Hero worship and the writing process

The Heroic Effort of Drafting Is Not Enough

We love our heroes. They inspire and entertain us.

But we often ignore the broader lessons of how those heroes achieve their goals.

We read stories of visionary company founders, but don’t notice the founding team members who pull long hours and take career risks. Nor do we profile the angel investors, the early hires, and the pioneering customers who all are instrumental to the success of the endeavor.

We idolize the lead singer over the contribution of the band. We glorify the inventor or explorer but skip over the work they build on, the “giants” on whose shoulders they stand.

When we worship the hero and forget the team, we fail to learn the full lessons of the remarkable achievements we admire.

The writer as a hero

Writers are just as attracted to heroes as everyone else. Heck, we study Joseph Campbell’s description of the hero’s journey and try to apply it to our stories. And we turn that same filter onto our own work.

We are valiant writers, banging out works of brilliance in isolation, undertaking the heroic effort of putting words on paper.