We’ve all experienced it: that moment when the giddy rush of creating a new story collapses into the certainty that everything we’ve just written is crap. In a new post, Tiffany Yates Martin offers advice about dealing with this phenomenon aka the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is when a person tends to overestimate their knowledge early in learning something new, and underestimate it as they gain more knowledge and skill. In writerly terms, this syndrome can mean we become less confident in our skills the more we develop them, even though we are probably much better writers now than when we started.
It’s a little depressing. You might feel paralyzed as you realize how much more you need to learn. But there’s another way to look at this effect. “It suggests that those times when we may begin to despair about our talent or skill or accomplishments are indicators of just how far we’ve progressed in those very areas,” Yates Martin says.
When you feel discouraged about the shortcomings in your writing, that’s a good thing. When you started, you probably couldn’t see your weaknesses. Now you can, and that’s the first step to addressing them. Knowing what works and what doesn’t is a major skill. Writers don’t get far without it.
So, the next time you feel discouraged about your writing, take a step back and give yourself some credit. Whatever isn’t working can be fixed. If you have the skill to recognize your writing flaws, you also have the skills to improve on them.
