What kind of writer am I?

I have no idea if this is a good question or a self-defeating question, but I’m intrigued by it. About a year ago — maybe  a little more now — I asked myself, what caliber writer am I? What level do I hope to attain?

There are the novelists who manage to sell fairly short novels fairly rapidly, easy fluff that you can read through in an afternoon or two. Things that have no takeaway, are just some random stuff happening, and have very little impact on your life or thinking when you’re done. Snack reading. I can’t even name you any that I’ve read, that’s how unmemorable the books were.

There are novelists whose work is light and easy, but who nevertheless manage to instill some kind of message, something that makes you think or feel differently than you would have if you hadn’t read the book. Something small, but real. I don’t want to disparage anyone’s writing, since I’m sure they don’t see their work as trivial, but I have a few authors like that on my bookshelves. I don’t re-read their books often, and when I do, I enjoy them, but am done quickly. I never spend the cash to pick up the hardcover versions of their books.

There are novelists whose work is interesting, real, honest, yet entertaining. These are the ones I return to a lot, try to get the hardcover version if I can find it, whose work surprises me in new ways when I go back for a re-read.

There are novelists whose work is brutal, deep, engrossing, makes a point about society and our places within it, leaves you a little breathless, thinking, “wow. That was intense.” I will be honest. I read those books, I feel like I learn from them, get something deep and meaningful from them, but I do not go back to them again and again. When a book really smacks me upside the head with a message of intense honesty, I approach it with some real respect. I am not always up for having my ideas and beliefs challenged at their very core, or to have a message I already understand repeated to me in bloody-brutal honesty.

To me, the greatest authors (and I realize this is my opinion) are somewhere between the epic message and the gripping yet entertaining. There’s this sweet spot where you feel very changed after reading a book, feel like your beliefs have been challenged or vindicated in a tangible way, but you have wanted to know what happened next at every page, you laughed at the jokes and marveled at plot twists, you cried when your favorite character died, and yet you were not merely entertained.

That’s the kind of author I long to be. I’m not there yet. I think I’m at the “interesting, honest, yet entertaining” stage. I hope so, anyway. But when I first thought about this leveling system, I thought to myself, “honest yet entertaining is good enough. That’s a good kind of writer to be.”

I realized recently that “good enough” is not a worthwhile goal. It’s not worth working for. I don’t want to be good enough, I want to be awesome.  I want to entertain, yet deeply move and change people while I am entertaining them. The authors I am thinking of didn’t start out epic. Their beginning stories are interesting, but not arresting. Their later works get into true beauty and terror and real life-changing qualities. I want that. I want to work towards that. I may not get it in the first book, or second or third. But that is my goal, and I am working towards it. One word at a time.