[UPDATE not working... why?]

Thank you very much kenrbnsn. I wasn't aware that I'd have to do that.
It works perfectly now.

Crayon Violent- I wasn't getting an error because all i told it to do was print failed query if it failed.

[UPDATE not working... why?]

Obviously I'm new to this so please bear with me...

My UPDATE query works fine when updating a database column with an int value to it but when I use the same exact code to update something with, say, varchar or text it doesn't work.
I can think of no other issue besides the possibility that I have to prepare the text for insertion, though this doesn't make much sense because if I use INSERT it will do its job fine. Perhaps you can help me understand why UPDATE isn't accepting the query.

Here's the basics of the code...
$query = "UPDATE ".$table." SET description = ".$val." WHERE id = ".$g."";
mysql_db_query($database, $query) or die("Failed Query");

The necessary connection code and variable values are in tact because if I swap "$query =" with "print" it prints out the correct code as it should be.

If you have any questions or comments they would be appreciated. Thanks