The problem I have with the writings of people like Terry Pratchett who are supposed to be “clever” is that it all feels like a cheap parlor trick for me. Any trick you can do probably feels that way, I’d imagine.

I once had a teacher who would not listen to any piano music that she could play herself. Being a very good pianist, not much remained for her ears. But I understood what she meant, and I understand it all the more now.

Though I am a bit more liberal in my writing consumption, I do have trouble reading writing that I’ve effectively already produced myself in copious amounts. When I was younger I thought folks like Pratchett were worth of emulation, artful in their wit, adroit in their manipulation of language. So I wrote like them.

Then I turned 10.

I’m not saying that liking things like Pratchett is childish. Taste is taste. No accounting for it.

What I’m saying is that it does not appeal to me because it is my métier. I don’t need someone to show me how to make the shoes. I’m already a cobbler. I turned 10 and could write like Pratchett with one hemisphere tied behind my back.

These days, I appreciate works more subtly constructed, where the writer is not at the forefront, not dancing on the stage crying, “Look at me, look at how clever and fun I am!” I select art that I could not have forged from any fire within myself: Adrienne Rich and Dante, Annie Dillard and Battlestar Galactica, Yeats and Rimbaud and Jo Walton.

Like my teacher from another life, another place, another me, I appreciate works that I couldn’t have created, and sometimes could not even have imagined.