The Cringiest Part of a Writer’s Job

What grips the heart of a writer and sends ripples of tingle down his marrow more than opening a Google doc and seeing several edits?

A ghosting client maybe?

But for me, nothing else beats the dread of the edit onslaught.

Imagine after:

• Laboring on your desk with a variety of hand-aches ba-da-bing ba-da-boom

  
  

• Almost cracking your skull to think out of the box

  
  

• Overcoming the dreaded blinking cursor to eventually craft some darling sentences, and

  
  

• Getting past the irritation of your "dirty-little-secret-that-shouldn't-see-the-light-of-day" (oops! I know that is breath-stopping, I meant "rough draft", in short)

Then you wake up to see that piece edited butchered, bleeding from what looks like diluted clay mud, with a few green words sprinkled as a garnish.

It is at that moment you know some of your darlings are gone.

Like a snail pushing its body into its shell, you shrink.

I know, I know.

It's cringy to think about it. But it is more reason why you should read further because I am about to hand you a little secret that'd change your perspective, and help you become artfully prolific in your craft.

Let's start with a story. The story of a rocket scientist turned law professor by the name of Ozan Varol. Well, he actually told the story himself.

In his book, Think Like A Rocket Scientist, Ozan recounts his early years in academia when he'd get defensive anytime someone challenged ideas in his academic papers:

In my early years in academia…I treated my papers as final opinions, rather than working hypotheses. Whenever someone challenged one of my opinions during an academic presentation, I’d get defensive. My heart rate would skyrocket, I would tense up, and my answer would reflect the annoyance with which I viewed the question and the questioner.

The story doesn't end there, but let's pause to fish gold out of that part —a gold that would form the thesis of this article.

“I treated my papers as final opinions, rather than working hypotheses”.

I think every writer falls into this trap. We attach emotion to our craft. This same emotion would later work against us to a point where we get defensive when confronted with opposing opinions—in this case, the opinion of an editor.

The phenomenon is called Subjectivity Trap.

We fall into the subjectivity trap whenever we care too much about our opinions, our efforts, and our labors that we protect them at all costs against opposing or novel ideas.

Much of which, admit it or not, is fueled by ego. It is called The Egocentric bias —the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality.

And it is fine, our brains are wired to have such biases.

But beware, lest it pushes you against change and renovation.

However, I have brought you a beware-ing solution.

A simple solution that would make you view your craft, not as a final opinion but as a working hypothesis, like our dear rocket scientist discovered:

• It would serve as a mental model to help you view your craft an arm's length away from your emotions and eventually melt every emotional attachment you have for your craft.

  
  

• It would also serve as a tool to make you receptive as a writer and also fuel you to become more prolific in your craft.

  
  

This solution appears in the remaining part of Ozan's story as he continues:

Obviously, I was the one who came up with the ideas, but once they were out of my body, they took on a life of their own. They became separate, abstract things I could view with some objectivity. It was no longer personal. It was a working hypothesis that simply needed more work.

This here is exactly how I approach my craft. It is a mental model that has changed the way I respond to editors even down to how I view and respond to criticism.

It is a way I have tricked my mind into separating my arguments from my personal identity. It is the way I have refused to be blinded by my subjectivity and view everything that comes out of me as a work-in-progress.

If I have not thrown it out into the world, it is full of opinions and not facts. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful the idea is crafted, or how smart I am. If it has not gone through the face of others, my argument is incomplete.

Knowing this from the onset informs how I respond to criticism, how I support my argument, and how I take feedback from editors.

To me, the suggested edit isn't so cringy anymore. The cringy thing now is a ghosting client.