Harness the surprising power of learning to mind the gap
Why leaning into what you don't know or understand (yet) is the only way to grow as a writer and human
Learning to Recognise the Gap
Last year, I took an online poetry course with the National Centre for Writing in the UK. As I dived into the material, I felt out of my depth. Taking part required that I lean on all the self-knowledge I’ve gained through self-belief work to keep going all the way to the end of the course.
I wrote more poems than I have done for years, and allowing myself the freedom to express things in this way felt great. But I had to keep reminding myself that the niggling feeling that my poems weren’t good enough was an indicator I needed to keep going. Not that I should quit. The poems weren’t good enough yet. I was there to learn.
It was only towards the end of the course that I felt a positive shift in what I was producing. I got comments like “this is really accomplished” when I shared a poem with the group. But although I knew I was improving, I still didn’t fully understand the gap. It felt like a fluke rather than something I knew how to reproduce.
Sometimes it’s the right questions that help you improve
I was feeling frustrated with my apparent inability to understand the gap between most of my poems and ones that could meaningfully be called “accomplished.” I had an inclination of where I needed to focus my energy, but I just wasn’t seeing what other people were apparently seeing.
So, as I always do when I’m struggling to get to the next stage in my writing and life, I leaned into the questions that were ruminating inside me:
Why was this poem so much better than the others?
What had I done differently and, more importantly, how could I create the same effect again?!
What did the poems being published in anthologies and magazines have that my poems didn’t?
Then the other day I was reading a poem that Simon Armitage posted to his Instagram. And suddenly I could see things I wasn’t seeing before. I still have work to do, but I was rewriting a belief that I’ve held for a long time about what I am/ am not able to do.
Since my days studying modern poetry as an undergrad, I’ve always believed that I was good at interpreting meaning in poetry, but I sucked at the technical analysis. Internal rhymes or word stress or, God help me trochees or spondees, felt like a mystery to me. It didn’t come naturally, so I filed into the “things I can’t do” box and left it there.
But now I see the gap more clearly I’m better equipped to do the work to bridge it and keep improving as a poet. Incidentally, this isn’t the first time I’ve had the experience of hitting an apparent wall in my skill level before things became clear and fell into place.
Leaning Into the Gap is Uncomfortable and Risky
We’re not comfortable with gaps. Think of the London Underground and we’re told to mind the gap in case we fall into it. Mind the gap is a warning, not an invitation to learn and grow.
Side note: I once witnessed a child fall into the gap between the station and the platform in Tachikawa Station in Tokyo. The emergency was sounded, and the staff could get the child out. But I was terrified whenever we got on or off a train when my son was small and we lived in Japan.
Where was I? Gaps can be terrifying! And this is why I believe cultivating creative courage is the most important (and usually overlooked) thing a writer needs if they want to write their most authentic and fierce self onto the page.
But it can feel counterintuitive to us to be told that being mindful of and leaning into the gap in our writing is actually the key to growth and learning.
As any insta-coach worth their salt will tell you, growth happens on the edge of our comfort zone, where things feel stretchy and uncomfortable. And while we’re on the subject, you don’t need to abandon your comfort zone altogether in some reckless act of bravado, resulting in a dysregulated nervous system. You get to stretch and grow the things you’re comfortable with and create a more open and expansive version of who you are.
Why the Gap is the key to your Growth
When I was learning Japanese, I often leaned into the gap in my knowledge instinctively. I wanted to learn. I was still in my mid-twenties and the sights and sounds around me were fascinating to me.
Years later, I learned that there’s a theory in language acquisition that it is only when we notice how our use of the target language differs from the use of a fluent speaker that we can improve our language skills. This is why having teachers or friends who can help show us the gap can be so powerful for our growth and learning.
In other words, we need to learn to mind the gap before we’re able to bridge it.
Don’t try to ignore, avoid or deny the Gap
I hang out in Facebook groups for women writers, probably an unhealthy amount if I’m honest, but that’s beside the point. And I see people all the time who are apparently unaware of the gap between their writing and the standards and norms of publishable work.
If someone points out what isn’t working and needs to change, they get defensive and huffy and shut down any learning that could be available to them. There’s also a huge element of self-doubt fueling this behaviour. And perhaps they’ve only ever heard encouraging things about their writing from well-meaning friends.
For some reason, when it comes to writing, many people make the mistake of thinking they don’t need any help. Almost as though they believe that if they’re meant to be a real writer, the words will tumble fully formed. Unaware of the gap, they fail to learn their craft, rush to self-publish without so much as hiring an editor, and wonder why no one is buying their stuff.
Learn to Mind the Gap in order to Bridge It
Let me reiterate this point, in case it’s still not clear. If there’s a gap between the writing you’re doing right now and the writing you desire to be doing, nothing has gone wrong. Leaning into that gap is the path to your growth and development as a writer (and as a human).
No writing is “good enough” at the beginning. The other day I was at an author talk at an event here in Singapore. A guy said he was working on a piece of writing but it was inconsistent and he wanted to know how to write consistently. The answer was by editing and rewriting further down the line. That’s the writing process.
If you switch genres, or take up a new type of writing, there’s going to be a gap in your knowledge there, too.
Let me leave you today with this short video, The Gap by Ira Glass. I found this immensely helpful when I first watched it several years ago. It’s a great reminder that it often takes years to achieve the level of writing you aspire to, and that’s ok. It’s normal. If your writing isn’t where you want it to be yet, that means you need to keep going, not that you should quit!
I was just thinking about this the other day. I feel like a late bloomer. But, it’s just where I am. My kids are all a little bigger now. So I have more time to write. But, gosh if I keep going...in ten years...I can only imagine. I’m really enjoying my learning. I think I’d like to learn more about short story writing. Great piece! Thanks for the encouragement.