Good Vs Bad

In Friends, when Joey writes a letter of reference for Monica and Chandler, he writes in broken English and substitutes each word in his letter with synoyms from the Thesaurus. Each and every word, until Chandler finds that even Joey's name is subsitituted as baby kangaroo. Now from Joey's basic written English skills to our topic!

Who can say that he/she is a good writer? I cannot claim that I'm a writer. When somebody asks about my work and what do I write, I generally evade the question. Some of it has to do with my awareness of my own limitations. Then comes great writers who can make you enticed for hours and hours without stumbling across any word or thought in their writing.

Then comes this need to simplify everything. When I see bad writing, my gut instinct is to change it into a better form. I have read bad writing that has an antique taste, as if it was taken out of some English book written two hundred years ago and happily copied by a lot of people as good writing.

What I feel is that writing is an internalised process; you cannot study a style and emulate it in writing just by following how the words go. Rather than that the message has to come in clear and sharp terms and many good writers re-write until they get their ideas clearly in writing.

This might be dismissed as plain rubbish; but if you can become a good writer by imitating the style of 'good writers', beware dear writer, you might be centuries behind!