Why I Won't Read Your Stuff

Harlan Ellison once said, and I paraphrase fairly closely, that it is an omnipresent conceit among the laity that anyone can write, that the average person wouldn’t think that he or she could be a brain surgeon or a prima ballerina or an opera singer, but that somehow the average person seems to think that anyone can write. Well, it simply isn’t so. Not everyone can sing, as watching “American Idol” surely must have proven to the general public, and not everyone can write. (Although I suspect a great many more people can sing than can write, but I digress.) People who can write tend to discover that fact early. They might not do anything serious about it for a great many years, as in the case of Joseph Conrad, for example, but they tend to know it, just as people with natural musical talent tend to discover it early. The average person doesn’t simply wake up one day and decide to be a classical violinist. It takes talent, talent that not everyone has, not to mention lots of training and practice. But there is no shortage of people who think that they can write a book. And, apparently, they don’t seem to think that it requires talent, training, or practice.

Now, this is not to say that people cannot be taught to write clearly, simply, and grammatically. (Though these days, that seems to be asking the impossible, given what’s become of our educational system.) However, it is one thing to be able to write a lucid business memo, and it is quite another to craft an essay on the level of Christopher Hitchens or Gore Vidal. And it is one thing to write an entertaining Facebook post, but it is quite another to write an entertaining novel.

You want to make a writer cringe? Ask him to read your stuff. Tell her you are going to publish your memoirs and you’d like to get her opinion, or worse yet, her help in getting them published. I won’t presume to speak for all writers. Doubtless, there are those selfless, noble souls out there who are perfectly willing to read your short story/memoirs/Great American Novel (though I suspect they just don’t know how to say “No!”) In fact, I used to be one of those poor, benighted souls. In trying to be empathic, in the past, I had often agreed to look at people’s writing and to give them “feedback,” or a “critique,” but you see, that wasn’t what they really wanted. When people want you to look at their writing, they don’t really want your honest opinion. They might tell you that they want your honest opinion, and they might even fool themselves into thinking that’s what they want, but what they really want is validation. And when they don’t get it, they tend to get pissed off.

Think back to all those early episodes of the aforementioned “American Idol” program, when people came in to audition who had voices that sounded like cats being fed through meat grinders. Now, they didn’t THINK that they sounded like cats being fed through meat grinders. They thought they sounded like Adele. And, assuming they were not completely crazy, which some of them clearly were, they were under this delusion because their relatives and best friends told them they sounded like Adele. You saw the would-be stage mothers on the show, getting all bent out of shape and insisting that the judges “just didn’t know REAL talent!” And, chances are, you laughed. Because, after all, that’s why they put those people on that show, to amuse the audience and be exploited. (Which is one of the reasons why “The Voice” is a much better program, because they do not exploit deluded people.)
Writers often have to deal with the same sort of thing, except that it can take a great deal more time out of your day to have to read something that somebody wrote, rather than to simply listen to them sing a few bars of “Unchained Melody.” The truth is, I have never found a kind enough way to tell someone they can’t write. And perhaps kindness is not the way to go. Perhaps some Simon Cowell bluntness should be called for. And the aforementioned Mr. Ellison has certainly been known for that. But even he stopped teaching writers’ workshops because, as he put it, he could no longer stand the pain he caused in the name of good writing.

It’s not that I don’t wish you all the success in the world. I do. Really. There isn’t enough good writing out there, and I would love to see more, because I love to read good writing myself. But I don’t want to read yours. Not until it has been published. And even then, I don’t want to tell you what I think of it. There are writers that I have known for years, professionals whom I consider friends, to whom I will not give my opinion of their writing. (Assuming, of course, they asked, which they are far too well-mannered to do. Either that, or they simply don’t give a damn about my opinion. Probably a combination of both.) So no, I don’t want to read your memoirs, or your novel, or your wonderful short story, because I don’t want to disappoint you, or upset you, or make you angry, or damage your fragile ego. And, ultimately, because my opinion doesn’t really matter.

As writer Robert Asprin once said, “The only person whose opinion (about your writing) matters is the one who can sign a check and send it to you.”