I have a writing project I have been procrastinating on for MONTHS.
It was due October 1, and it's now mid-December.
Every single day I tell myself, "Just write on this project for ONE HOUR." Or "Just write on this project for HALF AN HOUR." Or "Just glance at this project for FIVE MINUTES!"
But every day I don't do any of these things.
During this extended session of procrastination I have written not one, but two, middle-grade books in the new-to-me-form of the verse novel; one of them is already far along in the production process for publication in the fall of 2021. So it isn't as if the pandemic has made me utterly unable to function (though I certainly have those moments). It is only this particular project that has me paralyzed.
Why can't I make myself do this perpetually undone project?
It's because it is the kind of writing I hate most.
What kind of writing do I hate most?
I hate most when I have to write something I am completely unqualified to write. For me, this is anything where I have to sound like an authority, or an expert, a person who is supposed to KNOW something. Worst is when the thing I'm supposed to know is HUGE, so huge that it's pretty much unknowable by anybody. But particularly by me.
It's all I can to do confide to you what this hated project is. This is partly because the editors who commissioned it might read this blog post, and this would make me LOOK BAD. It's also because when I do, you will all say, "Yup, that is TOTALLY something you are not qualified to do." But I might as well face the worst right here and now. So.... gulp.... I've been asked to write a 7500-word entry on "Ethics" for the forthcoming Cambridge History of Children's Literature in English, Volume 3, 1914-Present.
"Ethics" is a huge topic.
A century is a long stretch of time for anybody to know anything about anything.
Why, you may ask, did I say I'd do this given that I knew it would generate toxic levels of terror and dread? Well, in my career as an academic I figured out right away that in order to get tenure I would have to say yes to many things I knew I was unqualified to do. After all, when I started out, I was pretty much unqualified to do anything. I'd try to reassure myself that it was fine to answer student questions in class with a frank "I don't know," but I wouldn't have been able to keep my job if I hadn't offered actual answers at least occasionally and written the requisite number of tenure-worthy articles trying to act as if I had something noteworthy to say on various topics.
I finally got tenure - hooray! Then a few years ago I relinquished my tenure and took early retirement from my academic job. So, freed from annual performance evaluations, I truly didn't have to accept this latest assignment. But saying yes to things becomes a habit. I've always taken pride in describing myself as a yay-sayer to the universe. In any case, now that I've said yes to this, for better or worse, I pretty much have to follow through on this commitment.
Here is what I'm telling myself as I promise the universe that tomorrow I really TRULY will do this thing!! Maybe my wise self-talk will be useful to you, too.
1. MANY people have imposter syndrome, not just academics, and not just me. MANY people are put in a position where they are expected to do something for which they feel woefully unqualified. Decades ago on a Greyhound bus I sat next to a man who covered international affairs for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He told me that after seeing his authoritative articles in print, written just by him, just by this regular guy, he now knew that all journalism was written by regular mortals just like him. Ditto for me writing academic articles: I'm just one more regular mortal who will be pretending to know more than she actually does.
2. I may consider myself unqualified for this assignment, but the people who offered it to me apparently thought I would do just fine. Why should I persist in second-guessing their assessment? In fact, I have my name on the cover of an award-winning edited collection titled Ethics and Children's Literature. I'm sure I was asked to contribute to this book on the strength of that book. Why shouldn't the person who produced a book with that title have at least some authority to write about ethics and children's literature?
3. The very (ridiculous) breadth and depth of the topic means there are at least a million things that could be included within its scope. It is clearly impossible to include them all. Selectivity is needed. Selectivity is desirable. Since I am the selector, I might as well select the subset of things that I do feel somewhat more qualified to write about.
4. Finally, my piece will go through peer review, so I'm not the only one who bears the burden of making sure the final product is acceptable. Others will be able to weigh in with their comments and suggestions. If they think my piece is truly terrible, they will say so: peer reviewers are not shy! I once had a chapter by me for an edited collection utterly fail in peer review, but only once. I doubt that will happen here. But if it does, it happened once before, and guess what? The world kept on turning.
All right. All this self-talk is only preamble to ACTUALLY SITTING DOWN AND WRITING THE DARNED THING. I have been alive for enough decades that I know from experience that dreading a thing is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS worse than simply doing it.
Dear friends, I am announcing to the universe that I, the Unqualified One, the Terrified One, the One Hopelessly Out of Her Depth, is going to get up tomorrow morning very early and get to work on this thing. (And to be fair to me, and I am always scrupulously fair to myself, I do have notes, and thoughts, and stuff I've read, so I'm hardly starting from scratch.)
Cue the Little (Completely Unqualified) Engine That Could: "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...."
I would only say this to one I held in my heart as my sister. I freely acknowledge that you did not post this to solicit help on writing a peer reviewed article , especially from a reader who has never published anything beyond that awful poem "We Broke the Rules" in our 11th grade English class anthology, and whose only degree is a Bachelor's Degree in Liberal Studies from a night school. All that confessed, I am pressed to reply by an unusually strong empathetic response to the poignancy of the bind in which you find yourself, and a seemingly irrepressible distinction to be made. I have no idea whether it will or ever would facilitate the writing you dread, and a highly generalized impression dawn from a growing number of years' experience causes me to refrain from investing much salvific hope in the off comment made at a great distance. All that said, it seems that the issue is less whether you are qualified and more fitting the writing you undertake in response to the editors' invitation to the qualifications you do have. Your success as an author testifies to you capacity to imagine and speak to an audience. Forget the editors for the moment and retain your faith in the anonymous peer reviewer and ask yourself, "Who will purchase the book in which my article appears and what do I want to share with them on the vast, compendious and inexhaustible topic?" What do you want your reader to take away from their reading tucked into their heart? What of all that Claudia does and doesn't know will you choose to offer the reader? The gift is a mere 7,500 words out of all that Claudia has read, thought, and written on prior occasions. The gift is Claudia's precis and not the stentorian thundering of ultimate and incontestable truth by some iconic donnish voice echoing down the halls of Magdalene College and onto your laptop screen. Now it may be objected that all the forgoing is very sweet,, but does not reflect the task at hand. But it inescapably does; the difference lies in how you wrap the gift. You are way too generous a soul to want that iconic wrap they use to dress up the empty boxes they hang in Bloomingdale's windows at Christmas time. One delightful element of your persona is that of sharing as exposition-without condescension. A "Here's what I have been able to make out it all. What do you think?" And that is what draws us your readers in and leads us to ask questions, think thoughts, and be glad of the time spent there.
ReplyDeleteYou're the children's' literature expert, but I always thought that the Little Engine was completely qualified but consumed by self doubt. After overcoming its imposter syndrome the Little Engine was able to climb the mountain and deliver the toys!
ReplyDelete... so how is the writing going? I think you can!
I am this way every day at my job. For which they pay me. So thank you for putting into written words things I say to myself every day, Claudia Mills! It's just me, saying thank you again for your blog!
ReplyDelete