You don't know how long I stared at the title, wondering if it would make sense or read well. Ditto the last sentence of that. No planned irony, it just happened that way.
If you're an author, chances are that this header will be relevant to you. At this very moment, maybe it's you. Perhaps last week it was you. Perhaps most days it's you. It's probably me, not most days, but with annoying regularity. So I thought it was time for that to be discussed.
Let's start off by looking at what 'good at writing' means to us.
Are we just talking about a competent writer; someone with above average spelling, grammar and phrase and story structure skills? Or is it greater and more nuanced than that; someone with all the above plus outstanding abilities in storytelling, a broad and sophisticated vocabulary, sophistication, eloquence, and a borderline capacity to empathize with telepathy?
I think most of us would pass the former criterion with flying colors, all would love to be the latter, but somewhere in between, in fact. Skills are not linear. In various fields, we all have strengths and space for enhancement in others. Many write cracking plot lines but struggle with voice or characterisation. Some build characters that are beautiful, realistic, but lack pace. Some write elegant prose, but they're dreadful spellers (my other half is a dreadful speller, I'm sure he'll certainly mind telling you).
So, at the very least, if you have decided to be a novelist, in the traditional sense, it is more than likely that you are not good at writing.
But what if you still think you aren't good at writing, even with the knowledge that you're a professional writer?
I figured (again) at the time I wrote the headline for this, that I was not good at writing.
That isn't enough.
I want to be more than I am while writing.
'No good at writing' means 'not as good as I wish I had been' for me. What I fear, what I believe many of us are afraid of, is mediocrity.
We all have internal problems of our own, right? It's one of my big gigs. I know other individuals with the same problem. We know, at a reasonable moment, that no one can certainly determine who or what is, or is not, mediocre, and what does it mean or matter anyway? The important thing is that we love to compose and want to be the best we can be.
But what if it's not good enough to please us, the best we can be? (I hear my cries of subconsciousness).
Oh, maybe it won't be. But how are we going to know? Who can say how long it's going to take to get there? Everything we're able to do is keep going. Continue writing. Continue to get stronger. And stop speaking out of it ourselves.