23/07/2020 - Self-Improvement Is Hard

There is a flaw in my writing.

No. There are many flaws in my writing, but one of the flaws has been identified. I don’t know what this flaw is, because the person who has identified it won’t tell me what it is yet.

I’ve started too far into this story. Let me back up.

I currently have a book out with an editor. It went through a developmental edit, where a bunch of issues were identified and I ended up re-writing about 80-90% of the text because I’d written the protag with a learning disability and that was making the text a little opaque. One of the sad realities of writing about things like learning disabilities (like the one that I have) is you either have to make it A Thing that the text Deals With as a Primary Theme or you just have to… not go there. Learning disabilities are big things, at least in my experience, and it can be hard for people who don’t have one to gel with the text.

Anyway, so I made those changes and sent the book back to the editor for the next round of edits. She’s been playing with it for a couple of months now. She sent me an email saying she’s identified a flaw in my writing generally which is holding me back. This is really great news. If a flaw is identified then I can deal with it. If I can deal with it, I can improve. If I can improve, my writing will get better. If my writing gets better, I will write better books. If I write better books, then that’s it’s own reward, but also it will aid my chances of commercial success, which shouldn’t be a consideration, but it is because capitalism.

My editor won’t tell me what the flaw in my writing is. She hasn’t told me exactly why. She’s explained that there is a process for this sort of thing and I need to trust her. I do trust her, so I’m happy to wait.

Well, I’m impatient and want to get to the fixing part, but I’ve done enough therapy to know that’s not how life works.

This coyness about what the flaw in my writing is might seem strange to some people so let me dig into that a little. We know that people find it strangely hard to change their minds, even when presented with evidence that they’re wrong. I almost certainly believe wrong or harmful things, and would struggle to change my mind if presented with data that should be sufficient to prove me wrong. Well, this principle also applies to writing.

Whatever the flaw is with my writing, it has almost certainly been present for a long time. I’ve been writing books since 2014. That’s time for a lot of bad habits to build up. I have a degree in English Literature, and studied English at A-Level, but those were a long time ago. My creative writing has essentially been self-taught, and that can lead to problems. For example, the more I learn about things like genre and tense, the more I realise I don’t actually understand them, I’m just running on instinct. The more I learn about these subjects, the more I understand that I don’t have a base theoretical understanding to underpin my work.

What all this means is, if the editor turned around tomorrow and told me that my fundamental understanding of (for example) storytelling structure is wrong, my instinct would be go say ‘no it isn’t’, rather than to stop and listen and accept what’s being said. Even knowing that’s the case doesn’t help, because the idea isn’t to get me to intellectually understand the flaw in my writing, the key is to get me to emotionally connect with the flaw to understand it fully.