When I was in high school, my basketball team had an ongoing problem.
You see, I went to a small school (around 100 students total, which is microscopic by Southern California standards) which meant that the “athletes” we had to work with on the basketball team weren’t always the most athletic people. And on top of that, what few true athletes we did get were often pulled from other sports to play.
We were a rag-tag bunch made up of football players, baseball players, hockey players, volleyball players (mainly just me), and precious few basketball players.
There we were—a basketball team with a roster eight men deep shallow, and hardly a true basketball player among us—trying to compete against schools much MUCH larger than us; all of which were able to field teams with rosters filled to the brim by hardcore, true blooded, diehard basketball players.
The whole situation felt suspiciously like the setup to your typical disney-channel-esque basketball movie.
You know, the type of underdog story where the little guy rises up against all odds to take home the big trophy. By the end of the season, though, it didn’t turn out that way; we didn’t come in first; we didn’t take home the trophy…
But we did come in second.
That’s right, even though we didn’t win it all, we did win game after game against much bigger schools with much better basketball players who should have, by all means, wiped the floor with us.
Most people would have never thought that a basketball team made up of non-basketball players, from a school so small that nobody had ever heard of it, would have been able to take second place in our league.
But that’s because most people didn’t know about our secret weapon.
What secret weapon, you ask? What could possibly take a team like mine and turn us into a basketball team from an almost-disney-channel-esque basketball movie?
We were really good at pretending.
Photo courtesy of: flicker
You’ve heard the saying: fake it ‘till you make it?
Well it turns out the psychological effects that this phrase can have on a team of non-basketball players is pretty incredible—when applied correctly, of course.
My team had a modified version of this saying. Instead of “fake it ‘till you make it” we simply had “Fake Hype.” The basic idea behind Fake Hype is this…
We know that we’re not basketball players. We know that our hearts aren’t in this game.
Because our hearts aren’t in the game, we’re lacking motivation to get better, we don’t want to give as much energy as we should, and we don’t have a competitive edge. We are all competitive athletes in our own sports though, so we want to be competitive as a basketball team.
So, if we can just pretend that we’re all super competitive basketball players, and act like super competitive basketball players, and practice like super competitive basketball players—and if we can pretend like we have tons of energy on the court, and maybe even convince the other team that we are a more competitive basketball team than they are—then, maybe, we could actually be a competitive basketball team.
Fake hype was a mentality, yes, but at the same time it was more than just a way of thinking: it was more like a code for us.
Fake hype was in the way we carried ourselves on the court: pretending like we knew what we were doing, pretending that we were confident, trying to convince the other team that we were dangerous… As a result we actually became dangerous.
It was in the way we practiced: pretending like our hearts were completely in the game, acting like we really did want to be there, convincing ourselves that we had a real desire to get better… As a result we actually got better—a lot better.
It was in the way that we thought of ourselves: doing our best to convince ourselves that we were basketball players, doing our best to act like we were basketball players… As a result we actually managed to become a competitive basketball team.
We literally faked it until we made it.
Pretty cool, huh?
Time to apply this to writing, so you should start paying attention now.
Writers don’t need fake hype like my basketball team did.
My team needed to convince ourselves that we were basketball players; I really hope that you don’t need to convince yourself that you’re a writer (or whatever you are), but if you do, read this then come back.
However, writers can apply “fake it ‘till you make it” in much the same we that my team did. It’s all about fulfilling a need. My teammates and I needed to be competitive basketball players, so that was where we applied Fake Hype—but writers have a drastically different set of needs that must be met if we are to function properly.
Writers need these
- Motivation
- Inspiration
- Imagination
- Excitement
- Motivation
- Experience
- Patience
- Time to write
- A supportive audience
- Motivation
- Focus
- And motivation
Okay so maybe you can’t fake having more time to write and it’s really hard to fake having droves of adoring fans. But everything else on this list you can fake. Especially motivation.
I’m zoning in on motivation because that’s where it all begins. If you’re not motivated to write then what happens? Lots of procrastination, excuses, and chores that suddenly seem much more important than they actually are—but not much writing.
A writer who is not motivated to write isn’t a writer at all—because they don’t write!
I’ve said this over and over again, and I’m sorry for that, but it just keeps coming up. Writing is hard. The amount of motivation it takes to do something hard (writing) as opposed to something easy (like watching tv) is incredible.
To those of you who naturally possess enough motivation to sit down and write day after day—congratulations! You’re freaking awesome!
As for the rest of us, however, unless we happen to be desperate or particularly inspired at the time, sitting down to write is very much a test to see how much willpower we can muster.
That being said, this post would not have been written if I had never learned the power of fake hype back in high school. The same secret weapon that helped my basketball team take second place, is the tool that I used today to sit at the computer and start writing. Even though I had very little real motivation to do this, here I am! Hi!
How do I do this? I’m not entirely sure.
It’s a strange combination of actively trying to convince my mind to accept what I’m trying to make it believe (that I’m really really motivated to write this blog post), and acting like I’m motivated, excited, inspired, focused, and patient despite not really feeling any of those things.
And just like with my basketball team in high school, the results are pretty incredible when I apply “fake it ‘till you make it” to my writing…
Every time I wake up in the morning, I fake that I’m the writer that I want to be, and every time I go to sleep at night, somehow, I’ve managed to convince myself that I really am.
In other words: every day I use my own version of “fake it ‘till you make it” to fulfill my need to be a certain type of writer. I pretend like I’m the writer I want to be, I act like the writer I want to be, and by the end of the day, I have become the writer that I want to be.
Pretty cool, huh?