That Little Voice is Right, Sorta.
William Least Heat Moon once said that, “The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one’s self a fool.” I think this sums up a lot of what most writers struggle with early in their process. When I taught college writing, many students would tell me that they just weren’t “good writers.” They believed that writing talent, like so many other learned skills, was inherent. Some folks had it and some didn’t. Like a Jello mold, once set, it’s set.
But writing isn’t this way. It’s a skill that can be learned. Sure, writing style can be challenging just like any other artistic endeavor, but I have seen countless gifted writers stop too soon in the process to reach style. See, the thing is that writing is a lot like clay: you have to get your ideas down before you can shape them into something beautiful. You have to start with what Anne Lamott calls a “shitty first draft.” Only then can we really begin the process of shaping and crafting the work into something we are proud of on an aesthetic level. And that’s okay.
What I’ve seen in others and in myself is a tendency to quit writing when we notice that our immediate product lacks the beauty, clarity, and sophistication we hoped to see in the final product. Instead, we listen to that little voice on our head that tells us in not-so-little ways that what we are doing isn’t good enough for a final draft. The problem, is that the little voice in your head is right in that moment: what you are putting into words is not final draft quality, at least not yet. So, instead of telling that voice to be patient and wait for the good stuff to take shape, we look down to see the voice is right and miss that it’s also too early. Our emotions about writing (often stemming from bad experiences in the past) take over and cloud our vision of the path forward.
This is why I love working with people in their writing. While I am emotionally attached to all the people in my life, clients included, I am not attached to their writing. My vision of their path forward remains clear. I can help them see the path forward even when they cannot, and the same holds true when I am stuck on a piece. In this way, writing collaboratively reminds us that we are greater than the sum of our parts, and our written works reflect the connections we’ve built painstakingly together.
