This week I’ve been reading about the benefits of self-awareness. The author of the article, Jessica Pugh, describes how she discovered that she was in fact a terrible writer, but she took the time to become aware of her negative self.

We all have parts of us that we don’t like to admit to, because we like to think we are “good” at something. The problem is, we are not. We are actually just the same old versions of ourselves, but with different, perhaps even better, ways of being. I’ve come to realize that the way I look at people, my family, and even myself as a whole are all just a means to an end.

This realization has led me to the question, “what does it mean to be a bad writer?” It’s a question that, I think, every writer has asked at some point or another. What it means is that you are a bad writer because you are not able to put a lot of thought into what you write. Writing is an act of conscious expression, it’s not something that we come naturally.

But as a writer I don’t think I have ever said to myself, “I don’t have the right tools, I’m not really good at it.” But I do have a habit of not being able to put more than a couple sentences into a long piece of writing, so I’m not a very good writer.

This is a good metaphor for the issue of writing in general. Writing is an act of conscious expression; so what does that mean? It means that it is not something that we come naturally, it is something that takes work. But we can and should put in some effort. In fact, if you are not a good writer, you are going to have trouble in any field.