I DO(N’T) KNOW WHAT I’M DOING

This week I turned in the first draft of what will become my fourth book. While I started the research process back in March, I only began writing in August. This means I wrote 65,000 words in four months while in grad school and juggling my other professional commitments. I cannot express the enormous amount of relief I feel that I managed to pull this off right in time for my deadline. I also don’t have any idea how I did it--which seems to be a recurring theme in my life.

Each time I sold a book, I felt a rush of elation followed by panic. While the idea of going on a book tour and bragging to everyone about the sale is easy to visualize, the actual process of writing an entire book remains distressingly overwhelming. I spent most of this year telling myself that once I was finally done with all the research it wouldn’t be so scary. I just needed to start writing to remember how to do it. Then I started writing. And it didn’t get any easier. I found myself looking at all my transcribed interviews and thinking, “How the hell am I supposed to make this into one coherent narrative?” I even questioned my ability to use the right tense when quoting people. Did she say the following quote? Or is it that she said it? How does grammar work? And, on a larger scale, what even is a book???

These were the types of thoughts that raced through my mind as I forced myself to hit my (self-imposed) 1,000 word a day quota. I didn’t feel overcome with inspiration or insight. I felt like a person clocking into work and praying I wouldn’t be fired for incompetence. This is not what I thought professional writing would look like. I figured that as you gain more experience, you become more confident in your abilities. I didn’t know that with each new book it would feel as though my brain had been wiped clean and I was starting from scratch again.

But in many ways, realizing this about my career has been helpful. I no longer think I have to know what I’m doing in order to do it. I didn’t feel confident that I would meet my December 1st deadline because I innately knew how to weave expert interviews, personal accounts and my own story into a detailed examination of the institution of modern marriage. I just knew I had to get it done so I sat down almost every day to do it. And then I chipped away at what initially felt like an enormous and insurmountable task, piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph. I also had the knowledge that I had done some version of this before, even if I didn’t remember how, so chances were high I could probably do it again.

While writing a book isn’t on everyone’s to-do list, I think this approach can be parlayed into any area where we feel the unnerving pull of imposter syndrome. There is an expectation in society that people are only doing things they are qualified to do. But what makes someone qualified? I would argue that doing the thing is what qualifies us, and we often don’t know what we can or can’t do until we try. Obviously, there are some important caveats here. I wouldn’t recommend that you try to operate on your friend’s heart without any medical training to see if you can figure it out as you go. But when it comes to things that aren’t potentially dangerous or require a specific license of some kind, so much of what holds us back is a sense that if we don’t know how, then we shouldn’t try. I’ve decided to unsubscribe from that belief system.

Part of what allows me to do that is reminding myself that a first attempt is meant to be just that—an attempt. If I had to release my new book without anyone else reading it first, I would return my advance and try to move into a cave somewhere. But I know that many people, including my highly skilled editor, are going to help me shape it into its final form. Allowing input and guidance from other people is a great way to learn what to do as you’re doing it. Is it scary to show someone a first draft of something? Absolutely. But it only becomes uncomfortably so if we hold ourselves to unfair standards. Whenever I started to question my writing, it was helpful to remind myself that getting the first draft done was my only goal. Fine-tuning it all can come later. There is not one giant step between the beginning and end of something. Instead, there are infinite tiny ones that often go backwards and forward, if not also side to side. We do not need to know how to leap. We just need to believe in ourselves enough to keep going.

If Elon Musk taking over Twitter has taught us anything, it’s that people rarely know what they are doing from the outset. Taking a stance that I will “figure it out” feels more helpful than forcing a mindset of “I already secretly know.” Because, while I had written three books before this one, they were all different. I needed to learn new skills this time around and I needed to give myself the freedom to do that. Even if other people didn’t understand my struggle because, from their point of view, if you’ve written one book surely you know how to write another. It can feel frustrating to find yourself questioning your ability to do something you have technically already done before. But the devil is in the details and the details change each time.

It is only through holding myself to lower standards that I have been able to reach my biggest goals. I don’t expect myself to enjoy writing or for it to flow out of me. I don’t expect myself to get it all right on my first attempt. I don’t even think that this will get easier with time or that I’ll ever be able to write something substantial without questioning how I’ll manage to do it. Sometimes all you need to know is that hard doesn’t have to mean impossible.

xoxo,

Allison