Unrecognized Ambition

Every so often, I meet a writer who struggles with writing. Really struggles, more than the usual “I have forgotten how to do this” level of struggle. They beat themselves up about their lack of skill and inadequate talent compared to everyone else they know. At least 98% of the time, the problem is not inadequacy or lack of skill; it’s unrecognized ambition.

These writers do not just push their writing boundaries with each new book. They attempt enormous leaps. Each work is hugely ambitious compared with the previous one, which compounds matters. And the writers do not realize they are doing this. As far as they’re concerned, they are just starting their next book, like everyone else. It doesn’t occur to them that “everyone else” starts a new book that is one step harder than their last one, while they are trying to write something four or five steps harder.

For most writers like this, it is really hard to see the correct problem here. They look at the above explanation, and what they see is I should write less ambitious books. Writing less ambitious books sounds like a) one more failure, one more shortfall in comparison to other writers, and b) being told they are not good enough to write what they want to write.

Neither of these things are true, but for a writer who is already half or more convinced of their own inadequacy, “I can’t/shouldn’t” is the first place their brain goes, and it tends to get stuck there because they interpret everything they’ve done so far through this lens. Both the comparison to other writers and the idea that they aren’t good enough to write what they want to write feed into their perception of inadequacy and lack of skill, especially if they are beginners having the usual beginner problems finding an agent and editor.

The first actual problem is one of recognition—seeing and accepting that they picked something really hard to write. This is the real reason they are struggling so hard with their current project. They’re like a beginner cook trying to make a chocolate souffle on their first try, and comparing their degree of success or failure to that of another beginner whose first project is making a grilled cheese sandwich. Even if the first beginner has more raw cooking talent than the second, a first attempt at a chocolate souffle is unlikely to turn out anything like as successful as a first attempt at a grilled cheese sandwich. By the same token, comparing one’s first attempt at chocolate souffle to the attempt of a master chef is unrealistic. Just don’t.

The second point is that realizing that a chocolate souffle is harder to make than a grilled cheese sandwich absolutely does not mean that one should start with something simpler. To stretch the metaphor totally out of shape, my experience has been that an author who really wants to write a chocolate-souffle book a) is going to be deeply unhappy and frustrated by trying to write a grilled-cheese book, and b) is highly likely to express this frustration by trying to stick some chocolate or whipped egg whites in their grilled cheese book in an attempt to make it more like a chocolate souffle. Since at this point they don’t actually know how to write either a basic grilled-cheese book or a basic dessert souffle, trying to turn one into the other on the fly is highly unlikely to end up with anything palatable. This, once again, reinforces the writer’s belief that they are inadequate and unskilled in comparison to their peers who are cranking out successful grilled-cheese books with a normal amount of effort, and moving on to things like scones and apple crisp for their second and third projects.

Recognizing that one has chosen something particularly difficult to write does not make writing the story easier to do in any absolute sense. It does, however, allow the writer to stop beating themselves up for not getting everything right on the first or second try when all their writing peers seem to be doing so. It’s not their lack of skill compared to everyone else; it’s their project needing four times as much skill as everyone else’s. Once one gets this, one can take actions that move them forward. (Hint: Beating oneself up is not a useful action, and does not move anything forward. Ever.)

The writer who is firmly committed to a chocolate souffle book has two necessary actions to take. First, they have to give up comparing themselves to other writers, because comparing chocolate souffle to grilled cheese, scones, or apple crisp is not useful. Second, they have to find a way to acquire the advanced writing skills that a chocolate-souffle book requires—a way that works for them. In some cases, this may involve classes on chocolate-handling and souffle-making. In others, it may mean writing and rewriting the chocolate-souffle book three, five, or more times until it comes out lovely and light and puffy the way it’s supposed to, instead of as a soggy flat pancake. (Nice people will not ask why it occurred to me to use this particular description.) In still others, it may involve setting the chocolate souffle book aside for a bit, while the writer writes some chocolate stories and some souffle stories, so as to get the needed techniques down before trying to combine them.

Outside readers are particularly useful for writers who are going the learn-by-writing route, as it is easy to lose one’s perspective and start doing the comparison thing again. Seriously, stop that.