How Do You Know If Your Writing Is Any Good?

Especially with AI churning out books and articles

Last month one of my lovely readers left a comment on an article with the following questions –

How do you evaluate your own work?

How do you know it's any good? Especially now as AI is writing books and poetry. It's almost, how can I compete with that!

Usually, I can type out a quick response to questions in the comments, but on this one I was floored. How do you know if your writing is any good?

When I judge my own writing and feel that I have written well, I tend to get a warm feeling inside. I also re-read it a lot and feel proud of that writing, whether that is an article or a scene from my novel.

Sometimes my opinion has been echoed by the reader in their feedback. My best friend was top of our English Literature class in school and reads what I call “high class novels” (as against the more easy-read chicklit which I tend to devour). When she tells me that an article was well-written, then I know it is good!

Getting lots of comments on a newsletter piece also tells me that I have hit the right spot. But equally, there have been pieces of writing that I have been very pleased with which have sunk without trace when I published them.

In the early years of writing my novel, there would be sections that I was excited about which were subsequently ripped to shreds by someone with more editorial experience than me. In those cases, it highlighted to me that there were techniques that I needed to learn that would make my fiction writing more effective.

Sometimes it just down to taste. I remember having a meeting with three people who had read one of the later drafts of Tales of the Countess. Two of them liked it and gave positive feedback. But it hadn’t resonated with the other person and they were critical of the whole concept.

Whether writing is good can be subjective. However, the most important thing is to write and be proud of that effort. This is an objective measure – have you written today?!

Tips to gauge the quality of your work

• Analyse writing that you consider to be good. What makes it good to you? How does your writing compare?

• Also analyse writing that you thought was appalling. Are you falling into the same trap?

• You can seek feedback from others but be cautious with this. A friend who prides themselves on blunt honesty might destroy your confidence. Try to pick people who actually know about writing or who enjoy the same genre as you are producing.

• Consider writing courses. When I first started to write I resisted this option as I’d had a very negative experience years ago as a music student and I didn’t want a teacher to put red pen marks through my writing. However, over time it became clear to me, particularly with fiction, that I had a lot to learn. I eventually took courses on story structure, dialogue, point of view and scene setting.

My thoughts on AI

In terms of competing with AI – this was my response:

As for AI - you don't have to compete with it. The writers I know who embrace AI as a tool make a big point of being very human - writing about personal stuff, their lives, their experiences. AI is clever but it can't do that. Yes, potentially there is more content or books driven or written by AI - so it might be harder to be found or stand out - but no one can write anything from your point of view. Only you can do that.

Look at me. Only I can write about how I'm coping my husband’s injury. ChatGPT might be able to bang out an article about how to write a book, or how to overcome procrastination, but it can't write with the honesty I can about something awful happening to your spouse and how it affects you both. That story is unique to me. Even someone else, in a similar situation will have a different story than mine.

So write from the heart. Be you. Keep doing it. xx

How do you evaluate your writing?

I’d really like to open this up to discussion as I don’t have all the answers on this matter. How do you evaluate whether your writing is any good? Please leave a comment.

If you are reading this article in an email and you want to see the comments, either click on the button above or click on the title at the top of the email. This will take you through to the webpage version of the article and you’ll be able to see what everyone else thinks.

Check back in a day or two when more people have responded. I know that you Gentle Creative folk will have some excellent ideas on these questions!

Keep writing

Keep plodding gently

Cali x

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

P.S. Please share this article with other writer friends. It might be just what a worried writer needs to read! Thank you.