Great Writing

Cannot be merely personal preference. There must be a standard, a basis for objective judgment, and quantifiable criteria. This matters to me, I am a writer. It matters to us as a society, a culture, a species, because what we know of who we are comes from literature. Great writing must be sublime, excellent, better than.

It must be moving, have significance, and originality. Each is self-evident, essential, and measurable. Together they form the basis for objective judgment. We can quibble over what is a “moving piece of writing” or not. But arguing for the sake of argument is a waste of time.

Great writing needs to move readers to an emotional response. An “okay” reaction won’t cut it; is not sublime. It also must be significant to humanity. Writing about nothing is not important. And there has to be a certain degree of originality because the same old, same old is boring.

Each of these push the reader in a similar direction. Emotion moves us to feel toward something. That is a personal betterment; as are encounters with meaningfulness and originality. Freshness, meaning, feeling, are positive growth; which make us better people, better aware of ourselves and our world. This matters - we are what we read.