What Kind of Writer Should I Be? Genuine Pretending and Academia
Philosophers Moeller and D’Ambrosio explain how the identities we form are arbitrary—owing not to our ownmost potentialities but instead to our changing social contexts. We are where/when we born as much as what our genes have predestined us to become. Therefore identifying with a social role as if that was what we were born to do is absurd. A woman born in 1604 could never have been born to be a computer scientist or a science fiction writer. She’ll be whatever she becomes, and she’ll do that seriously and earnestly but without the added belief that it is what she was made to do it.
I’ve found that I enjoy teaching and writing, so it’s easy for me to believe that I was made to do those things. I construct a narrative that emphasizes my teaching inspirations and the various discoveries I’ve made about who I am as a teacher or writer. I use these stories to pretend that being a teacher/writer is who I really am—that these are my genuine or authentic identity. So when I wake up feeling lazy, then this laziness is at odds with my identity and I chastise myself. I wind up chastising myself all the time, even when I’m going my best in the classroom, because I will inevitably make mistakes.
The 10,000 Hours Mentality
And it gets more nuanced than that. When I write, I wonder what sort of writing I should be doing--what sort of writer I should be. Should I focus on novels? If so, then I need to forget everything else and write those. Should I be a serious nonfiction scholar? If so, then I need to stop wasting time on novels. And so on. Months go by devoted to a specific genre, and then I wonder to myself, "Did I choose correctly?" This is in line with the 10,000 hours mentality.
In writing, as in higher education and the arts and sciences more generally, there is a popular mentality that you must stick to what you’re good at. This means discovering what you’re good at, and then developing the skills to become even better. It’s the sort of reasoning behind the Multiple Intelligences theory of Howard Gardner and the idea of 10,000 hours of practice to develop expertise introduced, I think, by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. Such a personal-skills-based approach is believed to have an advantage over the person who just does whatever they fancy and without any sort of systematic approach. Of course, there are alternatives out there, such as the advantages of being a generalist described by David Epstein in his book Range.
And so I’ve spent maybe eight years seriously devoted to becoming a good nonfiction writer. I’ve published eight books and dozens of articles, and I do think my writing has improved as has my understanding of the process. I’m confident that, were I to invest another 20 years doing the same, then I would become even better. And that’s an attractive idea. There is a pretty big downside, however, which is that focusing on one identity as a writer (say, as a serious nonfiction philosophy writer) means committing to doing this daily or at least weekly. It means feeling pretty crummy whenever I have a paper rejected or make some bonehead decision that a serious philosopher wouldn’t make. Overcommitment to an identity opens me up to taking the whole game of being-a-philosopher very seriously, and becoming neurotically concerned about being exposed as an imposter or fraud.
If I take a step back, then I can see that my commitment to the philosopher identity is arbitrary. I could just as easily have committed to becoming a qualitative psychologist or narrative nonfiction writer. These identities would have their own rules for behavior and for success, which means I would get embarrassed by a wholly different set of mistakes than if I were in philosopher mode.
My question is and has always been: which sort of writer should I be working at becoming? What is my writer identity? If it’s going to take me 10,000 hours of practice, then I had better decide and get started.
Genuine Pretending
What Moeller and D’Ambrosio call for instead of pretending to be genuine is to genuinely pretend at being our identities. In other words, I accept that I’m not a teacher deep down in my soul. I’m nothing deep down in my soul. I can, however, pretend to be a teacher. I’m quite good at it, too, and I can work at getting better. In other words, I can be as genuine as I wish at pretending to be a teacher. I can get satisfaction from it, too. I’m not satisfied because I’ve actualized my soul’s potential to teach. I’m satisfied because I’ve pretended to do something and I’ve succeeded at it.
It’s like touring Europe. I dress like a local and do my best to order coffee and scones as if I were a local. I’m pretending to be European, and I hope that my act is convincing. But I never think, “Gee, maybe this is what I was born to become!” I know all along that I’m an American who is pretending to be European. If someone says, “A European would never sit like that,” then I don’t become embarrassed. I either use the observation to improve my pretending or I accept that I’m not very good at acting European. I don’t get all bent out of shape about it.
But I do get bent out of shape when it comes to being a writer. I pretend that I am a genuine scholar, and so I worry that reviewers will read my articles and shake their heads in disgust. Or I worry that my colleagues at other universities will see where I’ve published and roll their eyes. If an actor who is performing the role of academic says something that an academic would never say, then learning about the mistake would give the actor insight into doing a better job at pretending. The actor would never even think of saying, "I'll never become an academic," because they were only ever pretending.
Profilicity and Academe
As I’m writing it out, I realize that my need for affirmation is constant. Whenever I have a peer-reviewed article accepted for publication, I feel good about it for a few days. I feel like a genuine scholar. But then the feeling fades and I think about what I must do to re-establish my scholarly identity. This constant need to produce ever more evidence for affirmation from the general peer is called profilicity. I’ve developed a profile as an academic and one as a teacher. But I treat the profile as who I really am. I take them seriously. If I fail at them, then I believe I have failed as a person. I’m trying to make my profiles match my ownmost identity.
In their follow-up book to Genuine Pretending, Moeller and D'Ambrosio describe this new profilic form of identity in You and Your Profile. They particularly note how difficult and psychologically distressing it is to pretend that profiles (such as my teacher and academic profiles) are consonant with the singular and authentic version of who I am. That's a lot of work, connecting each profile to some supposedly immutable and virtuous element of yourself. But profiles are not immutable. They are dispensable, and they should be treated as such. I might enjoy the affirmation a profile gets, but I needn't take that personally as validation for who I am. It's validation for a transient role I played.
So what does this mean for me as a writer? It means that there is no singular writer identity for me. I have many profiles from which to choose. A new profile can be established as simply and as easily as an old one can be discarded. I wrote novels for a few years. It was terribly difficult. Memoir writing is enjoyable and easy. Serious nonfiction is meaningful and helps support my profile as an academic. Developing one writer profile indirectly helps develop my other writer profiles. Learning how to structure a novel and introduce characters has helped me understand how to organize an article or book. And good writing is good writing.
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