The Thrill of Writing
Today I have a little encouragement for you.
Last week I met with a new coaching client, and we talked about places in her writing where she felt stuck. She said she had so many ideas for books—so many topics that she wanted to explore, but to answer the questions she had, she thought she had to be an expert in all of those topics. She was floundering, trying to figure out what she was already an expert at that she could write about.
She was following the oft-quoted advice for writing: “Write what you know.” It’s good advice for writers who are just getting started, who are still working through the basics and are just learning to own their identity as a writer. It’s not great advice for a writer who is looking for new challenges. So I asked my client if we could question that assumption.
The Skill, Will, and Thrill of Learning
One of my past authors and intellectual heroes is John Hattie, a preeminent education researcher who has studied how kids learn for decades. I think often about what I learned from him while editing his books when I’m coaching adults—because the lessons are often the same.
One of his favorite ideas is about the “skill,” “will,” and “thrill” of learning. Students have to get better at the act of learning itself, through repeated trial and error, building their self-efficacy through mastery experiences. That’s the “skill” of learning. The “will” is students’ dispositions toward learning—how they engage in the task of learning, what attitudes they hold toward it. And the “thrill” of learning is about finding meaning in it, in discovering new things that are interesting and inspiring. All three elements are intertwined, feeding into one another. Often, when one increases, the others increase as well.
I think the same elements apply to our writing, too. Writing is learning. We can practice the skill of writing, and getting better at it might change how we view the task of writing, i.e. our will to write (again, there’s that idea of self-efficacy!). And then there’s the thrill of writing—the meaning we make of it, the joy we find when our writing leads us somewhere we never expected to go.
Writing What You Know
There’s nothing wrong with writing what you know. It helps you sort through, organize, and articulate your thoughts. Writing what you know allows you to practice, to get better at using words to persuade and inspire others. Sometimes, that’s exactly the goal you want to achieve with your writing: passing on knowledge you have that will stir others. The goal is less about the content and more on what you’re able to do with your writing. In other words, focusing on what you know develops the skill of writing. And we all need that.
But I think it’s a mistake to stop there, or to allow the exclusive focus on skill development to take precedence over the other two elements: will and thrill. You might be familiar with another education phrase that rhymes with skill/will/thrill: “drill and kill.” It’s used to refer to excessive “drilling,” repeating the same task over and over again, supposedly with the purpose of getting better at it. Unfortunately, it ends up “killing” the joy in that task instead. It defeats the purpose, because students lose their thrill and will to learn that skill. (Try saying that five times fast!)
For us as writers, I think focusing only on what we already know can become boring and stale. Once you’ve mastered how to communicate what you know effectively, there’s little excitement left in making the same arguments again and again ad nauseum… At that point, it’s time to focus less on the skill of writing, and more on the will and thrill of writing.
Finding the Thrill to Write
“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.” ― Junot Diaz
If we stop at what we already know, we never, as Diaz says, become the person we need to become to write the book we really want to write. Writing is an act of discovery. Some of the best books have started not with answers, but with questions.
Truman Capote, already an accomplished author in the 1950s, asked himself, “Is it possible to write a nonfiction novel?” and then, “What goes through the mind of a killer?” Capote had mastered fiction (think Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and he hadn’t killed anyone, so it’s not like he knew the answers to these questions already. But after six years, he found the answers in his haunting but beautiful book In Cold Blood, and the genre narrative nonfiction was born.
New York Times bestselling novelist Ariel Lawhon recently posted a question on her Instagram stories. I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially she asked: “Could a story about a woman in her twilight years—who’s been married for decades and raised children—be as fascinating a subject for a story as a young, vivacious woman?” It’s a meaningful question because it echoes what we all ask as we get older: Are my best years already gone? Where do I find my identity and purpose in my final years? This question is driving Ariel’s next historical fiction novel. It’s not something she’s done before; all of her previous heroines have been young and vivacious. And Ariel herself is in mid-life, raising teenage sons. She doesn’t know the answers, but she’s going to find out.
It’s questions like these—deep, meaningful, heartfelt questions—that deliver the thrill of writing. It’s the joy of discovering what we believe about something. It’s the pursuit of something no one else has ever done, not the way you’re going to do it. That thrill is what drives us to the work.
My client and I are going to explore the questions that she has, to figure out which ones are most compelling and might be the key to unlocking greater creativity and skill in her writing. Here’s something else we discussed, something that both she and I find comforting:
“Creative people naturally produce a lot of false positives. Ideas they think are good, but aren’t.” - Ryan Holiday
You’re going to have ideas that don’t work out, and that’s ok. You’re going to ask questions that ultimately stay stuck on a legal pad and never get answered. This is part of the creative process, so embrace it. It’s all part of the thrill.
Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash
