What is good writing?

So what constitutes good writing? I think that is extremely subjective, even within the individual, for I have written some real absolute garbage that at the time I thought was ‘good’. Of course, years later when I look at these masterpieces of literature I laugh. Same thing goes for what I considered good writing in stories that I was reading. As I stop now to consider this, it seems that my favorites have always come in phases. As a pre-teen, I loved reading Judy Blume books, which seemed to coincide with my growing pains phase; Are You There God It’s Me Margaret was once a bible of sorts. My actual teenage years were way to busy with guys and music to read. Therefore, I concentrated my literary interests to such excellent publications such as, Teen Beat, Seventeen, and Circus. Then came my ‘drama’ phase and V.C. Andrews books fit the bill perfectly. Then was my infamous Danielle Steele phase when I was desperately seeking the perfect man; I never did find one. After this stage, I moved on to Stephen King novels. Now I’m not sure exactly what that means to my life phases, considering that I’ve never been faced with any creature, being, or entity that was trying to kill me, although I do recall a former girlfriend of mine who was pretty frightening.
Strangely enough, the real classics I read as a child, such as The Secret Garden and Charlotte’s Web were probably the only ones that would have been universally considered ‘good,’ with the exception of my wild side phase when Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski were the focus. The truth is, good writing moves me, whether it is my own or it belongs to someone else. I want to be inspired when I read, or provoked, or enlightened, something, anything. I want to read and write sentences that have a rhythm, a tone, a value, an experience, and not didactic, but educational none-the-less. Books like Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, contain so much more meaning than what is found in the plot; that is good writing. Good writing is like turning on a lamp in a familiar room and seeing something new.