Are You a Good Writer? Here are 5 ways to know for sure.

Every single writer I know, from the bloggers to the best-selling authors, at some point in their career have had this exact same question creep up. Usually, it’s in the middle of the night or the middle of the day or the middle of a first draft.

Am I a good writer?

When new writers have this fear, they often let it stop them from getting started and they never create anything or if they do, they don’t dare share it with the world. When seasoned writers have this fear, it keeps them from breaking out of their genre or their niche, it keeps them from evolving as an artist.

The first time I meet my students, I ask them to tell me exactly what has been holding them back. 99.9% of them say the same thing: “I just don’t know if I’m any good.” The other 1%, in case you’re wondering, tell me that they’re afraid of what their families are going to think about their essays — but that’s a whole other article.

So, these writers of mine, they come in and they say, “I just don’t know if I’m any good,” and I ask them to tell me how they can tell whether or not they’re a good writer.

They always say the same things:

“If someone pays me to write, then I’m a good writer.”

“If someone publishes my work and it is widely read, then I’m a good writer.”

“If someone tells me that I am a good writer, then I must be a good writer.”

The biggest problem with these answers is that they are outsourcing the job of deciding their worth. They’re asking someone else to confirm that they’re good. That doesn’t end well.

Because what if one day you realize you’re getting paid but it isn’t very much compared to someone else. Does that mean you’re not a good writer?

What if you write something and no one reads it or shares it and it disappears into the cloud of cat videos and political debates? Does that mean you’re not a good writer?

What if someone in the comments section is having a bad day and they decide to take it out on you by detailing all of the ways you are a terrible writer and a terrible human and how dare you to waste your time and theirs? Does that mean you’re not a good writer?

You have to be the one to decide that you are a good writer and I’m going to tell you how you can know for sure if that’s true.

I’m going to tell you what I wish someone had told me before I spent a lot of money on an MFA, before I spent many nights up late reading and re-reading the comments section, before I traded in my great ideas for safe ideas, before I spent years of my life allowing my own fears to dictate the kind of writer I could be and the kind of career I could have.

I’m going to tell you the five ways you can know for sure whether or not you’re a good writer.

How did I come up with these? Great question, I’m glad you asked. In a super unofficial study, conducted by me, I read 1,000 books (give or take a few) and I found that 100% of successful writers had these 5 things in common. I’m talking about Didion, Dostoyevsky, Philip Roth, E.B. White, Richard Wright, Zadie Smith, Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Malcolm Gladwell, the best of the best of the best could all check these five boxes and my guess is that you can check these five boxes too.

Take a deep breath. I’m going to share what I’ve learned that has allowed me to calm my own fears, to quiet that voice in my head that made me question the worth of my own words.

1. You know you’re a good writer when not everyone loves your work.

In 1855, a reviewer said of Walt Whitman’s work, “Whitman is as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics,” which is today’s equivalent of #DeleteYourAccount. The New York Times called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo “improbable.” Susan Cohen said it was easily one of the worst books she’d ever read. Well, that improbable little book is now a 3-part series and has sold over 80 million copies worldwide. Accept that not everyone will love your writing so find the ones that do and write with those people in mind. They are your readers, you write for them.

2. You know you’re a good writer when you can see you are getting better.

Now, I’m not saying that Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem is in any less of a masterpiece than The Year of Magical Thinking — I’m saying, let’s read Didion’s first journal. Let’s take a look at her earlier scribblings from her copywriting days at Vogue. I’m saying If Joan Didion had started her career in the age of the internet, she would have been just like the rest of us fools, writing listicles and naval gazing essays and failed attempts at satire before she found her voice. You have to allow yourself to be terrible so that you can get better. That is part of the process. Go back and dig into your old journals from two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. Read your first published clips and tell me you’re not cringing. Now, read the last thing you wrote and tell me you haven’t gotten better. Tell me, you won’t get even better two years from now, five years from now, ten years from now. So Keep writing. Keep cringing. Keep getting better.

3. You know you’re a good writer when: You finish what you start.

Okay so maybe you haven’t finished that novel yet, but you can. Word by word by word, finish what you start writing. I don’t care how long it takes, this is not a race, you win simply by reaching the end. I remember being in a class at Columbia University with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Hilton Als and he was discussing the work of James Baldwin. One of my classmates, a boy who had never published anything longer than a tweet, kept launching criticism after criticism against the book and I wanted to scream, “But he finished it!”

When you hold a copy of Giovanni’s Room in your hands, you are holding evidence of James Baldwin’s ambition. You are holding a tangible reminder of what is possible when you get out of your own head, get out of your own way and finish what you start. Baldwin finished this powerful book that no one asked him to write, in fact, many people told him not to write it and still, he did. He wrote the last sentence not entirely certain that a single person would even want to read the first sentence and if that is not a sign of a damn good writer, I don’t know what is.

4. You know you’re a good writer when you write every single day.

Now, before I get a bunch of comments from people saying, “wait, wait, wait, so-and-so doesn’t write every day, and they’ve sold millions of books,” let me make something clear. Sitting your butt in the chair and putting your pen to the page or tapping your fingers on a keyboard, that is the last step of the writing process.

When I say write every day, I mean do the pre-work of writing, the living like a writer part of the writing process. I mean, absorb the world around you.Listen to the conversations that a child has with their mother on the subway. Observe the different ways people check to see if an avocado is ripe or rotting. Memorize the look on someone’s face when they’re lying, when they’ve lost something or when they’ve found something out. If you are fully present and living as a writer, your writing will reflect that. When I say write every day, I mean make love, break up, laugh with your friends, and fight with people you care about. Part of writing is questioning your beliefs and challenging your bias.

Writing is putting your bare feet on the ground, it is happening during the days you spend getting dirty and the years you spend getting clean.

Writing is studying the world around you deciding what you want to say, what you have to say before you sit down and type out a single word. So, write every day.

5. You know you’re a good writer when you make an effort to keep learning your craft.

I can always tell which of my students will be successful and which ones won’t. It’s the ones who say, “I know. I knew that already,” that never get very far. They attribute their failure to the fact that an editor didn’t like them for whatever reason, or a publication didn’t get them or that they’re writing was just too high brow for this low brow world. These people usually go on to do other things with their lives but they never become good writers.

The students who succeed, the ones that have gone on to publish books and get bylines in the New Yorker and Harpers and Vogue and Vanity Fair, they are the ones who say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Tell me more.”

The ones who find success are the writers who know that there is so much they still don’t know, the ones who push themselves, and challenge themselves and allow themselves to continue learning all that they can about their craft.

The best writers are the ones who question whether or not they’re any good, decide that they are and then challenge themselves to become better.

Jessica Ciencin Henriquez is a writer and teacher in New York City.