You Call that Art?

In my office there hangs a painting.  I didn't pick it.  It was there when I moved in.  But in my opinion, it's about as ugly a piece of art as you could ever hope to get a frame around.  It’s been in my office for a few years!  But it wasn't until today that I actually looked at it and thought about it, less in terms of its sheer amount of ugh, but more in terms of its history.

Someone took the time to put it on a canvas, looked at it, even if it was only for a brief moment, and thought, "You know what?  That is a nice painting!  I'm going to have prints made of it and sell it."  And then the process went a step further.  Some poor-tasted person who decorated my office years before me, saw it in a store and thought, "Hmmm, that's a pretty nice painting.  I think I'll hang it in my office!"

Now to avoid offending the artist who took the time to put his brush to canvas and create this... work, I won't describe it.  With my luck he'll read this and begin an all out offensive on the writings of Kevin Kilgarriff.  And do you know what?  He'd have every right to do so.  Because when it comes down to it, one man's trash is another man's treasure.  And people have every right to dislike someone’s writing... or art.

I can pooh pooh the idea that what I consider to be an ugly painting can be considered art all I want.  The fact is that others can look at my writing and say the same thing.  What one person considers good writing, another may look at with the face of an ill llama.  It all comes down to taste.  Some might say it's a matter of education level.  But I disagree.

Take me for example.  I consider myself an educated man.  I'm a college graduate. I love to learn!   I'm even a regular viewer of the History and Discovery Channels.  But I’m also a huge fan of VH1’s "I Love the 70’s."  And when I sit down to read a book, sometimes I don't want to have to think.  And when I say think, I mean that I don't want to feel like I'm paging through Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, trying to find out whodunit.  I want to get lost in the book and have my mind follow along with the words as though they were my own thoughts.  And my own thoughts don’t sound like that of Hemingway or Tolstoy.

Are the Browns and Pattersons of the world bad writers because they haven't published a book that is on a High School English class' summer reading list?  No, not all!  In my mind it’s just the opposite.

Good writing is good writing - plain and simple.  It doesn’t have to elicit a need for a dictionary at every other paragraph.  If you can string together thoughts on paper and capture the reader’s attention, as though failure to finish reading were not an option, then you've done your job.  No matter what the content and how you’ve said it.  You've gotten your art to hang on the wall of someone's mind.  Hopefully it will stay there as long, or even longer, as the one in my office.   Some people may read your work and then take it down off of their minds wall immediately.  But that’s fine!  It just wasn’t for them.

Another example of what I’m trying to illustrate here occurred a few months back.  I received a compliment on something I’d written.  It was one of the most amazing compliments I’d ever heard directed at me.  “Wow!  Look at this!  It must be true if someone else says it.  I am a great writer.  Others would be fools not to publish everything I’ve written since I was in preschool.”  The next day I was summarily brought back to earth by another rejection letter for the book I’ve been trying to sell. 

“What could have happened?” I thought.   “They must not have read my query letter completely.  Surely they would recognize the genius in my work!  Maybe I should forward on that compliment.  That may jar their senses a little bit and make them realize what they’re passing up.”  But I soon realized that it may not be my writing that’s bad, it may have been that it just wasn’t right for them.  They also may have wanted to line their cats litter box with it.  But that’s an entirely different article.

The important thing is to remember that you need to write for yourself.  If you like what you wrote, then rejoice and be glad. That friends, is the icing on the cake.  If you find that others like it too, well then consider that the rainbow sprinkles.

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Kevin Kilgarriff is a writer and Recruitment Advertising Account Executive. He's been writing forever (Yes, since the beginning of time!), but didn't choose to share his work until mid-2004. A virtual novice in terms of writing professionally, his goal at Writers Remember is to share his experiences with other writers, and to hopefully help them through the trying times that a writer can encounter.

Recently Kevin started his own freelance writing business, Londontown Writing Services.

He blogs at Aspiring Adult and enjoys reading and writing in a variety of genres. His childish jokes are unrivaled and his vast collection of useless information, which he swears will one day be fully utilized, continues to grow exponentially.

Kevin lives in Warrington, PA, just outside of Philadelphia, with his wife and their 2 year old daughter.