If I Can’t Write as Well as a Professional, Why Bother?
This is the second article in my writing journey, An Accountant Learns to Write Again.
In the next few parts of my writing journey, I’m sharing the lessons and tools that helped me get through “writer’s block.” It has been a two-year journey from being too afraid to sit down in front of a blank page to finally enjoying writing. Writer’s block is not one thing but a combination of fears, some personal and some commonly shared.
When I first got back into writing, I felt intimidated by good writers I was seeing everywhere. It seemed to me like they formed their perfect paragraphs on the first try. In comparison, my early efforts were awkward and stilted, and every word shouted I was not good enough to be doing this.
When I read the work of good writers, I immediately thought, “what’s the point of me writing this and putting out worse material?” Or I read someone write about a similar topic and thought, “now I can’t write about that anymore, someone already did it.” I saw better ideas and writings as life-like sculptures compared to my clumsy LEGO blocks, and I kept asking myself, “why bother doing this if someone else does it better?”
The Brain As a Filter
You know how when you buy a new car, you can start seeing the same car everywhere? Our brains are constantly taking in information through our five senses — the roar of tires against the road, the chirping of birds, the rustling green leaves, the splatter of rain, the peal of children laughing. We know what to pay attention to because of our prefrontal cortex, which tells the other parts of the brain what types of sensory information are important. In this case, we know we need to pay attention to movement on the road while driving, and we slow our car down earlier in the rain so we don’t hit those kids crossing the street.
The brain filters sensory information that is relevant in our lives, and when we take on a new creative project, that project becomes highly relevant. We inhabit the same world we always have, but different information is now highlighted as important. Where I used to read articles to be informed, entertained, or inspired, I now notice the writers I admire, how they think, how they reveal themselves, how they make a point.
Comparisons
Growing up, I was taught that if I couldn’t do something as well as a professional, then there was no point in doing it. I remember my aunt wanting to learn the piano, and my mom saying, “it’s too late now. She won’t be good at it anyway, so why bother?” In Chinese culture, it seems like the primary reason to learn music is to be a concert musician or to give your parents something to brag to their friends about (let’s face it, it’s both).
I really wanted my writing to work out. I didn’t know what my subject was yet, exactly, but I wanted to write about the concepts and observations I’ve learned through my personal growth process over the last decade. I had also hoped, of course, that I could somehow make a living from it. This was my time to prove that all that personal work was worth something. Every time I read someone’s writing that was more articulate and well-thought out, it felt like a nail in the coffin. It hurt to see that my writing skills weren’t nearly where I wanted them to be, and that my journey may take much longer than I’d expected.
It’s natural to compare our work to those of others. That’s how we evaluate our work and improve. Other people’s work that we admire are natural inspirations for where we want to go, otherwise we wouldn’t even pay attention. Do I care about the work of the world’s best classic car restorer? Does seeing their work make me depressed? No, because I don’t want to be one (my husband, on the other hand…). The truth is, if I didn’t want to improve as a writer, I would enjoy good writing rather than fear what it meant about me.
Comparing my work with those of professional writers showed me that I want my writing to be more authentic, thoughtful, and polished. It told me that my work may not be good enough yet to deserve a following. Those are feedback that can help me improve. But comparison can turn into an obstacle when we use it to condemn our own work and hold it up as evidence that we could never be as good.
Competition
Artists face a paradox. We have long been taught to compete with one another for the limited availability of paid work. This is especially true in artistic fields as there are far more artists than those who make a decent living making art. Those who do are usually the best of the best.
At the same time, competition can hurt us and kill creativity. Every artist stands on the shoulders of others who inspired them — no one is purely original, even as their work is a new evolution of those that came before. Beginners like me need environments of support and cooperation rather than competition, especially the environment in our heads.
As a new-ish writer, it was easy for me to feel discouraged and scared when I read the work of better writers and felt like I could never get there. The truth is, these comparisons are natural functions of our brains distorted by our upbringing to see each other as competitors. If we could be kinder with ourselves and allow our inner artists to play and explore without demanding certain results, these comparisons can become our teachers and collaborators instead.
Originally published at https://www.soultoworld.com on June 9, 2020.
