I’m not a real writer. I’ll never succeed. Why do I continue trying? I’ll never be published. Why would anyone care what I have to say? These thoughts and more pass through my mind on any given day. You’d think it’d get better the more jobs and recognition I get but, counter-intuitively, it gets worse. After all, what have I done to deserve any attention or praise? This train of thought is quite common among writers, often known as “imposter syndrome.”
The magazine Poets & Writers published an interesting article on the matter back in April 2016. I immediately connect with the experiences and doubts expressed by published poet Leigh Stein. The process which Stein went through when commissioned to write an essay on an artist’s work is the exact process I go through with everything from writing contests to book reviews and even school essays. I think that there’s no way I can do well, no matter how many times I’ve done it before, and convince myself that the worst will happen. Then, when I receive an honorable mention, praise from the author, or a high grade, I ride a new high. (Immediately after I usually berate myself and tell myself that I can do better, but that has nothing to do with imposter syndrome and everything to do with my anxiety and depression.)
I’m pretty sure my readers are familiar with this pride-desperation-pride cycle from their own writing. After all, a writer who grows too comfortable with his/her success will soon see their work suffer. Still, the mental anguish of imposter syndrome–the feeling that we’re not “real” writers and therefore will fail or are unworthy of praise–can be too much to handle.
Everyone will encounter this issue at some point in their lives, whether they’re writers or not. Even Maya Angelou once said, regarding herself as a writer:
I have written eleven books, but each time I think, “Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”
Everyone around you will think you know what you’re doing but, deep down, you feel like you’re drowning it. The important thing is to not let self-doubt or success get to your head. Too little confidence and you’ll freeze up, unable to do anything; too much confidence and you’ll grow sloppy, producing half-baked work that will make readers wonder what happened to you.
What do you think? Have you encountered imposter syndrome? How do you overcome it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
If you search for writing advice on the Internet, a few common pieces of advice appear in almost every list. Read a lot and write a lot are two, and those are both wise and self-explanatory. Another one, however, can be debated: write what you know. You can interpret this advice in many ways, some more practical and useful than others. But, overall, should you write what you know?
On the one hand, if you write what you know, you minimize the amount of inaccuracies spotted in your work. Of course, there will always be people who try and argue with how your writing represents certain things; it’s more a matter of perspective and personal experience at that point. However, some facts–such as how long it would take to drive from Point A to Point B or where the sun rises and sets–aren’t disputable and you have to make sure your depictions are accurate. In that way, it makes sense to just write what you know.
Writers of pedestrian and other “literary” fiction would probably agree with this advice. After all, they shape the seemingly-mundane into tension and heart-wrenching emotion, and they often draw upon their own lives for authenticity. (Some may still cast characters and experiences that they don’t have first-hand knowledge of, so even that opinion isn’t guaranteed.)
Fantasy, science fiction, and other speculative fiction writers would beg to differ. None of them have been in space or fought dragons or the like, and yet many speculative fiction works are just as well-written as fiction based on personal experience. These genres prove that imagination and passion fuel writing.
What, then, should writers do? Write what we know, or write what we dream?
Many, if not most, of us can’t write interesting stories or poems straight from our lives (although they could make for interesting personal essays). Sometimes we can’t write about the compelling parts of our lives for litigious or emotional self-preservation reasons. I come from a small town in Northern California, typical backwoods, rural America where it can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. I’m bored living here, can’t imagine anyone would want to read about my experiences unless I add some imagination to it. The parts I think would interest people are either too personal or too close to libel for me to write about until I’m long gone from the area.
We can’t delve too far into imaginative journeys, though. To err is to human, and readers are hardly divine when it comes to forgiving mistakes. For that reason, we have to put research into our works as well. We shouldn’t be writing a story about an alien invasion in Russia without researching the climate and socio-political dynamics of the region first.
Most importantly, we should channel what we know into everything we write. Our individual walks through life contribute something to our writing which readers will not find in other works. No matter what we write, there’s always something we can connect to and enhance because some experiences are universal (although not experienced the same way by everybody). Emotions read the same no matter what the genre; familial relationships and friendships have similar dynamics no matter the characters’ backgrounds; we all have our unique histories, personalities, and reactions which can add depth to our characters, whether they’re on a mission to Mars or moving to a new apartment.
What do you think? Should you write what you know or what you dream? Should writers strive for a balance of the two? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
A writer needs to write to be a writer, right? The obvious answer is “yes” but, as I’ve pointed out in a previous post, we don’t all have endless hours each day to dedicate to writing. Unfortunately, the average writer’s life involves much more than the pursuit of word counts, and yet we encounter all of these success stories in which writers claim to produce 20+ pages each day. Who can keep up with that sort of volume? More importantly, should all writers aim that high?
I read an interesting article on this matter on the website for Author magazine. In it, James Thayer outlines different examples of successful writers, some of whom compose(d) ridiculous amounts of pages each work day, others who are/were about as slow as a tortoise, and still others who fall/fell somewhere in between. Thayer points out that Ezra Pound produced eight books and a hundred magazine articles in just six years, Stephen King writes about 2,000 words a day, and that it took J.R.R. Tolkien eleven years to write The Lord of the Rings trilogy (which, at the time, was one long book).
Clearly, every writer works at his/her own pace. But how do you decide your own pace? Slow and steady like Tolkien, frenzied and frightening like Pound, or some middle ground like King?
Image retrieved from Dreams of QaiMajIn truth, no one can solve that riddle for you. Ask a hundred writers and you’ll get a hundred different answers. Ask people who don’t write? You can forget about that right now; they aren’t familiar enough with the process and certainly aren’t familiar enough with your process to help you make a decision.
For some writers, it may be best to not set a word or page goal at all. Some people don’t operate well under pressure while others need it to thrive. If you don’t do well with pressure–think back to timed tests in compulsory school–then you shouldn’t even bother setting that sort of goal. It may sound counterproductive and lazy, but sometimes a deadline or threshold isn’t needed.
If you do work better under some pressure and want to set yourself a goal, pay attention to how quickly you write. How many words or pages can you crank out in an hour? Two? An entire afternoon? Once you’ve figured out your pace, match it with the average amount of free time you can make in your schedule each day. Your rate multiplied by that time will get you your ideal goal.
You can even change your goal depending on the day of the week or the season. New commitments pop up all the time, making it unrealistic to try and maintain a constant writing schedule 365 days a year. Most people say a consistent schedule forms a habit, which in turn makes it easier for you to ensure you write each day. We all know that life doesn’t let much go as planned, so you have to be flexible.
While swimming through the sea of word counts and deadlines, don’t lose track of why you started this process: for the love of writing. Writing, like life, is full of trial-and-error. You can’t be too upset if you don’t make your goal a few days or you don’t write that bestseller in three months. It takes a while to learn your process; I’m still learning the best methods for my writing. Be patient and, while you shouldn’t let yourself get away with too much, cut yourself some slack every now and then.
About a month ago, I wrote a post on a writing quote from Anne Rice. Rice’s quote encourages writers to go where the pain is, where the pleasure is, wherever your passion is when writing. I believe this to be sound advice. However, I’ve found it hard to follow. In particular, I have a hard time going where the pain is. Opening wounds does not come easily to me, and my struggles make me wonder: are some wounds not meant to be opened, even for fiction?
I’ve sincerely tried opening wounds for my writing. I know that there’s a rich vein of emotional material there, but something keeps blocking me. Whenever I attempt to immerse myself in these pains and sensitivities, I hit a brick wall. It feels as though something clamps down on my skull and an unbreakable window stands between my writing self and those emotions.
Don’t get me wrong, my negative emotions and experiences do often slip into my writing. It’s when I consciously write those emotions, when I try directly opening wounds, that I can’t access them.
Ray Bradbury once said that thinking is the death of creativity. Is that the case here? It certainly doesn’t help. When we overthink the pain we’re trying to access, we fear revisiting it. At least I do. Self-preservation dictates we avoid that which causes us pain. If memories and emotions cause pain, our minds and bodies will do all they can to avoid those wounds.
Does that mean we should avoid opening wounds? Are some scars too fresh or deep to touch, or should we push past the avoidance reflex for the sake of good writing? Do we just need to stop overthinking it?
My answer is a firm maybe.
Really, the memories and emotions we want to avoid make our writing rich and real. If we’re so deeply affected by them, our readers will be, too. Still, we have to take our mental well-being into account. If we have severe mental and/or physical reactions to opening wounds, those wounds may not be ready to pick at yet. Someday we might be ready but, at the moment, we’re not.
Sometimes writing can help us work through our emotions, like therapy. Sometimes we need to forget that other people might read the work to let the emotions seep through uncensored. Many times, we need to abandon the idea of directly accessing emotions and memories and let our subconscious write for us. We may not get what we originally set out to do, but we’ll at least have solid material to work with.
Emotions are the, to state the obvious, the heart of writing. Anything written without them turns out like crud. That’s why we can’t let ourselves shut out our personal selves while we’re writing. We may not react the same way as a character should or we may blather on in order to work through raw emotions, but those problems are best ironed out when rewriting. The initial writing phase is all about getting words onto paper; we need to let our id speak then and give our ego and super ego the stage later.
Do you have a hard time writing about painful emotions or personal pain? Have you found a way to push past that brick wall? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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Earlier today, I read an article from The Writer about creating DIY writing retreats, whether at a friend’s house or at a home rented in Mexico. The author has many interesting ideas and makes many good points. The two most important she discuss, in my opinion, are the need for no distractions and the need to set your own definition of “productive”. However, most of the ideas in the article involve either you going away or the other people in your house going away. What if we simply can’t do that?
I’ve discussed finding the best place to write multiple times on this blog. Somehow, I can’t ever find the right place. I can’t afford to leave and, unlike the author of the aforementioned article, no one I know plans to leave town for too long anytime soon. Even if they were, at best I’d only be down the street from the chaos. I can’t send everyone else away, either; they have their own responsibilities to take care of here and they can’t walk away for more than a day or two without a lot of advanced planning. I get some writing done in those short bursts of freedom, but lately it hasn’t been enough.
I know a lot of writers have this issue. We have family, social obligations, work (we have to pay the bills somehow), pets, chores, the list goes on. I can hear the objections to this belly-aching already: if you’re a real writer, if writing is so important to you, you’ll make some sacrifices and find a way to fit it in.
I’m sorry but I need money, so I can’t pay to leave and I can’t close down shop (figuratively) for more than a week or two. It also doesn’t help that not everyone gets the hint to shut up when I say I’m working.
Well then, what’s the plan? How can we create DIY writing retreats when we can’t go away or send others away?
Desperate times call for desperate measures; it’s time for plan “barricade myself in my room (or spare room)”. It’s a bit obvious but often the obvious answer is the right one.
Locking yourself in a room within the house with your browser closed and phone turned off allows you to exist in a sort of vacuum almost free of all distractions. Of course, if you live in an area like mine, there’s still plenty of noises that you’ll have to block out. That’s where you’ll have to get creative. Play music you can write to, invest in noise-cancelling headphones, buy a cheap pair of disposable earplugs, whatever it takes. My personal favorite is playing a string of TV shows or movies I’ve watched a thousand times before; I can block that out a lot better than crowing roosters and people talking outside my door.
The fun part comes in personalizing your DIY writing retreats. Hang up posters and artwork you find inspiring; line bookshelves with your favorite books and works by writers you admire; a whiteboard, cork board, or sticky notes to jot ideas down; if you have a mini-fridge taking up space in the garage or storage, you could really make it a retreat. A mini-fridge stocked with essentials, a makeshift mailbox constructed from a cereal box slapped on the outside of the door, and a bed, cot, or sleeping bag and you’ll only need to leave for the bathroom.
Whether it’s for a few hours after work or a couple weeks, you can make your own retreat without anyone leaving the house. You just have to get creative and assertive. Insist that no one bother you, that someone else walk the dog and do the dishes. After all, people can’t tease you for being a writer who doesn’t write if they complain about what needs to be done in order for you to write.
What are your thoughts on writing retreats? Have any ideas for DIY writing retreats you’d like to share? Drop a line the comments below and help other writers find ways to solitude.
As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve read a wide range of genres lately. I’ve dabbled in a little of everything from memoir to fantasy and beyond. However, that’s not the only genre classification I’ve been blind to. Age groups are also used to classify literature, from children’s literature to young adult (YA) and adult. I, personally, ignore such genre restrictions when reading. From Dr. Seuss to Harry Potter all the way to Anna James Watson’s Blackmail, I really don’t care about age groups. If I want to read it, I’ll read it. If I like it, I like it.
Not everyone approaches reading with such abandon. Some people are real sticklers for age groups, with kids reading children’s books, adults reading adult books, and pre-teens and teens reading Middle Grade and YA. But are those realistic expectations?
No, no they’re not.
First of all, it’s almost impossible to define the genre of a book based on age groups. Yes, some age-based genres are more easily defined than others. Erotica like Blackmail clearly belongs in the adult group, and picture books like Dr. Seuss’s works can safely be defined as children’s books. What about Harry Potter? The books start off more as children’s books but, arguably, the dark tones and mature themes they later take on can be considered YA.
In the UK, there are “adult” covers for Harry Potter so that older readers won’t be embarrassed to be seen reading them in public.
The Hunger Games? The Giver? Post-apocalyptic YA often teeters between YA with adult themes and adult books with YA-style writing. The Catcher in the Rye? Not everyone likes their YA with such vulgarity and others would claim that it’s a necessary part of the coming-of-age element which helps define the genre.
I’m sure that many will argue that these books more clearly fit into their age groups then I’m saying. That’s fine. I’d love for someone to spark an articulate debate about the matter. My point remains that books don’t often fit neatly into their age groups. This difficulty rings especially true for children’s book, as I learned in my undergraduate Children’s Literature course.
The second wrench in the “divide by age groups” campaign is a two-parter: people read at different levels and all the age groups bring their own special joy to readers.
I’ve always been an advanced reader. I was already reading in kindergarten and had to be set aside with tasks like writing down the alphabet so that I wouldn’t distract the other kids. I started reading Anne McCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern and Jack London’s works when I was in the fifth grade. My mom was the same way and so was my oldest brother. We’re avid readers and that made us more advanced readers, too.
Many of my friends were also advanced readers as kids. We probably aren’t the best judges of age-based limitations because we’re not the average reader. We read at a higher level than the standard for ages, while other people read at a lower level than average. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just who we are. Still, the very fact that we must read outside of our age groups to feel properly stimulating demonstrates the difficulty of such classification.
Of course, our reading level doesn’t matter as much as our reading preference. While I can read at a high reading level, I often read Middle Grade and YA novels. In addition to being a Harry Potter fanatic, I love Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl, and The Chronicles of Narnia.
Books intended for younger age groups offer a lot of entertainment value and make for a much more relaxing read. They can also make us think about the world around us without us realizing that’s what we are doing. Books for older age groups, on the other hand, more thoroughly explore themes established in younger books and address those situations which people find too “adult” for younger readers. The higher-level writing forces us to think more, and the novels stick with us for long after we’ve finished reading.
Some people are snobs about age groups, some secretly read younger books, and others–like myself–read whatever they want without caring who sees. The idea of what’s appropriate for which age groups is ever-changing and hard to define. No matter the age of their intended audiences, all books have their merits. So long as you want to read it, you should; it doesn’t matter if you read Dr. Seuss, Victor Hugo, or something in between. Go where your interests lie.
What are your thoughts? Should readers only read in their age group, or should we feel free to read whatever we want (at least once we’re 18)? Start a discussion, drop a line in the comments.
I’ve been very busy lately. Between book reviews, writing gigs, and my home life, I can barely stop to think, let alone write. It’s an unfortunately common problem for writers. Considering that society, particularly American society, seems to expect more and more of people, it’s no wonder writers struggle to stay afloat. The question becomes: how do we make time for writing?
Writers at all levels have responsibilities which take precedent over writing. Family, friends, household chores, a 9-5 job, it’s no wonder they have to scrape together all the time they can for writing. That’s excluding the marketing and publicity they have to generate once something of theirs gets published, and don’t get me started on editing.
Often when I read articles about fitting time for writing, the author treats the matter as though it’s just as easy as telling people to leave you alone for a while or turning the TV and social media off. It really isn’t.
We can’t always force our schedule to allow space for a solid hour or so of writing. It’s even harder when other people, like employers and family, are involved. What should we do if we can’t reserve a long chunk of our day for writing?
The answer is obvious, although challenging in practice: take minutes here and there to write down whatever is on your mind. I’ve personally found that my brain wants to write and makes the time for writing when I’m trying to get to sleep. While I really just want to sleep, I still keep a notebook beside my bed and spend a few minutes–whether it’s five or thirty–writing the scene or story idea that has popped into my groggy head. The notes app on my iPhone has also proved helpful in such situations. Whether or not I can decipher my writing in the morning is a different story entirely.
Take a notebook with you everywhere or, at the very least, make your notes app easily accessible. Five minutes on the bus, five minutes during your lunch break, five minutes while waiting outside your kids’ school, it can really add up. This form of time management doesn’t always make for the best writing since the interruptions can jar your thought process. However, would you rather start out with crappy writing or no writing at all?
Some people can carve out an hour or so from their lives and write better that way. In a perfect world, that’s probably how we would all like to make time for writing. We don’t live in a perfect world. We have distractions and stubborn schedules which can’t be rearranged without some part of our lives tumbling down. That’s why we have to take our writing whenever we can get it; if that means stealing a few minutes here and a few minutes there, well, that’s just the sacrifice we have to make to continue with our craft.
Have advice for making time to write? Any tricks to sneak writing in when it seems impossible? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Let’s face it, we’re conditioned from a young age to associate the summer months with taking a break from everything and relaxing. At least, that’s what Americans learn. I can’t speak for anyone else. Regardless, the school system I grew up with enforced the idea that summer is a time for relaxing and having fun, not doing any work. Suffice to say, this idea breeds bad habits which must be broken abruptly as adults. Considering I’m still attending school in the form of a Master’s program, I’m having a hard time remolding my way of thinking. It’s led to an annoying writer’s block, which I will call my “summer writing slump.”
Image retrieved from this travel blogMy writer’s block usually follows the same pattern. First, I have a hard time conjuring an idea for a story or I can’t focus on one idea at a time. My brain bounces from one thought to the next, never settling on one long enough for me to fully pursue it. Then I slip into the worry that nothing I write will ever be of significance and/or live up to what people liked in my writing before. It feels like I’m trying to capture lightning in a bottle, a fruitless effort. The end result? I get nothing done and I have to up my “as-needed” anti-anxiety pills.
How is the summer writing slump different? I have a built-in excuse: I have all summer to knock the rust off before classes start again. I don’t need to force the muse yet. I have plenty of time to get myself back into shape and have a really productive year.
Well, it’s August now and I’ve only written one short, really cruddy story, if it can be called that. I know that everyone gets into a writing slump occasionally, but I can’t let myself get too rusty or else I’ll lose my edge entirely. It’s taken a long time for me to create my arsenal of writing tools; it’ll only be a lateral move to let myself slip out of practice while my program’s on break.
Why am I telling you this? To remind my readers to never take too long a break from writing. Yes, a break can help you shake off writer’s block when you’re really stuck. However, it can also lead to writer’s block. Just like we can’t have the entire summer off from our 9-5 jobs, we can’t have the entire summer off from our writing. It’s a job and a skill. We have to be disciplined enough to maintain momentum in our careers and take the time to practice our craft.
We must also remind ourselves that it’s OK to write crappy first drafts. Heck, it’s OK to have all drafts of a story be crappy (if we don’t plan to publish it). At least then we can learn what does not work in our writing. If we’re too afraid to let ourselves write badly, we won’t write at all. Then we’ll be stuck in a perpetual summer writing slump.
Thoughts? Comments? Advice for escaping the summer writing slump? Leave your thoughts in the comments and remember to sign up for our newsletter for a chance at the monthly giveaway.
Everyone is flawed. We claim to know that and yet, in some cases, we either can’t accept it or won’t allow it. This fact is especially true with people raised to the status of “hero”. Flawed heroes, well, we can’t let them be flawed and heroes. Perfect or villainous, no in-between. While some real-life and fictional “heroes” are truly flawed to the point of incompetence or villainy, many just make mistakes. That’s how it should be and that’s how we should portray the world in our writing.
Here’s a real-life “flawed hero” moment: J.K. Rowling recently came under attack for a mistake, i.e. a Twitter attack against President Trump regarding his treatment of a disabled boy. Her criticism, it turned out, was based on a video taken out of context. According to the boy’s uncle’s Tweet, Rowling’s words seemed to cause emotional distress to the boy involved and his family. Rowling admitted that the source did not present the information in the complete context and apologized profusely and politely to the boy and his family. That should’ve been the end of it but, of course, it wasn’t. While some appreciate her honesty and willingness to apologize, others insist on villainizing her for an honest mistake and for not apologizing to President Trump. She’s either a hero or a villain, not just a generally admirable but flawed human.
It’s interesting how we can’t allow our heroes to have slip-ups. Either they must always act perfect or we must be so delusional as to think they are always perfect no matter what they do. We can never admit to the existence of flawed heroes. It makes me wonder, do we hold the same delusions in fiction? Should we?
In an earlier post, I discussed the appeal of flawed characters, particularly flawed protagonists. Flawed characters are human, and readers relate to human characters. That’s why a flawed–maybe even hated–protagonist is better than a Mary Sue or Gary Stu.
If this appeal applies to flawed characters, including flawed protagonists, shouldn’t it still apply to flawed heroes? As writers, we strongly believe so. As readers, it’s a more bitter pill to swallow when thinking our heroes could be flawed.
In the “Return of the Bling” episode of American Dad, Stan has to learn the hard way that even our heroes do questionable things.
While the line is very fine, there is still a difference between flawed protagonists and flawed heroes. The plot of a novel focuses on a protagonist, i.e. the main character. This character can be good or bad, loved or reviled, active or sedentary, etc. Heroes, on the other hand, become role models of sorts, characters to whom we aspire. For example, Macbeth is the protagonist of Shakespeare’s MacBeth but, I would argue, is no hero, certainly not someone I would use for a role model. Nymphadora Tonks, on the other hand, is not a minor character in Harry Potter, not a protagonist. Nevertheless, I look up to her and would not hesitate to call her a hero because of her sacrifices and bravery.
With this difference in mind, should there be flawed heroes in literature? My answer is of course.
Flaws, whether in heroes or a minor villain, give the reader something to hold on to, something of themselves which they can find in the character. I would go so far as to argue that flaws make heroes in literature possible. We see all our possible successes in our fictional heroes; when we see these successes coupled with flaws much like our own, we latch onto that character as a possible version of ourselves. We sympathize with their struggles, root for them to prevail, and feel their emotions at every turn. Flaws give us our connection to fictional heroes; take them away and we just have another saint or martyr who’s nothing more than a name.
Being flawed doesn’t make a hero any less of a hero; it makes them interesting.
Theoretically, heroes are like any other character. Readers relate more to them when they’re flawed, and so the best heroes should be flawed. Yet readers have a hard time admitting that their heroes are flawed heroes. Criticize Harry Potter for being a hormonal teenaged boy soaking up the limelight and Potterheads will descend upon you like a flock of vultures. (I would know, I used to react that way and sometimes still do.) What we don’t realize is that we can still look up to certain characters even with their flaws. We just cannot make them some inhuman idol to worship. We must also remember that the flaws make the stories interesting. If our heroes didn’t have flaws, we wouldn’t have any reason to worry about their success, would we?
In life, we have to take our heroes and their digressions with a grain of salt. Some are forgivable, others are not. Some mistakes can be righted with an apology and others take much more, if they can ever be righted at all. Mistakes are a part of life and as long as our heroes learn from them–more importantly, so long as we learn from them–then some bit of good may come from it. Admire the good flawed heroes have done but judge their wrongs as you would anyone else’s. After all, they’re human, too.
Thoughts on creating flawed heroes? On our tendency to idolize heroes, both fictional and in real life? Drop a line in the comments. Let’s start a discussion!
We all know the saying: jack of all trades, master of none. For those who don’t know, the phrase refers to someone who dabbles in many areas but does not master any. The saying makes sense overall; the more we spread our focus and talents, the less energy we have to put into any one task. Hence, we know a lot of trades but we master none of them. But is that truly the case nowadays, especially for writers? Do we really have to choose between being a jack of all trades or mastering one?
I’m sure that, by now, you’ve read some variation of the article on Business Insider which lists the fifteen habits of self-made millionaires. If you haven’t, I highly recommend it. Even if those habits won’t work for you, it makes for a fascinating read.
These habits include developing multiple sources of income.
This concept is not exactly the same as dabbling in multiple trades–after all, investing in stocks can be considered a source of income but not necessarily a “trade” like we are discussing here–but some of the reasoning can apply to both. In earning money, the wider you cast your net, the more you’re likely to bring in. The same is true with trades and hobbies. The more we do, the more experiences and skills we gather.
Does that mean it’s better to be a jack of all trades than a master of one? Not necessarily.
Can you be a success AND a value in multiple areas at once?
If we spread ourselves too thin, we will have neither the energy nor the focus to really complete any task competently. Let’s say that you’re trying to write a novel, edit a project for a client, write a blog review of the latest episode of American Horror Story, and dabble in a traditional 9-to-5 job at Barnes and Noble. I’m guessing you’re exhausted just thinking about it; I know I am. Odds are that you won’t get all of this done in the same week. Heck, balancing it all within the same month plus your daily social and familial obligations would be a stretch. We can’t do it all without burning ourselves out.
I learned this lesson early on, although I probably haven’t heeded it too well since my first experience. In high school, I tried to do it all: zero-period Physics, AP Calculus, Yearbook, leadership (a class, basically a form of student government with volunteering mixed in), student representative to the school staff, school liaison to the school board and city council, and a weekend volunteer at a local museum. I was incredibly overwhelmed, and it was this period in my life which really sparked my anxiety and stomach problems. (There were issues at home which made it worse, too.) I don’t like looking back at that time out of embarrassment and a feeling of failure. Frankly, I’m not sure how I made valedictorian.
In addition to causing us to explore things superficially, too much dabbling and multitasking can kill us inside. As I said in my workaholics post, writers tend to work too hard because we’re a bit addicted to it. Still, that habit of being a jack of all trades can wear us down.
Does that mean that we should only master one trade? Again, not necessarily.
The experiences and skills which we gather from our other trades and hobbies feed into the trades we master. For me, the trades I am attempting to master are writing and literature. In particular, I focus on fiction and academic creative writing. However, I have other hobbies and trades which fuel these two. I workshop and proofread other writers’ manuscripts, which helps me to strengthen my self-critiquing skills. I review published books, which forces me to see books simultaneously as a reader and a writer. Oddly enough, I also dabble into business concepts. I don’t try to master business or anything like that; I’m just fascinated by everything behind it, from finding the break-even point to marketing and promotion. This interest makes me better prepared to promote my own work, as well as the work of those I review and critique.
Being a jack of all trades does not always mean you’re a master of none, not in this day and age. You have to tread lightly and balance every aspect of your life very carefully, but you can still dabble in multiple areas and master one or two. As with reading and writing diversely, sharpening your skills with multiple trades and hobbies can teach you lessons which you then bring back to your main focus. Rather than one or the other, I think that all well-rounded people, writers especially, must be both a jack of all trades and a master of one (or some).
