What Makes a Great Writer?

You’d think that to be a great writer, you have to be a master wordsmith. While that certainly helps, it takes a bit more to put you at the top and keep you there.

Someone who writes a bestselling book the first time out of the gate may be a good writer, especially if the book is a hit. But it could be the subject matter that sells the book—plus some really great editing.  Having one hit book doesn’t make anyone a great writer, just a lucky one. In fact, can this person even be considered a writer at all or just someone who’s incredibly lucky. Great writing comes with experience and lots and lots of writing. The old saying, “Practice makes perfect,” isn’t far from wrong.

Take Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Some claim her book to be one of the best of all time, but what else did she write? She just happened to write about racism—a really hot topic just about any time—and she did it well. But then nothing for years. Recently, she tried to resurrect one of her old manuscripts, but it more or less fizzled. So in the greater world of writing, she might be considered to have produced a “happy accident,” but she’s not necessarily a great writer.

Then look at writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ann Rice, and John Updike, and you’ll notice they all have one thing in common—they all have written about various subjects equally well.

Another thing these writers have in common is that they aren’t only aware of the world around them, they scrutinize it’s every detail. So many things occur every day that the number of subjects and even topics within a subject category is almost endless. All of the above writers most likely had so many ideas they didn’t know which to do first.

Prolific writers are students of the world around them. They pay attention to everything because stories worth their time are happening all the time around them. The difference is that they see details others don’t. Their gift is seeing beyond the obvious.

Great writers also know how to fight resistance—that invisible force that works against creativity, production, and progress.  Resistance is that little negative voice that tells you that you can do it tomorrow or that you’re not that good anyway. Resistance is the enemy to anyone who strives to be great. Successful writers are aware of this and know how to fight it.

Creating writing is hard work. Many people who think they want to be writers just don’t make it because they don’t realize just how hard it is. There are probably more half-written novels out there than completed ones.  To be a great writer, you’ll have to keep your head down and move forward regardless of the odds.

If you say no to new ideas, you probably haven’t taken many risks. And writing is a risky business.  Too many beginning writers don’t like to see other succeed where they have failed. And when someone does succeed, they usually don’t know all the details. A great writer believes his or her ideas are possible whether they are or not.

People often see great writers as delusional or egotistic. But it’s really seeing the world for what it could be and expecting nothing less than passion and belief in what they are doing that makes them great.

Does One Book a Writer Make?

Several nights ago I watched two very special T.V. shows on my local PBS channel. Both were part of the series “American Masters.” Both dealt with two very—and I emphasize very—famous writers, Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee.  The first I knew about, the second I hadn’t heard of before.

Just about everyone knows that Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind. But I bet there are a lot like me, especially older people, who didn’t know that Harper Lee wrote another famous book, To Kill a Mockingbird. In Mitchell’s case, I assumed she had written a shelf full of books and short stories. And in Lee’s case, I guess since she was a writer, she must have written other things. I was wrong on both counts.

Both writers each wrote one and only one book. Both books became runaway bestsellers. And not only that, Mitchell’s book has made more money than any other in U.S. history. So what happened to each of them? Why didn’t they produce more?

At the time both of them wrote their books, being a literary writer was the epitome of the art. Readers raised fiction authors up on pedestals a mile high for all to see. Non-fiction writers—notice the difference in terminology—they classified as “hacks.” Heaven for bid you made a living as a writer! To be deemed a success, you had to live in a one-room garret and struggle to make your rent.

Today, thanks to writers like Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and John Updike, non-fiction writers have finally achieved their rightful place in the writers’ pantheon. But for Mitchell and Lee, the novel was king.

To understand why neither writer went on to write more, it’s important to look at what they wrote and how they wrote it.

Margaret Mitchell wanted to become a writer. In fact, she wanted to work for a living, something a woman of her social stature wasn’t supposed to do. She eventually got herself a job as a reporter with an Atlanta newspaper and was good at it. She enjoyed interviewing celebrities and working on gritty investigative journalism pieces. But in society’s eye, she wasn’t a writer. So she quit the paper and began writing a novel, a very long novel. The publisher of Lippincott Books of Philadelphia went to see her (Imagine that happening today?). But at first she told him she hadn’t written anything because she was embarrassed to show her manuscript to anyone. Eventually, she told him she had written a book but still refused to let him see it. Finally, she gave in because she figured a rejection from a top publisher would look good on her resume. He read part of the manuscript on the train on the way home. Although he loved the story, he said the manuscript was in very bad shape.

The important point about Mitchell was that she had quite a reputation as a person. The publisher came to see her and wanted to know if she had written anything. It’s like publishers today going after celebrities for books about them. What the publisher liked about Mitchell’s work was the story. So he signed her immediately and assigned an editor to work with her. After working for two years with the editor to get the book in shape, Mitchell finally had a book that was publishable.

A similar experience awaited Harper Lee. She had written several short stories but wasn’t getting anywhere. Then she wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird, her first and only book, and actually the last thing she wrote. After completing the manuscript, she sent it around to a dozen publishers, all of whom rejected it because of its edgy topic, civil rights, and relatively poor writing. As with Mitchell, the publisher that finally accepted it assigned an editor to work with Lee for the next several years, rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting again.

It just so happened that Lee lived next door to Truman Capote. They grew up together and became close friends. However, Capote knew he wanted to be a great writer and worked hard at it. He became jealous of Lee when her first and only book received the Pulitzer Prize—an award that Mitchell also received—and gradually left her in the dust.

And while both Mitchell’s and Lee’s books did a lot to change how people perceived slavery and civil rights, they didn’t do much to change writing, itself. Capote’s works, on the other hand, helped to change the world’s perception of non-fiction, raising it to an art form equal to fiction in today’s world.

So why didn’t either Mitchell or Lee write anything else. Mitchell said the only way to go was down, plus her book made her wealthy enough not to worry about writing another.  Lee, on the other hand, worked hard on her book but couldn’t repeat the process. Could both books have been “happy accidents” (A term used in the art world to indicate something done once successfully but not able to be repeated.)?