Characteristics Of A Great Writer Essay

What Good Writing by Great Writers Entails

Everyone who has learned to read and write can write literature by forming and putting down a story, but good writing requires more than literacy. All great writers have different views on what it takes to be a great writer except that they agree that writing is onerous. Even then, they disagree on the extent of its difficulty. Ernest Hemingway says that to be a great writer one should cut one’s vein and bleed while Elizabeth Gilbert detests this statement and says that a good writer must hold on to stubborn gladness(qtd. in Fassler, “The ‘Stubborn Gladness’”). While there is no one rule to writing well, a great writer must be a committed, and write personally but should not be a self-centered individual while writing; one who aspires to belong to the canon must embody

In an interview with Jonathan Franzen, winner of National Book Award in 2001, states that a good writer must be able to seclude themselves from society while writing (qtd.in Fassler “How to write”). Writing is a personal work that should not be done collectively or by collaboration even with the internet. Will Self, author of Umbrella, says to “regard yourself as a corporation of one,” which coincides with Jonathan Franzen’s view (“Ten Rules”). Good writers dig deep into themselves and tell their own stories. Nabokov states that a good reader must use their imagination because it was what the writer used in making the literary work (Nabokov). A writer’s imagination can only come from within. Therefore, a good writer must mingle with society carefully so the individual in the writer still remains (qtd. in Fassler “how to write”). Good writing can only be done while the author’s mind is self-contained. The only ones to participate in the writing activity of the author are the characters, whose stories the author is