The Myth of the Solitary Genius

Writing is a team sport.

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One of the biggest obstacles to writing about theory is the myth of the solitary genius.

The solitary genius is inspired. They experience inhuman bursts of energy that allow them to toil day and night without resting. They pull brilliant ideas from thin air. They produce sparkling prose without effort or revision.

The solitary genius doesn’t need to edit because they always get it right the first time. There are no gaps, contradictions, or inconsistencies in their work. They are the last word on the topic. No one can refute or question their authority.

The solitary genius is a myth. There’s no such thing. But if you’re new to writing about theory, the myth of the solitary genius can hurt your self-confidence and make it hard to get started – for a few reasons:

1. It creates an impossible standard to live up to. No one gets anything right the first time. The most experienced writers spend hundreds of hours revising their work. That’s partly how they got to be so experienced in the first place.

2. It removes writers from the human context they inhabit. It ignores the agonizing revisions, the writer’s block, the mistakes, the borrowing and petty theft, the self-doubt, the embarrassing oversights, and the moments of growth that are all part of the writing process.

It’s easy to forget this when you’re reading someone’s masterpiece, but even the most successful writers have doubts about their work. They’ve just learned the only way to work through this insecurity is to let it propel you through multiple rounds of feedback and revision.

In other words, nobody should be dealing with any of this stuff alone. Writing is a team sport. If you’re struggling with the “human” part of the writing process, you need to assemble a team. This can be as simple as asking a friend to read your writing or mustering up the courage to join a writing group or workshop.

As you are assembling your team, there are positions you’ll need people to cover. Every project is a little different but, generally speaking, you’ll want someone who is excited about your work, someone who has questions about your work, and someone who can offer you a constructive critique of your work.

Put differently, you’ll want a fellow traveler, an outside perspective, and a skeptic.

• A fellow traveler helps you brainstorm and will help renew your enthusiasm for the project.

• An outside perspective helps you identify gaps, inconsistencies, and points that still need to be clarified.

• A skeptic helps you avert misunderstandings, strengthen your claims, and anticipate counterarguments.

The most experienced readers will be able to take on any of these roles as needed, but that’s usually a lot to ask from one person. It’s okay to have teammates who only play one position, especially if they play it really well.

It can take time to find people you enjoy working with (more on this in a future post). That’s okay, as long as you’re putting your work out there.

In the meantime, here are a few of the texts that helped me deal with my own tendency to internalize the myth of the solitary genius.

• If you’re struggling to silence your inner critic and put words on the page, try Anne Lamott’s essay “Shitty First Drafts” from her book Bird by Bird: Instructions for Writing and Life.

• If you’re worried your work isn’t original, you might want to take a look at the introduction to James Porter’s article Intertextuality and the Discourse Community in the Fall 1986 issue of Rhetoric Review.

• If you’re feeling anxious that you’re going to interpret something wrong, revisit Roland Barthes’ “The Death of an Author” and try to remember that a productive misreading of a text can be just as helpful and intellectually stimulating as the “correct” interpretation.

Good luck with your writing!