I follow Seth Godin.
From time to time, he writes about an extraordinary book, something which impressed him, a special project.
But rarely, if ever, does he mention average books, not-so-great-projects, and so on.
And I think there are two or three reasons for which I, unlike him, should write about less-than-great things:
- It trains the muscle. You learn how to write better about books in general if you review lots of them. If you write a lot about movies, you learn how to write about movies. I wrote one of my first reviews on any movie about “Le Notti di Cabiria” (1957). It wasn’t that good. For some other books, when I didn’t write lots of reviews, I wrote poorly. Sure, if all you write is one or two paragraphs about a movie/book, it doesn’t matter all that much what you say. But even then the constant exercise should help you write better.
- You learn how to read a book/watch a movie better. If you write about how the actors played their roles, next time you see a movie, you will focus more on that aspect. If you constantly write about the ideas/emotions you got while watching a movie, you will pay more attention to this. And this is good.
- “The gold is in the dark. And one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” ~ Carl Jung. There are some movies (and books) which are not-so-great, but, still, you might get one idea or two. On an overall scale, it’s more likely that a top book (by critics or sales) gives you more ideas than a poor book, but that’s not always the case.
All these are specific to things that can’t be offended if I write poorly about them. I will generally refrain to write something negative about a real-life, can-be-offended, person.
