5 Stages of Writing Competence

Where are you at?

The Neverending Story and The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Bet you weren’t expecting that combination today. It’s a useful one for writing, I promise. Stick with me and I’ll explain.

But first…

Navigating Substack

I know a lot of you are trying to navigate Substack right now and I’m working on another post to help.

Can you help me? I’ve been here forever, so I need to know—What are the things tripping you up or feeling difficult to figure out?

Feel free to add any Substack questions into the comments and I’ll do my best to find answers for you.

Those Creeping Doubts—Am I a good writer?

I notice something when I run writing courses or mentor people. They start out feeling pretty confident, then the more they learn, the more they freeze up.

They start to ask, “Is my writing terrible?”

Often they’ll say to me, “Maybe I’m just kidding myself about this writing thing.”

Ever experienced that?

It’s the Dunning -Kruger Effect. You’ve likely heard of it.

It’s nothing to do with intelligence, like some people think it is. It’s actually how we feel at each stage of learning something new.

Recently, I experienced it learning to play the bass guitar.

• Me after my first week: “This is so easy! I’m so talented!”

  (Tells everyone I’m learning bass and imagine I make it look as easy as this guy).

  

• After my 3rd week: “This is actually pretty complicated.”

• A month into lessons: “I sound like absolute rubbish. I’ll never get it.”

  (Takes a break from learning bass)

Lets apply it to your writing journey.

Where are you on the continuum?

That “I don’t know anything” part? It also gets called the Valley of Despair.

Which is where The Never Ending Story comes in.

Sorry if you’re not a 90s kid and have no idea what I’m talking about. But seriously, its the best movie!

The Valley of Writing Despair

The despair stage reminds me of that scene in Never Ending Story with the Oracle.

Atreyu has to pass between two humongous statues with laser eyes to continue on his journey.

He’s not the first one to try. Piles of fallen heroes in suits of armor are scattered about.

Pride and doubt stopped them from passing through and they all got zapped.

Such a great movie. (Did I mention that already?)

In terms of writing, the pride and confidence we feel when we’re just starting out can come crashing down when we realize we have so much more to learn.

That our writing, perhaps, isn’t as great as we thought.

We start to doubt we’ll ever get better.

And ZAP. We quit.

How to get past the oracle

If pride and doubt stop us in our tracks, then humility and curiosity keep us moving forward.

Humility like: “I know I have a lot to learn.”

Curiosity like: “I want to keep trying and see what happens.”

Some models of the Dunning-Kruger effect say we need 10,000 hours of practice to move back up to maximum confidence and competence.

10,000 hours!

If you write for 2 hours a day, that’s 5,000 days. Almost 14 years of writing every single day.

Not just writing either. Learning to write better and applying what you learn.

I’ve been a professional writer for over 16 years, but I know I haven’t practiced every single day. Still a lot to learn.

Unfreeze and take a step

If you find yourself frozen under the oracles, intimidated and despairing, take a step.

It doesn’t have to be a big step.

One sentence will do.

So what if you’re writing has a long way to go? Trust that you’ll get there. You just need to keep moving forward.

Substack is a great place to practice. As are Medium, Jotter, Vocal, LinkedIn. Whatever suits you best.

Or…

Your journal that no-one ever reads. That’s a great place to practice, too.

Where are you at?

Are you confident or staring up at the oracle?

If you managed to move past the Valley of Despair, what tips can you share?

Let’s talk about it.