by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: March 05, 2009

There are a great many different types of writing, reasons for writing and styles of writing. Equally, there are a great many different types of writer. The value of writing is likely therefore to vary considerably as we consider these different genres and writers so it may be valuable to consider same from a number of different perspectives and in a number of different ways.

The value of writing to the writer himself is likely to be best represented by the level of satisfaction the writer obtains from his work, how much money he makes from subsequently selling his work and the way in which his work is received and treated by both professional critics and the wider public at large. As an artist, the writer may in some instances be extremely vain and therefore even if he himself is delighted with his work and he receives a more than adequate payment for same, one example of adverse criticism can devalue the whole process for the writer and cause him to become most unsatisfied not only with the critic but with his own writing that it attracted such negativity.

The value of writing to publishers can never be underestimated. It is after all writers and the quality writing which they produce which keeps the publisher in business. He therefore has to carefully assess first of all the value of the writing in how it is represented in terms of quality and suitability for his publication and subsequently, in terms of how much he should offer the writer in monetary terms for the rights to publish the work. This second evaluation of the writing involves a very delicate balancing procedure. The publisher has to place a monetary value on the writing which will be acceptable to the writer and not have him take his work elsewhere but also ensure that he himself stands to make sufficient profit from whatever he then does with the writing in question.

The value of writing to the eventual reader will also take many shapes and forms, depending upon what they wish to obtain from it. The reader of such as a novel will determine its value by how well it entertains them or allows them to escape reality and the problems said reality may hold for them. If the piece of writing is such as an article on how to perform a particular task, the value to the reader will depend upon how precise and easy to understand the instructions are and how well the article subsequently helps them to perform the task. If the piece of writing is perhaps a text book for the use of students in a particular academic discipline, the reader will determine the value by how well the work helps them to better understand their subject.

The value of writing can therefore be seen to cover a great many related but quite distinct areas and perhaps often like beauty, can be very much in the eye of the beholder.

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