Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Maybe one day I will know what “any good at it” means when applied to writing.

I heard the title used as a line in a movie recently. Yet another young, earnest person was confessing to an acquaintance about how they spent their idle time. They wrote. They were trying to write something great. They had their doubts about their abilities.

They didn’t know if they were any good at writing.

I don’t know what it means to be “good at writing.”

If the definition is “make lots of money doing it” well, I’ve been writing and publishing for 30 years and I’m not any good at it.

Other definitions:

• Some people laugh and smile or cry or think deeply when they read something wrote.
• Some people follow my directions, and they arrive at where they wished.
• Some people follow my instructions, and they do what they wanted to do.
• Some people learn something from what I wrote.

If some of these things apply to some persons at some times, I am good at writing. The trouble is, I don’t know if any of these things happened or not. Well, maybe.

And I suppose there are many other definitions we could list. If I was any good at writing, I would be able to make a longer list. Oh wait, I just added to the above list. If I was any good at writing, I could continue to add to the list. Oh wait…