the last last one
Literature is a sloppy art. There is no equation that a person can learn in order to become a good writer. There is no way for a person to read the works of great writers and, by following their examples, write great literature. There is no way for a person to endlessly study the mechanics of metaphor, allusion, character development and playful language, and having learned these strategies by rote, invent unique phrases and apply them to personal composition. While having a knowledge of these skills can help a writer on the technical side of writing, without the innate skills of creativity, inspiration and natural born talent, the writer is left with technically perfect yet soulless art. This creates a problem for those given the job of determining what is “good writing” or “bad writing;” it is impossible to invent specific guidelines for what constitutes quality literature and then try to apply them to an abstractly created medium.
At some point in the judging experience the reader has to set aside the preformed rules and ask himself how the piece made him feel or what it made him think about, and then grade the writing holistically. If an essay is one incredibly long, but poignantly portrayed run on sentence, then it is good writing. If a piece of nonfiction is riddled with clichéd phrases and words, but makes the reader laugh, then it is good writing. Even if the writing is convoluted but contains beautiful imagery and diction, then it is still good writing. Rules can only get a person so far. They are helpful to a point but, sometimes they need to be ditched. Good literature can often be badly written according to the rules we create.
Serving as a judge for the writing contest has been a challenge. First I was asked to come up with grading criteria and then expected to adhere to them while picking the contest winners. This worked for awhile, but after reading a few submissions I had to change my approach to the process. There were a few clearly written, uninteresting pieces, but also a few unclear and awkwardly written pieces that were great. Some of the submissions had an original perspective and were written in an easy to read style, while others’ styles weren’t completely new, but still were interesting to read. In judging each of these submissions it became clear to me that the rules weren’t working in determining what good writing is and that if I wanted to get anywhere I had better loosen the parameters and grade each piece by not only by the rules, but also on their abstract qualities.
At this point I had to ask myself how the literature made me react emotionally and how it related to me as a reader. I also had to step away from judging for awhile in order to see what stories stayed in my mind and which disappeared because of their lack of interesting writing. After all this I combined this amalgam of personal and technical reactions to make my decision.
I don’t know if what I did was right, or even professional, but it seemed like the only thing that could work. Writing is not something that can be graded concretely. It is subjective for both reader and author and its quality cannot be quantified. Literature is not something that can be graded quantitatively. It is as abstract as it is hard to judge. It is as hard to understand is it as to write, and finally it is something that cannot be judged with simple criteria.
At some point in the judging experience the reader has to set aside the preformed rules and ask himself how the piece made him feel or what it made him think about, and then grade the writing holistically. If an essay is one incredibly long, but poignantly portrayed run on sentence, then it is good writing. If a piece of nonfiction is riddled with clichéd phrases and words, but makes the reader laugh, then it is good writing. Even if the writing is convoluted but contains beautiful imagery and diction, then it is still good writing. Rules can only get a person so far. They are helpful to a point but, sometimes they need to be ditched. Good literature can often be badly written according to the rules we create.
Serving as a judge for the writing contest has been a challenge. First I was asked to come up with grading criteria and then expected to adhere to them while picking the contest winners. This worked for awhile, but after reading a few submissions I had to change my approach to the process. There were a few clearly written, uninteresting pieces, but also a few unclear and awkwardly written pieces that were great. Some of the submissions had an original perspective and were written in an easy to read style, while others’ styles weren’t completely new, but still were interesting to read. In judging each of these submissions it became clear to me that the rules weren’t working in determining what good writing is and that if I wanted to get anywhere I had better loosen the parameters and grade each piece by not only by the rules, but also on their abstract qualities.
At this point I had to ask myself how the literature made me react emotionally and how it related to me as a reader. I also had to step away from judging for awhile in order to see what stories stayed in my mind and which disappeared because of their lack of interesting writing. After all this I combined this amalgam of personal and technical reactions to make my decision.
I don’t know if what I did was right, or even professional, but it seemed like the only thing that could work. Writing is not something that can be graded concretely. It is subjective for both reader and author and its quality cannot be quantified. Literature is not something that can be graded quantitatively. It is as abstract as it is hard to judge. It is as hard to understand is it as to write, and finally it is something that cannot be judged with simple criteria.
posted by Anonymous at 9:46 AM
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