Second Guesses

One huge disadvantage to making art instead of doing something more meaningfully productive, like assembling widgets, is that it the results are incredibly subjective. If you're tasked with putting together a widget, the test of whether or not you succeeded is a known-known - the widget works as intended, or it doesn't. In art, there a lot of evaluative known-unknowns (and maybe even some unknown-unknowns). There are many genres of literature, many reader audiences with many preferences, and many authors with varied skillsets and chosen subject matter. What does the New York Times Bestseller list really mean? The distinction of that honor certainly does not guarantee that I will enjoy reading a particular book, especially not if the book is about something I'm not interested in.

My parents are good critique readers for me: they know me personally, they're honest about their reactions, and they're reliable helpers. But, what if I'm working on something they don't care about? What mainly happens is that they'll still read it, but they won't enjoy it very much.

Because the work I'm doing is so subjective, I rarely feel very confident about what I've done. I've most recently been writing fantasy fiction with heroes and monsters, but my mother doesn't care for it. How do I tell the difference between a critique that is influenced by disinterest in the genre and a critique which transcends that preference? How can I know ahead of time if a fantasy enthusiast audience will treat my artistic and structural choices as acceptable staples of the genre, or if I'm really just bad at making fiction?

Really, I know that some of this wondering is ego-protection to compensate for a lack of skill. I'm aware that I'm not exactly composing great literature here.

But, the subjectivity of making art has helped me unearth a more poignant problem: a tendency to second-guess myself.

This is not a problem that is confined to my craft or my chosen profession. My spouse is forever complaining of doubting herself in her own work, and I suspect that many people encounter this in many areas of life.

My latest project contains examples of how this plays out for me personally: as I attempt to narrate story events, I'm forced to make choices. Do my characters travel and encounter their antagonists on the road? Or, do they stand guard and wait for their enemies? Do I follow the story hook as it was originally conceived, or should I change the plot and allow the heroes to fail?

Text is a strange medium to work in because it is serial: you can only transmit one piece of data to your reader at a time. (This makes things especially difficult if a scene contains a lot of simultaneous motion.) Even as the author writing the text, this linear transmission of data can be problematic. Once I've made a choice, such as to move my characters to the wilderness, I find myself "locked in" to that choice. If I later realize that I hate the choice, it's often too late.

Suddenly, I find myself filled with loathing, anxiety, and uncertainty. What if I made the wrong choice? I feel like I want to throw away what I've done, but I'm yoked to the effort I put in. What if the other choice was better? I begin to dread that I've wasted my time.

This self-doubt and second-guessing can be crippling. For me, it can induce writer's block. Instead of drafting, which gives me the fundamentally-required raw material I need to work with when I go back to polish and revise, I hit a wall, I dead-stop, and I feel stuck. 'I've written myself into a corner!' I think to myself.

It can be important in situations of this kind to realize that the doubt itself may be the actual impediment, not the subject of the doubt. Especially in drafting, but also in other areas of life, halting action in response to doubt is the least-desirable response, rather than the most-productive and satisfying response. (In other situations, obviously, doubt and uncertainty serve as guards against harm or loss resulting from poor courses of action. Measuring the difference between the two takes self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-knowledge.)