November 22, 2021
Why It’s OK to Suck at Writing (or Anything, Really)
Forgive the lame title, I suck at coming up with proper ones – though I seem to have a talent for self-reference. Today’s post will be about feeling taken aback by our perceived lack of skill in writing, singing, drawing, or anything, really. Though the focus will be mostly on writing – and so the implicit thesis is: “Why it’s OK to suck at writing” – the lessons are applicable everywhere.
Indeed, inspiration for this post came after I saw something remarkable on YouTube (I’ll share it with you in a moment) that made me question my guitar skills. Question? More like, wanting to sell my guitars and never touch one again for as long as I live.
I then realized that similar feelings can be inspired regarding writing. The ultimate takeaway, as we’ll see, is this: Comparing skills in artistic processes is very thin ice.
Comparing Is Both Inevitable and Flawed
As you might recall from the post on art being holistic, besides writing I also play music. I play guitar, bass (some very basic piano/keys, but not regularly), and I compose songs – if you’re into post rock/metal and the like, feel free to check out some of my music.
I’m aware of my limitations. Music is not as central in my routine as texts are, and overall I haven’t practiced it the way I have practiced writing – which has been a sustained, multifaceted, decades-long process. Not to mention, whereas I have a PhD in English, whatever meagre theoretical knowledge I have about music is entirely self-taught.
Still, I felt what can be described as a shock when I saw this 1-min long video:
Click to display the embedded YouTube video
“If my guitar skills are the size of a basketball, this guy’s skills are probably the size of Jupiter”, I thought while gathering my jaw from the floor.
Long after the video finished, I still felt a sense of pointlessness. Why do I even bother playing music, I thought, since I wouldn’t reach this level in an entire lifetime?
Ah, but there lie several flawed assumptions, which we need to address if we are to see why it’s OK to suck at writing – or anything, really.
To Suck at Writing (or Guitar, or [x]) Is a Flawed Assumption
Forgive me for using guitar and music so extensively as examples, but the symbolism is too good to pass on. I truly figured it out eventually, and I want you to do too. Figuring this thing out is essential for understanding why when you say “I suck at writing” you’re actually saying something else.
You see, when I thought “I suck at playing music” what I actually thought (though I wasn’t consciously aware of it) was: “If I tried to play – right nowIf I practiced regularly, which is a function of if I cared enough (which I don’t), I see no reason why I couldn’t play this some day. But, as I said, I lack the motivation to spend time on practicing for this level. – what this guy did, it wouldn’t sound the same and I wouldn’t like it”. However, it’s a flawed mental leap to go from “I suck at playing this” to “I suck at playing guitar”.
Similarly, when you read someone’s novel and you think “Gosh, they write so much better than I do”, what you actually think is “If I tried to write this, it wouldn’t be the same and I wouldn’t like it”.
And you know something? It’s true!
Moreover, it’s true for all of us. Despite my occasional doubts – which are very healthy to have; if we don’t doubt ourselves every now and then, how can we become better? – I have great confidence in my writing skills. Still, if you asked me to read another author’s book and write something similar, I would undoubtedly “fail” – in the sense that, by comparison to my own work, it will only be a mediocre copy. I am the only person who can write my own books, with my own authorial style. Nobody else can write what I do. Similarly, I can’t write what others write – in the sense, it’s not an ideal setup.
When You (Think You) Suck at Writing, You’re Focusing on Technicalities
How many times have you heard me talking about affect? Well, here’s one more: Writing fiction is not about “telling a story”, but about telling about how something feels. The narrative exposition part is only a necessary evil.
A writer of fiction is a translator of experiences, who takes an experience, packages it in an abstract, ambiguous form, and offers it to you. Your own experiences then interact (precisely thanks to this ambiguity) with this packaged experience, and you have something new; a hybrid, in a way.
The reason I fallaciously felt I suckedThere is a hilarious phonological pun hiding here, I wonder if you spotted it! at guitar playing was because my technical guitar playing skills are certainly not as evolved as what the video demonstrates.
But technical skills are only a minor part of playing music, the way they are a minor part of writing, too. They are necessary, to some extent, but minor. You might think there’s a paradox there, but the paradox exists only insofar as you associate technicality with value.
The Flawed Coexistence of Technicality and Value
In other words, if you turn the very technicality into the cornerstone of your work, then yes, it’s important. I mean, if you play technical death metal, involving extremely challenging compositions and speed, it’s evident why skills are required.
Similarly, when your goal is to produce something like The Odyssey, it requires a set of technical writing skills entirely different to, say, a children’s story. But just because I can’t play technical death metal or you can’t write an epic poem of that magnitude, that doesn’t mean we need to give up playing music or writing.
This is especially the case when we’re dealing with genres – in music or writing – where technicality is not the central focus and affect is, rightfully, primaryTo clarify, I’m not implying that technical death metal or - especially - Homer’s poem lack affect; only that their technical aspects essentially define them..
Allow me to use guitar playing once again as a metaphor, asking you to take a brief look at these two videos below. The first one is Yngwie Malmsteen, playing a fast, highly technical piece:
Click to display the embedded YouTube video
Now let’s take a look at another video. This one is Billy Gibbons, playing the guitar of a street musician:
Click to display the embedded YouTube video
Both require technical skills (to a different extent), and both inspire affect (again, to a different extent, though it’s subjective; personally, I find the Gibbons clip more impactful).
Can we truly say that one is “better” than the other? Can we draw any sort of artistic conclusions? The answer must be no.
You (Might) Suck at Writing (Technically) but That’s OK
So, you’d need a dictionary to know what “pulchritudinous”, “pauciloquy”, or “parrhesia” mean? You’d need a thesaurus or other writing resources to figure out how to say “experienced at secondhand” as one word?
So do I!
Other things I can’t/don’t do include spending two pages on describing a brick wall, explain things in depth, and overall offering the reader a complete, all-encompassing picture.
If such factors were the gauge of quality, then I’d suck at writing. But they aren’t – not for the kind of literature I’m interested in; some genres (off the top of my head: historical or crime fiction) might require them.
Is it important to have a good vocabulary? Of course it is, but it’s both subjective and a continuously evolving process. In any case, it’s not primary. I’d much rather read a book that had something affective to say and used the phrase “pretty face”, rather than an emotionally void text with fanciful descriptions such as “beauteous countenance”.
Leaving out the technical part, we’re left with art; abstraction and ambiguity. Above all, we’re left with increased subjectivity. I can tell you that, technically speaking, a sentence such as “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” is bad. Yet there’s a reason it’s considered a masterful example of literary prowess.
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This blog reminded me of another one – of mine I wrote a while ago. A brief quote:
“Our obsession with size, speed, power, the demented mantra of bigger, faster, stronger is by definition better, keeps pushing us in the direction of extinction. What no human agency has ever attempted to do was to examine how bigger, stronger, faster actually contributes to overall human happiness. It’s just assumed, as an absolute truth.
All these fables of Shangri La, Utopia, Atlantis, Kazohinia, Ozimord are never taken seriously enough to consider that we, as a specie, would be happier by just living within our evolutionary heritage, instead of attempting to be gods, flying to the sun like Ikarus.
We, as a species, collectively, would be a lot happier if we just lived and let each other live, instead of killing ourselves and each other for the unattainable goal of building the tallest skyscraper. A goal unattainable because no matter how tall we build, anything we can possibly build will forever be only half the size of its double and, sooner or later someone will do that and then the vicious cycle will go on until we will have finally destroyed ourselves. “
PS. The two blogs are only loosely related but both have to do with comparison and competition. If we can’t outdo each other, we at least want to measure up – be as good as something (someone) we admire. So what’s wrong with accepting what (who) we are and enjoying the process of becoming the best we can be? Competition will kill us sooner or later (the self-destructive nature of Capitalism).
The competition you describe is indeed extremely damaging. This is especially the case in a context that is, quite by nature, beyond quantification – if not representation. I’m referring to art, of course. As I mentioned in the post, it’s one thing to compare technical, practical aspects, and entirely another to assign qualitative value to them. Put simply, art – when it is genuine, rather than mere entertainment – is not comparable.
I don’t understand self-flagellation. Identify the problem, choose either to work on the solution or not to do so right now, accept the results of that decisions, and get on with it. Whatever ‘it’ is.
This is a result of decades of trying to do things I was told I could NOT do (in my cohort, there are few women with PhDs in Nuclear Engineerings). It wastes SO much time. But it protects against actually having to spend time practicing the guitar.
Now, as a result of decades spent trying to achieve the results I want in writing with a non-functional body and mind, and being quite satisfied with the results when they let me work, al I need is homeostasis: things not to get worse. And the mind not to go further. And the results of writing my slow way not to show.
Impostor syndrome is for those who can afford such luxuries. I have work to do.
I admire your ability to approach it from such a practical perspective! I don’t think I could do that, because the associated emotions make it (in my eyes; a subjective position, to be sure) worthy of my interest in the first place. In other words, I often need to feel the lack and despair in order to be able to discover the (impartial?) truth behind it.
Oh, I have plenty of despair – being chronically ill and mobility-impaired and getting old are sufficient for everything from micro-rage to having to write an apology note to a staff member who accidentally got me on a bad day – but I also have the very odd consequence of this disease that if I allow myself to experience those emotions, I pay for days after while my body disassembles the adrenaline molecules. So I plow them straight into the fiction.
A learned behavior – or I’d get nothing done ever – and not an admirable one in general, but my survival mechanism is that fiction. Reviewers have commented on that tension – this is where I get it.
To suck at writing is the fastest way to stop sucking at it. As Beckett famously put it: (My emphasis.) It’s a quote from Worstward Ho, a later text (1983), after that quote, the rest of the paragraph goes:
Sometimes I question why is he regarded as such a master of 20th century literature; other times it dawns on me, then I lose it again, and it’s a rediscovery every time. The piece is boring, mechanical, even. Still, isn’t failure itself modernity’s hero? The 20th century is a century of failures, and it is our measure of what modernity is. Even Orson Welles’ best films are the ones he couldn’t finish as he wanted to, due to myriad constraints. Kafka was a failure in every respect. So was Artaud. The Aeneid is unfinished, Virgil wanted it burnt or simply destroyed somehow. To fail is to succeed.
The idea of a literary failure intrigues me. There have always been authors who attempted to modify the text based on some external (ostensibly rational/objective) factor. Yet this is precisely where the trap lies, because literature is an affective process that isn’t supposed to fully make sense (let’s remember negative capability). In other words, when Shelley modified Frankenstein based on feedback, when Kafka attempted to edit “The Penal Colony” to address criticism, or when any author tries to please anyone but themselves, the process is already doomed to fail.