QUALITY may seem an overdone characteristic, but it is absolutely essential. You may have heard that quality is more important than quantity. In good writing, this rings true. Quantity looks good on paper (the more you have, the more work you did, right?), but the truth is that too much of something can be troublesome. Readers want the words on the page to stand out to them, and they want to be transported into the world or topic that is being written about. They want escape (see yesterday’s post on PURPOSE), and in that case, quality clearly overrides quantity. Having more of a good thing can be fantastic, of course, but it must all be a good thing, or else readers will become tired of reading words that don’t help their purpose, which is to read something that engages them and encourages more reading.

Sometimes writers find themselves becoming repetitive if they have done too much writing. This can be hard for writers who need to find new ways to express themselves, and it can be hard for readers who do not want to read the same ideas over and over again. Writers must season their work with quality, peppering it with all the ABCs that are staples of their process. Readers will be happy, and writers will bask in the glory of completing their task to their readers’ satisfaction.