What I Learned Today

Brian Sanderson has a student so enamored of his teaching that he (the student) took it upon himself to record and post Sanderson’s Creative Writing lectures online (Write About Dragons). So far it seems focused on novel writing (with a sci-fi/fantasy bent), but he makes the great point that really you should only be writing something that you regularly read. Short stories, mysteries, romances, whatever; regular reading gives you an ear for the genre and style.

Intrigued by this generous offering, I’ve started out with the first lecture. You can’t actually read what he writes on the whiteboard, but it doesn’t matter, since he states everything quite clearly (and often opinionatedly :) ). So I’ve been listening to it as a good companion while I do other things, like put together a puzzle or dust my new bookshelf.

His first lecture emphasized that good writing is about skill, which comes from practice. Interestingly (to me), he de-emphasized the value of the story idea (compared to raw writing skill) and claimed that a good writing can spin gold out of the humblest straw. He also encouraged his students actually taking the class (who faced the daunting task of writing 50k words over the semester) to start fresh with some new idea, rather than trying to re-write that novel sitting in the closet that’s already been tackled 15 times and never gone anywhere useful. This was a nice reminder that it’s always possible to pick up some new project and come back to one you’re not making progress on later.

I mentioned 50k words as a challenge. Not coincidentally, National Novel Writing Month also sets the bar at 50k words. The difference (in my view) is that in this class you are generating writing you actually want other people to read. NNWM is purely focused on volume, explicitly instructing you to ignore quality. (“Don’t worry, it’ll come out in the editing process,” which is a bit like “Don’t worry, that red wine stain will come out when you wash it.”) The class is organized around small groups that provide each other feedback, so you’re obligated to share with, and to read the products of, your classmates.

He also identified two major categories of writers: discovery-based (or “gardeners”) and outline-based (or “architects”). I like exploring and discovery as much as the next person, but (unless prompted by NNWM) I’m unlikely to ever just start writing and see where it goes. I want a plan. I want signposts. That makes me more of an architect by nature — and therefore vulnerable to architect foibles, like never actually starting the story because you’re trying to perfect the clever planned plot twists or the world-building. Gardeners, on the other hand, suffer from writing along until they figure out what the story is about, then going back to ret-con the earlier material to match, then writing more and figuring out what it’s REALLY about, then circling back to ret-con some more, and never finishing for entirely different reasons.

After concluding with some tips about how to contribute productively to a critique group (as critiquer or as person on the spot), Brandon exhorts students to go off and create a LiveJournal account to make sharing their material easy. Get out there and get writing!

I’d heard about Impostor Syndrome off and on throughout grad school, a term to describe the almost omnipresent yet seldom admitted phenomenon by which otherwise talented folks are convinced, deep inside, that they’re just not as good as their peers. (There’s obvious irony when a large fraction of people consider themselves below par, especially in a highly selective environment.) Virtually everyone I ever had this conversation with, in a moment of soul-baring honesty, admitted to such doubts and comparisons. It can manifest in many ways: “I got lucky on that test.” “The admissions committee made a mistake and let me in.” “Yeah, I got an A+, but I didn’t really deserve it.” Another big sign is deflecting or diluting compliments that are received.

Recently, though, I hunted down the original 1978 paper that gave this phenomenon a name: “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention” and boy, is it a fascinating read. I hadn’t realized that the phenomenon was associated with women initially, or primarily (the authors include a footnote about male impostor syndrome on the first page); I’ve certainly encountered men who also experience it.

There are lots of interesting elements in this paper, but one in particular stood out to me. They made an effort to trace adult impostor syndrome back to patterns in family life, and this resulted in two rough groups. One is based on having a sibling who is the designated Smart One, so you never quite get recognized for your own accomplishments, and eventually you start to doubt their validity. The other comes from being the Smart One, and in fact, having everything you do praised and supported and validated. Ultimately you start to devalue praise, since it doesn’t seem to correlate with actual performance, and even worse, if you do struggle or fail at something, you’re entirely unprepared for how to deal with it, and it can become a core of nagging doubt and insecurity because you’re still trying to inhabit the image of perfection placed on you. In both cases, well intentioned parenting can, apparently, have these long-term effects.

Want to find out if you suffer from Impostor Syndrome? You can take the test and get a quantitative result — but if you’re honest with yourself, you probably already know.