way she said it wasn’t good enough anymore.
She upped the ante from the clunky verses that mattered to her to more mature formats, more collegiate syntaxes, to short stories with surrealist elements, things that were more accessible, more polished, more publishable. She read how-to books and attended workshops and joined writer’s discussion groups. She pinned up her hair in a neat little bun and traded in her TV for one of those neat little old-fashioned typewriters. She