"Competence"

[davidlevine]

Promoted from a comment to this post:

The whole "competence" argument seems to me to boil down to this: "I don't like a lot of the stuff I'm reading. The authors of the stuff I don't like are merely Competent, and clearly this is because they are Not Trying Hard Enough. Try Harder, everyone!" It ignores the fact that not everyone is trying to please this particular reader; even those who are, and are failing, are already trying as hard as they can. Trying Harder is not the answer. Writing your own personal thing, and accepting that not everyone will like it, is the answer.

Comments

Applause

[kellymccullough.livejournal.com]

Thanks for getting so much of what irritated me about the original plus a good response down into one spiffy paragraph. I've been meaning to post something similar but my version was longer and less to the point.