Write Well not Good

Since 2003 I’ve been reading weekly columns by Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy. A Boston native with a heart for comedy and, well, Boston sports, he constantly writes whimsically about his experiences writing from a fans perspective rather than from a reporter's. He’s become a cult favorite and one of the most read authors on ESPN.com.

Why though? Perhaps simply because he’s a good writer.

Since the dawn of time there has always been good writers and bad ones, just these days it seems the distance between the two has been growing at a drastic pace. With the dawn of reality TV shows, bad writing has almost become habit as an ignorant audience gobbles up celebrity magazines and trashy novels at an astounding rate. Surely no one is going to be awarding TV shows like the Hills and Real Housewife’s of Orange County SAG awards. (Also if you don’t think these shows are scripted, watch next time for how specific conversations always take place in front of cameras and people just so happen to all be at the same place all the time.) In general the public has embraced this form of reading, which has given way to just plain bad writing.

TV shows such as House, Lost, and Heroes survive due only to the fact that they’re so well written. While I can’t stand Lost or Heroes, I respect the creative integrity that is put into each episode. I respect the time that Bill Simmons puts into his columns to make them fun to read. I respect authors who can capture emotions and build plots such as the playwright Eugene O’Neill or the writer Tim O’Brien. To often now, slapped together books that are poorly written gain notoriety because they “reflect our present youth culture” (yes a direct quote about Twilight from an unnamed college student).

It’s time to start finding books that we can celebrate because they’re well written. Not because their draining our culture by making us dumber.

And yes I realize the irony in having a bad writer in college write a post on this issue. But would you really listen to an established writer complaining no one was reading his work?