Does being a good writer make you a good person?

Want to be a good writer? Work on your personal credibility, read good writers (including Charles Bukowski) and listen to what others are asking you.

Better person, better writer:  Even if writing isn’t your full time gig, the way you write and your attention to detail says a lot about you as an individual. That’s what Barbara Wallraff writes in the Harvard Business Review. She lists several dos and don’ts to add integrity to your writing and project a person that can be trusted. The most valuable of these might be “obsess over your credibility.”

Writing well is a learned skill; it isn’t the same as being a considerate, interesting, admirable person. But if you do your best to be considerate and interesting and admirable — or whatever else particularly matters to you — no doubt you will have an advantage in the writing department over the thoughtless, the dull, and the contemptible.