
Have you ever started writing a story or a blog post and felt like it wasn’t turning out the way you had envisioned it in your head?
The words aren’t flowing quite the way you would like. Yet, you spent so much time working on it, that you decide to hit publish.
And your audience loves it.
In fact, they love it even more than anything else you have written. They demand more of the same.
What are you to do? Is your writing really as bad as you think?
Something similar happened to Arthur Conan Doyle.
Sherlock Holmes’s Greatest Enemy Wasn’t Moriarty
“I was glad to withdraw Holmes before the public were too weary of him,” Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to a journalist in 1927, several years before Doyle’s death.
It was not, of course, the public that was weary of Holmes, but Doyle himself.
He had already tried to kill off the famous consulting detective in 1893.
In 1891 he had written to his mother, “I think of slaying Holmes… and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.”
His mother’s reply: “You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!”
But in 1893 Doyle followed through with his plan. In “The Final Problem,” Holmes falls to his death while fighting his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, over the Reichenbach Falls.
However, public outcry was so great that Doyle was forced to resurrect the detective.
This article in The Wall Street Journal observes that Doyle “saw his detective fiction as hackwork and strongly preferred to write historical novels. ‘If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one,’ he once complained.”
So who was right? Doyle or the public?
Was Sherlock Holmes really hackwork? Could anyone have written Holmes?
Or was Doyle trivializing his abilities?
The Curious Incident of the Dunning-Kruger Effect
If you’ve ever been in an art class, you’ve probably encountered one or both of these students.
One student draws a picture that isn’t very bad, but isn’t very good either. However, he believes he is quite talented. Another student clearly does have talent, but as soon as his sketch is finished, he crumples it up in a ball and tosses it to the floor, even though everyone else says how much they love it.
This is often described as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
According to Wikipedia:
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. The bias was first experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in 1999.
Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence, they may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
In other words, mediocre people tend to be more confident and overrate their abilities.
However, when you’re skilled, you become a harsher critic of yourself. You underestimate your ability compared to others. You don’t realize how good your work is.
This often happens with us fiction writers. We begin writing a story and then grow bored with it or think it is absolutely horrible. However, our friends read it and love it and tell us we must continue writing the story. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to overcome perfectionism.
In Doyle’s case, he thought Sherlock Holmes was a waste of his talents, and that he should be devoting himself to other things. It seems that he didn’t realize how brilliant the stories were.
Are You Undervaluing Your Skills?
I am glad that Doyle decided to bring back Sherlock Holmes.
It is unfortunate that he grew to dislike the stories so much and was not able to see how they would bring enjoyment to millions of readers through the centuries.
Perhaps if he were living today, he would realize that the detective fiction he wrote was not “hackwork” and that he could have been proud of his achievements.
For even though Doyle believed he was capable of writing more serious works, perhaps he should have recognized that his Sherlock stories were equally important.
When we spend time reading Sherlock’s adventures and puzzling through his mysteries, we are transported away from our everyday cares and become spectators and inhabitants of another world. A world where vice seeks to destroy virtue, but where we see justice eventually win.
And that is the true purpose of literature: to uplift and encourage its readers. If our writing impacts just a single person in that way, it has fulfilled its purpose.
Doyle’s life reveals that sometimes we are not the best judges of our work or of what our readers need. And when we crumple up that paper and toss it on the floor, we may not only be sabotaging our creative success but also the joy of others.
The next time we are tempted to do that, we should consider what Doyle’s decision to let Holmes live meant to generations of future readers.
How do you ensure that you are not judging your creative work too harshly? If you enjoyed this post, leave a comment below and share with someone you would like to inspire.
Kate Mantis says
The more I scroll down, the many more we are those writing furiously than crumpling our work even more furiously. I usually swing between the joy of writing and the sense of “Gosh…who would need this”. Yes, I had good feed-back from friends about my stories, yet I find hard to reconcile what I read and what I write. My uttermost feeling is that I’m a very good…reader and a very much usual amateur writer.
Not that this would prevent me from writing. I write when I feel like, when I’m pushed from inside and I cannot do otherwise. I’m moody and hectic as a writer and I don’t think I’ll change that. For now, I keep posting on my blog and testing the patience of my friends…Who knows what would bring the future?
I greatly enjoyed your writing. It’s encouraging, humorous and energetic. Keep it up!
Nicole Bianchi says
Hi Kate! Thank you so much for your comment and your kind words! Yes, I think it is important to just keep pressing on. Our writing will improve the more we practice. I love what you wrote about writing when you feel “pushed from inside and I cannot do otherwise”. I think that’s the feeling that assures us that we are truly writers. All the best with your writing endeavors!
Lynne says
Excellent post, Nicole. I think it’s good to have a trusted writer/friend who can give an honest critique. 🙂
Nicole Bianchi says
Thanks for your comment! I definitely agree. Having someone who can encourage you with your writing is so important.
John says
Thanks for the excellent post! Perfectionism can be crippling for a writer. I have come to realize that I often have to be content with what I consider to be 80%. If not, then I may never hit the send button. By the way, what did you think of the new Sherlock holiday episode? I thought it was superb!
Nicole Bianchi says
Thanks for the comment! 🙂 It’s true. Perfectionism truly is the enemy of success. While we should strive to do our best, we shouldn’t let that impede us from sharing our work with the world. After a few edits, it’s important to move on and to realize that only by writing more will we become better writers.
I loved the Sherlock holiday episode and can’t believe we have to wait until 2017 for the new season!
Anna Maria Junus says
Here from UBC. It’s tricky. How do you know you’re good, and how do you know you’re one of the delusional kids on American Idol who thinks they’re the greatest in the world because Grandma says so.
I would say that perhaps it’s better to be one of those kids who tried, than the talented dreamer who was afraid to and still sits alone in his room singing into a hairbrush.
It takes guts to fail.
Nicole Bianchi says
Hi Anna Maria! Thanks for your comment! Yes, you’re absolutely right. It does take guts to fail. It seems that the only way we can know we’re talented is if we let people we trust read our work and tell us what they think. Often that means sharing our work with the world before we feel it’s 100% perfect. What do you think?
Ruth says
I can see a lot of myself in this. I have a recycling box filled with crumpled up papers from stories and articles I’ve thrown out and started over.
Nicole Bianchi says
Thanks for commenting, Ruth! I love the fact that you keep the crumpled up papers in a box. That means you can still go back and keep writing if you want to. Do you ever use those crumpled up papers as inspiration?
Kim Eldredge - New Frontier Books says
This makes me wonder where the line is between KNOWING when you’re good and when you’re over estimating your talents.
And it seems, in the grand scheme of things, I’d rather have someone who isn’t as good as they think but it BOLD than the brilliant person who is ashamed.
Nicole Bianchi says
Hi Kim, so true! Maybe we need to partly rely on the opinions of others (as long as those people aren’t trying to discourage us from our dreams). What do you think? And, yes, I definitely agree and I love the way you worded it: it’s better to be bold than brilliant and too scared to share your work.
Emma says
Sadly I can recognise a lot of myself in what you describe here. I’m trying to overcome my second guessing but it’s touch.
Nicole Bianchi says
I hope you found the post inspiring, Emma! 🙂 Yes, it is tough. I think it is important to have friends who can encourage us to keep working towards our goals. What about you? What do you do to overcome second guessing?
Ben Phipps says
Great post! I hesitate often – keep thinking it could be better. Can’t hesitate with the challenge. I’m already behind.
Nicole Bianchi says
Thanks, Ben! Yes, I think what we often don’t realize is that our writing can only get better if we write more. That’s why I love writing challenges where you must write and publish something everyday. They are such an excellent way to overcome that hesitation and keep pushing forward.