Those Who Can, Do.

Next month I will have been scrawling nonsense on this little corner of the internet for a year and the whole exercise has taught me a lot about writing. I’ve found that for me ideas can’t be forced, I generally tend to have to be in the right mood or have been hit sufficiently hard by the inspiration stick to put something out that I’m happy with. There are hundreds of things I see or hear that I could write about but if I put finger to keyboard every time I had a half-baked idea for an article I’d bore the shit out of myself, let alone the people who are generous enough to give up some of their time to sit and read what I post on here.

That said, not all people who read things such as this page are generous. Allow me to explain…

I’ll happily admit that a major inspiration to start Small Tales came from reading a blog that is written by a friend. I didn’t know him when I first looked at it – although we’ve since become friends – and I found it to be one of the funniest things I’ve read for a long time. His observations and vicious wit are right up my street and easily on a par with anything a professional columnist could produce. With material ranging from idiots with iphones on the bus to his crazy neighbours and their ridiculous exploits, from his being crap at drinking alcohol to being accosted by a mad woman at a nightclub, my friend’s writing never ceases to pluck at least one belly laugh from me per article. And what struck me above all is his writing style; it’s engaging, fluid and he has the ability to pen things that are on one hand laugh-out-loud funny and yet at other times incredibly moving.

About two or three months ago I received a text from him when I left work, which read,

‘Hello mate, now I know you’re a good writer but my question is am I?’

It was a strange question because my friend isn’t the kind of emo-esque, insecure attention seeker that constantly needs affirmation or self-inflicted razor slashes to his arms to feel better about himself. A little bemused I replied and told him about how his writing had inspired me and asked why this sudden crisis of confidence. He went on to tell me that someone who had decided to remain anonymous had emailed him and effectively told him he couldn’t write for shit. I pressed him for more specifics and while the following isn’t verbatim quotation of what they said it’s along the same lines.

‘Anonymous’ told him that his writing lacked depth and substance, his style was shoddy and that he used foul language to cover up both his lack of intelligence and ability. Now from my grassy knoll that couldn’t be further from the truth and my first question upon being told this was, ‘have they sent you anything they’ve written?’ to which I was told no they hadn’t. I then asked if they had left their name and an indication of what qualifies them to make these sweeping judgements to which the answer was once again, no they hadn’t. ‘Anonymous’ didn’t even point to sections of my friend’s text that they’d taken offence to.

Now one thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s easy to criticise. Anyone with an opinion – however badly informed – coupled with the power of speech or some vague semblance of literacy can slag something off. But for me nowadays, being negative is mostly a cop out. As the saying goes, it can take years to build something that takes seconds to tear apart and let's face it, destroying something hardly takes hard work, talent or imagination does it? Unless you’re one of those badass demolition dudes, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What ‘anonymous’ did was the literary equivalent of a dull-witted bully coming along and kicking over a sandcastle someone had spent time and energy creating. Of course there are things out there that are so crap they need a good bashing, take most of the music that makes the charts these days for example, but if you have to be negative about something at least put in some effort and be well-informed enough to back up what you say with some form of evidence.

I’ve found that it’s much harder to be positive about something, especially if it’s something you aren’t personally into. There are a lot of things out there that really aren’t my cup of tea let alone my glass of finest single malt, but just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit. One of my biggest bugbears are people with no talent and no motivation other than to sit in their ivory towers dishing out what they loosely describe as criticism to people who have worked on something and had the guts to put it out there in public.

The internet is awash with semi-literate armchair critics who are happy to tear chunks out of someone’s work and yet haven’t produced a single thing themselves apart from their inane, boring, predictable rantings about things others have created. For my friend to be viciously criticised by this moron who didn’t even have the backbone to post their name on the email is a joke. So I’d like to take the shallow approach in my response to ‘anonymous’ and mask my obvious lack of intellect or depth by saying fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

I’d love to see the kind of thing that ‘anonymous’ could produce because I’m sure it would be of such a poor standard that I could give them a proper lesson in articulate bitch slapping. It takes balls to create something and put it out there for people to read, look at or listen to and it is nothing more than cowardice to attack something without so much as revealing who you are and why you think your opinion counts for shit.

If you’d like to form your own opinion, which I strongly suggest you do, you can check out my friend’s blog HERE. But do us both a favour if you want to slag either me or my friend off, at least leave your name and justification for your negativity.

And whatever you do, remember this golden rule: those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch.