In the Dear Writer, You Need to Quit book, I talk a lot about the things that writers need to quit doing in order to have more success. There’s one I wish I would have spent a little more time on.
Quit Fixing The Wrong Problem
One of the most common reasons that people come into Write Better-Faster is that they want to write faster. Not a surprise, right? But more than half of those people don’t really want to write faster, they just want to not feel crappy about not writing fast. They know, deep down inside, that they’re frustrated with everyone else being able to do something they can’t, but they can’t. They might be able to reclaim *some* time from their process, but they’re not going to be able to hit 10K a day. They’re just not capable of it.
They have spent months, and sometimes years, and sometimes thousands of dollars trying to fix the wrong problem. They’re trying to write faster.
But the reasons they’re not writing faster are the real problem. Just a few of the most common.
#1: They have a brain that needs to process information more than the people who are doing vomit drafts. And usually, they don’t like vomit drafts anyway, but speed is so preferenced these days, they feel like they have to. They feel icky, someone else appears to solve that icky problem by writing faster, therefore, they are convinced their life would be better if they could just write faster, but by and large, they cannot.
In this case, writing slow is not the problem. The social pressure and not knowing themselves is the problem.
#2: Their life system has too much emotional inertia. There are too many people in their lives who need them and who put demands on their time. Like the Enneagram 2s they are, they definitely like giving themselves away, but at some point, they start to resent that no one gives back to them, and they get frustrated that they can’t set boundaries. But the bottom line is, the inertia of their life system dictates that those boundaries would be problematic. They’ve been giving for so long, there will be a lot of pain if they start to push back. Some of those relationships might not survive. That is scary. They want to write fast, but they want something else (peace, stability, good relationships) more. They feel icky about not writing fast, and someone else appears to solve that icky feeling by taking productivity classes, so they take the class.
In this case, not writing fast is not the problem. Their desire to give of themselves and make this world a better place is also not the problem. But it does create the problem of “no time” and then gives them a hard choice for the solution.
#3: Their life system has no margin. Yet they feel like their “slow production” is a problem, and their “procrastination” (which is often just renewing energy pennies) is a problem. They think they can produce, produce, produce, and never fill. They’re mad that they have to even sleep because think of all those usable hours. 😉 (Some of you really believe this, don’t judge me for pointing it out…) 😉 They think that a productivity class is going to help them find more margin in a margin-less life. In general, this is not possible, and is in fact a recipe for burnout. They believe that because they want it, they can make it happen. But everyone needs rest and renewal. And when there is no margin, there will be burnout.
In this case, not writing fast is not the problem. They typically write faster than anyone. They are also busier than anyone. They have less margin than anyone. None of these are “problems” per se, until they start trying to reclaim the margin for productivity. Then, that’s the problem. On some level, even the expectation that there should be no margin isn’t “really” a problem. Because they will think that, no matter what I say. 😊 So, accepting that this will be the thought pattern is important. And recognizing that sometimes, you really can’t be any more productive than you are is sometimes a grieving process for this type of person. But they’re fixing the wrong problem, and they don’t know it.
#4: They got a major blow at some point in their past. It might have been a bad release, a friend’s betrayal, a series of events out of their control. Whatever it is, it’s almost always not fixable. Yet the desire to make it not-have-happened is so strong, it derails them. When they sit down to write, they see the failed expectations. They want to change all that. They want things to be the way they should have been (idealists). But **most** of this gets sublimated when they sit down to write. They can’t imagine why their brain goes “ouch” every time the manuscript gets opened, because they’re not really aware that it’s happening. Most of the time, they can’t even sense their disappointment, because it’s become such a part of their life.
In this case, not writing fast is not the problem. Not writing is the problem. But the “not writing” is not the first cause. The first cause is the ego-hit or the influence-hit or the relationship-hit or the emotional-hit that happens when they open the manuscript. It brings up all that subconscious disappointment and their brain doesn’t want to progress.
These are just four of the many ways that we try to fix the wrong problem. There are personality metrics at the core of each of these types, and the only way to really handle them is to learn about why you are this way, and how to fix the right problem.
The reason we fix the wrong problem is that we are not paying attention to the ways our subconscious brain works. We usually don’t know much about our subconscious brains. And we let it control too much of our decision making. The goal in learning to fix the right problem is to pay more attention to the psychosubsystems that are at play in any of our decision making apparati. To be more aware. More in control. More intentional.
And of course, you know me… this comes from questioning the premise! (Which we’ll talk a lot more about in the future, of course.)
For now, I’m going to keep thinking on this. It will likely become a big part of the next Dear Writer book, but at this point, I’m just glad to get it out on paper. It’s helpful for me to have to process like this.
Hope everyone has a great week!
-Becca
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