30 Posts in 30 Days Challenge

Writing Won’t Make You A Better Person

It might help you find like-minded weirdoes that appreciate you, though.

Anton the Writer

Published in

Word Garden

4 min readFeb 16, 2024

Are writers better human beings?

A cursory Google search yields these headlines:

Why Writing Will Make You a Better Person
Why Writers Are the Most Influential People in the World
Does Being a Good Writer Make You a Good Person?

If you substitute ‘writer’ for ‘artist’ we get:

Is It Possible to Be a Great Artist and a Good Person?
Why Are Great Artists Terrible People?
Do People With Mental Illness Make Better Artists?

Why Does This Matter At All?

Does it? You tell me.

Writers love asking questions, some hard, some unnecessary. We love talking about writing, and, by extension, talking about ourselves.

Questions like “Are writers good people?” are connected to the more general questions of

“What makes an artist/writer?” or
“What makes a good person?”

An artist is not a writer, and many writers are not artists. Both are creative. A copywriter can have more ideas than a novelist, and I suppose a similar thing can be said when comparing a graphic designer to a celebrated mixed-media artist. Don’t quote me on this though.

(If you are wondering why I point this out: I am half-German. I come from a cultural background that has a rather strict divide between art as high-brow art (‘real art’) and art as entertainment.)

What Makes a Good Person?

A good entry point would be to consider why you need to know. Do you want to become a better human being by becoming a writer? Are you a writer and feel like a lousy person? Why would a creative profession be connected to morality in the first place?

It’s been a while since I’ve studied philosophy but in ethics, there are two main schools. Deontologists, like Kant, maintain that someone acts in a morally good way if he follows a set of principles or rules. His actions would be good in themselves, intrinsically good, since they are based on his good will (=good intention/right intention).

Example: Lying is intrinsically bad, so I won’t lie to my friend when he asks me if his botched haircut looks good.

Consequentialists, on the other hand, think that an act is only good if it produces a good outcome, a thing of intrinsic value. They’d agree that something is of moral value if it’s a means to a good end.

Example: Lying is intrinsically bad. But if I lie and tell my friend his bad haircut looks good, then I’ll make him happy. Thus, I am acting in the right way and being morally good.

Please forgive me for this very short and crude portrayal of the two schools of thought.

Ok, so how can a writer be a good person?

The Myth of the Good Artist

I don’t think writing and morals should be voiced in the same sentence.

History is full of writers with dubious views. Men who were plain assholes, racists, or, at the very least, little fun to be around.

German poet Gottfried Benn and his contemporary Ezra Pound supported fascism. Junot Díaz has been accused of sexual misconduct. Nobel prize winner Austrian author Peter Handke has been widely criticized for his statements regarding the Srebrenica massacre.

The list goes on. Were they good people?

I refuse to reject someone’s work because of their views or actions. But at the same time, I don’t think writing makes you a better human being.

Some people say writing improves you because it gives you more empathy or self-awareness. You have an easier time putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and understanding them.

Yes, and then what?

Writers Have Good Figures

I am better at structuring my thoughts than the average person. I can be persuasive with words but I might steal a bill from a wallet I find on a street.

Writers are just like me and you. It’s not a path to absolution.

If anything, we’re athletes. A regular Joe cannot run a marathon or benchpress 150 kgs. Us writers being more eloquent does not mean we are morally good. We are neither acting out of a set of correct principles nor do we contribute to the greater good.

We’re flawed, broken, and crazy; we have technicolor dreams and thoughts that cannot be contained. If anything, we just know how to express our messiness.