Learning Pains
As I’ve been giving author talks to students and talking about my writing process, I’ve become aware of how different my writing is now than when I first began.
When I was drafting my first book, I simply wanted to know if I could write a book. I thought about it almost constantly: driving down the road, while falling asleep, as I did the dishes. What would my character do? How would this scene look? I couldn’t wait to get back to my compute and write.
I also had little idea what I was doing. I slowly found resources and read and learned and revised and read and learned and revised,
By the time I wrote my second book, I thought, “Perfect! I made all my mistakes with my first book, so this one will be a piece of cake!”
Actually, as it turns out, the more you know, the more aware you are of all your faults.
The second book I wrote was painful because I knew so much of what I should be accomplishing as achieving structurally and with character dynamics, but I wasn’t skilled enough to execute it. In theory, I had it, but getting that knowledge the transfer to the page is incredibly difficult. It reminded me of a triangle most educator’s are familiar with: Bloom’s Taxonomy
Bloom's taxonomy: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create
There’s a lot of thinking around this triangle, but basically it says the lowest level of learning is remembering. I might be able to tell you the definition of a midpoint, but that doesn’t mean I understand it. In truth, I understood plot structure well enough to analyze it in another texts and even evaluate it in some cases, but creating a piece of my own to apply it really is the most difficult, and it’s no wonder I struggled.
A good friend introduced me to another chart: the stages of competency.
Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence
When I was writing my first book, I had unconscious incompetency. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so I didn’t realize I was making mistakes. In my second book (and much of the third, which is now published), I was firmly in the conscious incompetence. I knew what needed to be done, but I couldn’t do it on my own.
I think now I am in the conscious competence. I can write, but it takes effort. Honestly, I’m not sure writing exists past this stage. At least not completely. There are pieces of it that I am unconsciously competent in, but on the whole, it still takes an immense amount of effort.
I wonder if I would still enjoy writing if it was so easy I didn’t have to think about it. When I consider most of the tasks I complete with automaticity, I don’t experience pleasure from them: driving, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, cleaning. Instead, I thrive from challenges, from accomplishing goals.
I often tell my students that if they don’t think they’re a very good writer, they’re probably better than they think, because they’re in the conscious incompetency stage. It’s those who are fully confident in their abilities, those who don’t feel the need for feedback and improvement, that truly need it most.
