There's good, then there's better, and then there's BEST

I have had a certain college professor for two semesters in a row now. (We’ll call him Professor W.) I’m sure many of you have met the type. Laid back as a person, but as a professor he’s critical of every literary thing and impossible to please. Don’t believe me? He thinks “Lord of the Rings” is a joke, Jane Austen is good but still horrible stuff, and don’t even get him started on “Twilight” and “Harry Potter.” He considers those books to be crimes against the literary community.

What he believes are the best books (and in a way I agree with him) are the ancient classics; “The Odyssey,” “Confessions of Socrates,” and other books which were our first histories. (Did you know the first novels were actually history books? They didn’t write them dry back in the day. Professor W had us read one and it was actually exciting.)

Very few modern books even touch his standard of high quality literature. He believes that society has dummied down books so much that there is no substance left to them. And all at the price of an easy read. After two semesters where I was required to read some “better quality” literature, I have to admit he does have a point. The Odyssey only looks tough on the outside, once you open it, it’s actually really good. True, old language is easier to understand when you read stuff like the Bible all the time, but still...it’s just a thought.

Actually, it is this very professor who was the first person to inspire me to become a better writer. I’ve always been good at writing and had good grades in all of my English classes and all my papers received top marks. Needless to say, I was a bit proud of my “gift.” It was his dissatisfaction and grading style that showed me that if I was going to make it in the literary world, I would have to make some major improvements.

My pride was literally torn from my ego and ground to powder to salt his breakfast eggs. Humility? More like public humiliation. But I know why he did it. He required me to not only be good but to become the best. He wasn’t going to waste his time babysitting a bunch of whiny college students who expected life to be handed to them on a platter just because they were enrolled in a University.

And now...neither do I. I want to make my life. I don’t want it given to me. It is my goal to improve my writing so much throughout my life, that by the time I’m 60 I might be able to pull of a “Beowolf” level work or two. That was what he tried to teach us. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use these new skills to hone my book into a near perfect text fit for the publishing world.