How I Learned I Have Much to Learn About Writing

We really are our own worst enemy sometimes aren’t we?

Over recent years, and especially recent months, I’ve become convinced that the biggest obstacle to success in writing is actually ourselves. For many of you, that may not even be a revelation, but for me, well, let’s just say I took the ‘long way round.’

It wasn’t that I’m not disciplined (I am — most of the time), it’s not that I’m afraid of hard work (definitely not), it’s not that I can’t write (although you’ll be the judge of that), it’s more that I thought I could do it straight off the bat and be successful.

Because, after all, I’ve done stuff. I’ve traveled. I’ve started companies and sold them. I’ve got a degree. I’ve given speeches in public. I've written two non-fiction books, one of which made Amazon’s top 100 finance chart. So, of course, I know everything there is to know about writing, right?

And yet it took me a long time to gain ANY traction at all on this platform … and even longer to learn where I was going wrong. So much for ‘the expert.’

The answer was staring back at me in the mirror every morning: I simply hadn’t yet learned what my demon was, let alone confront him and take him down.

We all have our own demons to deal with of course, and what’s true for me won’t be true for you and vice versa. I know people who are incredibly disciplined in writing, but simply can’t open up, or are desperate to succeed and will do anything — except actually write — to do it. But those those things don’t apply to me. I had to learn something else, just one simple thing.

I had to learn that I know nothing.

And I didn’t like it.

And, at first, I liked admitting it even less.

Writing this article has been a cathartic cleansing and a public admission that I was wrong about how much I thought I knew.

But I said it. And the emotional release must be akin to the alcoholic finally standing up in a room full of strangers and admitting there’s a problem. Man, that really feels good, doesn’t it? It feels free.

Even re-reading that sentence is like reading something that someone else has written. But it’s too late. By the time you read this I will have pressed that innocuous looking ‘publish’ button and made my peace with it. No, really, I have. It just took me some time.

You see, my so called ‘pedigree’ wasn’t an asset. It was just training. In fact, it was no more than basic training. The trouble was, I’d mistaken the completion of basic training as a doctorate that was licence to ignore advice from anyone else.

That’s like turning up late at a professional football match and starting to tell the other players how to do it ‘properly’ because you spent a few years in the Sunday league. Not only do you look like a complete ass to the people concerned, you run the risk of not being invited to play. Or, if you do play, you’ll be politely ignored until you have something to contribute.

At no point would it have crossed my (old me) mind, that perhaps they’re ‘professional’ football players because they’ve learned their craft and paid their dues.

“No” my old mindset brain would say “because they didn’t see this brilliant thing that I did at some completely irrelevant point in the past! It was genius!”

I would have then waited for the approval and sheer adoration from the imaginary football team that I have created entirely to make this point.

But these guys (and girls) know their stuff. My imaginary football team now respond in a way that makes me wonder who is actually imagining them in the first place.

“Really? Maybe it actually was brilliant, but maybe it wasn’t so great. You’re wanting to work with people who do brilliant things like that every day. And work incredibly hard to do so. You’re playing now with the big boys now, so why don’t you go and learn some stuff?”

I’m silent for a moment, astounded at being spoken to like that. Don’t they know who I am?

“But I did this thing ….” I start … and then trail off quickly.

The cold looks of their completely made up faces say more than their words ever could.

Fortunately, coach takes me to one side and has a word. He suggest practice, hard work and an ample dose of something called ‘humility.’ Apparently this is a real thing and successful people have it, especially in the field of learning. Who’d have thought it?

‘Imaginary coach’ — an amalgamation of all the Medium writers I have been in touch with directly and the literally thousands of amazing articles I have read — was right of course. They usually are. If we’d actually listen.

It’s only when you open your mind and accept that you might not be that good, that you may not know the game or that other people are better than you at something you have a chance to get it right. And that’s not meant in a negative way. It’s meant to say ‘That’s where we all started, even the very, very best writers. You’re just ready to learn now. And we’ll be here if you need us.’

Now that demon was exposed, I could see him everywhere and disarm him immediately.

For example, how could I possibly learn something from someone who is twenty five years younger than me? How can a single parent with a difficult background show me what success looks like?

Well, If you’re humble, willing to look deeper and accept your current limitations, a hell of a lot actually. The inevitable conclusion, of course, is that after three months on Medium the main thing I’ve learned is how little I know.

Which means, in turn, that my journey as a writer is actually only just beginning.

And I find that incredibly exciting.

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