People don’t like being wrong. Especially writers. Writers have committed, in a far more permanent sense than others, to a set of ideas. It is right there in your book, on paper, proofed and published. Copyrighted under your name, for all to see. Try taking that back.
Well, don’t. Mostly because it’s too late.
So of course everyone wants to be right. And everyone wants to be considered logical. Yet logic doesn’t stop a lot us. We deploy our own logic: I said it, ergo, I’m right.
“He’s nothing but a fraud,” Clark told me. It was a pretty day, sunny and cool. But Clark, brooding, clutching a satchel of writing, descends like an angry rain cloud.
Clark had been to the library to hear an author talk. “Everything that guy says is a lie.”
“How so?”
“He said the best time to write is in the morning. That’s a lie.”
“Isn’t that an opinion?”
“Yes. And he’s lying.”
I told him something I thought we all knew. An opinion cannot be true or false.
Clark wasn’t buying this. “Of course an opinion can be false!”
In any disagreement it would help, a lot, if people used the dictionary more. I got out my phone and Googled. An opinion, according to Oxford, is “a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact.” I showed this to Clark.
He scowled, pursed his lips, and gave this assessment. “They’re wrong.”
“The dictionary is wrong?”
“Yep.”
“So you’re telling me…”
His patience had expired. “You’re wrong! They’re wrong! Everyone is wrong!” He stomped off.
Clark has the makings of greatness. He simply cannot be mistaken. Rather than clarifying anything, this left me more confused than ever. I’m frequently wrong, or to be more precise, I frequently question my own views.
Do I lack the requirements for greatness?
Maybe. We’ll see. In the meantime, someone told me Clark has a new project. He’s writing his own dictionary! I looked ahead. Far ahead. Someday, it would be impossible to argue with Clark. He would always be right.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com