In his book “On Writing” Stephen King categorizes writers in
four ways; bad, competent, good and great.
He goes on to say that a bad writer can never be made competent and a
good writer can never be made great. A
competent writer, however, can achieve goodness with considerable practice in
reading and writing.
I wonder what that means for the great writer who never
practices or the bad writer who practices constantly. Can you be a bad-great writer? Can you be a good-bad writer? This is important for me to know.
Mr. King humbly does not categorize himself as a great
writer. He may think it and it may be
so, but he does not say it. In fact, he
gives every indication, short of saying it, that he would call himself a competent
writer who has achieved, through decades of devotion to his craft, goodness.
This puts me in a troubled state. I know I am not great. I have enough presence of mind to understand that
everything I’ve created, poems, short stories, all of it, falls short of the
glory of being memorized by high school seniors or being collected in a
publisher’s century in review.
I also have considerable reservations with putting myself in
the same place as Stephen King. How can
I? The man has written forty books and
all of them – every last one – has been a world-wide best seller. Being a best seller once could be a fluke,
but not forty times.
Further, I have submitted my works to several publications
in the past. Poems and short stories have
been coldly and sometimes politely rejected by all. I have a hard time even getting family to
read my short stories. The short ones.
This leads me to the conclusion that my writing must be bad. Now, don’t fret, dear reader of this widely
ignored blog, for I have no intention of ceasing my writing. I enjoy it.
But I’m curious. If I practice my
craft as Mr. King instructs in his book, can I become a good-bad writer? Can I be bad, but be good at it?
