Being a writer myself (hey, if after a million words, I’m not a writer, nobody is), I’ve perused a lot of the literature online and in print about how to be a good writer, a better writer, a published writer, a writer with a better standard of living than a Calcutta street beggar, and so on.

And there is a lot of highly valuable advice out there about how to put together a professional looking manuscript, how to tighten up your writing to make it more succinct, how to convince editors that you are literate (I should use good grammar? Really? Wow!), how to come up with ideas, how to write convincing dialogue, and even some idea about how to write something worth reading.

And that is all very important stuff, but it’s really only half of the equation. And the problem is that because so much of the advice in the world about writing covers only or primarily that half, it can give a young writer the false impression that writing is all about rules, technique, precision, and a lot of other details which, to a certain mindset, can be extremely off-putting. It makes it seem like writing is an art form for accountants, lawyers, and other highly detail-oriented people only, and if you are one of those kinds of people, you might as well just not bother typing a single word.

And that is just not true. Sure, all those things count for a lot. But none of those things, by themselves, make you a good writer. It is the difference between writing as a skill and writing as a talent, between the little details and the big picture, between something you don’t particularly mind reading and something you actually enjoy reading.

This is an obvious truth, when you stop to consider it. None of the great writers who are universally admired today won their immortality and respect by having the fewest typos in their manuscript or by having the fewest split infinitives, the least number of unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, or the most “according to Hoyle” paragraph structure. If it was that easy, there would be a lot of people tied for first place.

Obviously, there must be something more to writing that precision of execution and the ability to follow the rules, and it’s that portion of the endeavour that is the subject of this article, and that I refer to when I speak of “the other half of writing”.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the other half of writing is much harder to learn and ever harder to teach than the half you usually see in writing manuals and advice columns. It’s a lot easier to educate people in writing cover letters and finding markets than it is to somehow teach imagination, insight, understanding, empathy, wit, and that sine qua non of je ne sais pas of writing, having something interesting to say.

Those are all highly subjective and ephemeral qualities that cannot be learned by rote or mastered through intensive study, and only a fool would claim to be do more than just point you in the right general direction or give you some potential fruitful food for thought.

Nobody and nothing can truly teach these things to a person, and so the books and websites stick to what can be taught, and thus unintentionally give the impression that writing is that, and nothing more.

Every writing manual, every helpful blog entry, every “how to get published” guide, and every writer’s group nugget of advice should begin with “This assumes that you have a good story to tell, a beautiful dream to share, or something interesting to say. ”

And of course, many do. A lot of these manuals do include something along these lines in their introduction. But the way it’s phrased is often quite harsh and negative, taking things from the “fuck you if you can’t write” end of the stick, as though to crush as many people’s dreams as possible.

My point, and I do have one, is that the real message for potential writers is not “you probably suck and don’t even bother”, but “if all these rules and regulations seem too much for you, if it seems like you have to be a detail-obsessed nitpicker to even stand a chance of getting noticed, relax. If you are good enough at the other half of writing, editors will forgive the occasional imperfection in your technique. ”

After all, that’s why editors exist. One of the little secrets that writing manuals won’t tell you is that a lot of very famous and important writers made a lot of work for their editors. They have (or had) poor spelling, grammar, typing, you name it. On the writer manual scorecard, they scored very poorly.

But once all the surface imperfections were fixed, once the grime and dirt and dust were wiped away and the nature of what was underneath was revealed, what the editors found was solid gold.

That doesn’t mean you should just type any old thing in any old way and fire it off without even proofreading it and expect the editors to line up at your door to kiss your ring. You still have to make it as good as you can before sending it off or showing it around, if for no other reason than to show the editor that you respect them enough to do as much of their work for them as you can before dumping something on your desk, and thus, give you word a chance to appeal to them.

But if the best you can do is still a lot less than perfect, do not despair. That doesn’t mean that you completely suck at writing and shouldn’t even bother trying.

After all, you might be very good at the other, more important half of writing.

And if you are, the rest of it will not matter nearly as much as you think it will.