Evidentiary Hearing, Part I
Find the Empirical Proof
Today’s Shelf Life was going to be titled “Burden of Proof” but as I typed that phrase, my Shelf Sense started tingling and I thought—hold on. Did I already write a Shelf Life called “Burden of Proof”? Turns out, yes I did. In case you missed it, Burden of Proof from May 2023 is a primer on how to read proof pages. I encourage you to check it out. Even if you don’t intend on becoming a proofreader or an author, reviewing proofs is a valuable skill and you never know when it will come in handy.
Anyway, I had to come up with a different name for today’s Shelf Life, which is about having valid evidence for the things you tell yourself (and others). When you say something (aloud or within your skull) or write something (for yourself or for public consumption), ask yourself: Do I have evidence for this thing I am saying? Or is it just something I think? Is it just, you know, my opinion, man?
Shelf Life is a very long and involved chronicle of my thoughts and opinions so perhaps this is the wrong place to ask the question. But let’s do it anyway. You can choose to do bad stuff sometimes. Being inappropriate is often really fun.
If you are stating something as an opinion or belief you hold, or a conclusion you have personally drawn from present facts, there is no burden of evidence you have to meet to say that thing. You’re allowed to express your opinions and beliefs. Everyone else is allowed to ignore them if they wish, nobody has to listen to anybody else’s opinions or beliefs. Thank you for reading Shelf Life, which you could be ignoring right now, but are not.
I could say:
I do not like the color green.
And I need not present any evidence for that. It is just a statement of my feelings about the color green. I could say:
Emerald green is not flattering on me.
That is stated in the manner of fact, but it’s still an opinion because it’s an expression of my subjective experience. Someone else could disagree and say, “No, emerald green is quite flattering on you.” We could then each present evidence to support our belief. Perhaps we would come to an agreement or perhaps we’d agree to disagree in the end.
If I said:
Green is a mix of red and yellow.
That would be factually incorrect. Green is demonstrably not a mix of red and yellow. It is a mix of blue and yellow. Orange is a mix of red and yellow. Orange is not green. That statement is objectively wrong.
If I said:
Emerald green is not flattering on Kiera Knightley.
That would be an almost-ubiquitously disagreed expression of my subjective reality. Literally anyone could quickly provide evidence to the contrary, for example:
I may believe that Kiera Knightley doesn’t look good in green (I do not believe that, for the record), because “looks good” is subjective. However, most people—dare I say, most reasonable people—would disagree with me.
There is a legal concept in English common law of a reasonable person. (Sometimes characterized as “an average person,” not the same thing but the same concept.) When the law has to determine, for instance, whether someone could have foreseen the consequences of their actions, whether someone’s reaction to a set of circumstances was egregious, or whatever, the parties in a court of law may use the standard of what a reasonable person, given the extant set of facts, might have done.
Could a reasonable person, with this information in front of them, have drawn same conclusion as the defendant?
Would a reasonable person have known that [doing the same action as the defendant] could have caused harm?
Would an average person, looking at this manuscript of Ulysses by James Joyce, find it obscene?
A reasonable person, the average person, would agree that Kiera Knightley looks good in emerald green. That doesn’t make it a scientific fact, but it’s good enough for government work.
What I want to talk about today vis a vis the reasonable person standard is the things that we often tell ourselves that discourage us from creative work. Sometimes these thoughts (or words, if spoken aloud) are intrusive—that is, uninvited and unwanted thoughts, for example those that cast doubt on your ability to do something—or they may even be conscious thoughts. Consider:
My writing is not any good.
I can’t possibly finish a complete novel.
No agent will ever sign me.
I’ll never get published.
My writing won’t amount to anything.
These may pop up in someone’s brain unbidden or they may be thoughts that someone deliberately entertains either from low self-esteem or because they are trying to mitigate future disappointment. But what if you asked yourself:
What’s the evidence for this belief?
Is this factual? Or is it just my opinion? and
If this belief is just my opinion, would a reasonable person agree?
For what it’s worth, I think I’m a reasonable person and I don’t agree. But I don’t expect you to take it on faith so lets unpack some common doubts together.
My Writing Is No Good
For this to be true, first we would have to establish that good and bad writing exist, which I’m not so sure is true. Gives an example of what characterizes “bad writing” I can think of a counterexample.
Bad spelling and grammar? Go read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Nonstandard English? Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston or Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It’s called dialect, you can google it.
The things that actually make writing bad are subjective—for example when the writing is confusing or boring, or overwritten (flowery prose) or underwritten (white room syndrome). Someone who likes complex, challenging, rewarding books might never encounter a confusing book but encounter many boring ones. What does boring even mean? I like science fiction and fantasy so I like action and a speedy plot. Plenty of people find science fiction and fantasy completely boring and prefer to read Shakespeare, which puts me to sleep.
Writing is good when pleases the reader. That’s it. If there’s a reader out there who enjoys reading your writing, then your writing is good. If you are the reader who enjoys your own writing, then your writing is good. Whether it would sell, or win a Pulitzer, or become a classic—those are different questions. We don’t say somebody’s bad at basketball just because they’re not a professional player for a living. (And I suspect sports-watching people sometimes say that specific professional players are bad at the sport in spite of, you know, being ostensibly the best players there are.)
If you find yourself telling yourself “this writing is bad”: What’s your evidence? Stop, go back a few pages, and read what you wrote. Do you enjoy it? Then you did not meet the burden of evidence. Case dismissed.
I Can’t Finish a Novel
How do you know that? What, because you haven’t finished one yet? Are you dead? No? Then there’s still time to finish a novel. Apologies to any Shelf Life readers out there who are currently dead.
If you have never completed a novel, let me remind you that every novelist—and I mean literally every novelist, every single one who has ever existed—was once in the same situation as you. Every novelist was once a person who had never finished a novel. Everyone starts out as a person who has never finished a novel and remains so until they finish one.
Finishing a novel—or any work of fiction, or creative work, that you attempt—takes time and dedication and sticktoitiveness, that is true. But none of those things are evidence you can’t do it. Having never yet finished a novel is not evidence that you cannot finish a novel—else, logically, the world would have no novels.
To write a novel you need the following:
The ability to tell a story in your language of choice.
The commitment to see that story through to the end.
Ask yourself: Have you told a story before? I’d be shocked if you have not, as humans are natural storytellers. Have you ever given a presentation at work and used data to persuade someone to make a decision? You told a data story. Ever run into a friend while you’re out running errands and stopped to tell them about the mishap in the Starbucks line earlier? You told an anecdote. Made up a bedtime story for your kids? Played Dungeons and Dragons?
If you can think of an instance where you have told a story, then that offers evidence that you can tell a story. So that’s squared away.
Can you commit to something and stick to it? Have you ever taken a class from beginning to end, or kept a garden alive for an entire growing season, or—imagine this—potty trained a kid or a pet? Have you passed a year of schooling? Have you built a piece of furniture from wood, sewed a garment from a pile of fabric, or fixed up a run-down car or house? Have you ever held the same job for a year or even a couple consecutive years?
Any of those things, and many more, are evidence that you can commit to something and see it through. Combine the two pieces of evidence:
Premise: I can tell a story.
Premise: I can commit to an endeavor and see it through.
Conclusion: I can write a novel.
In the case of “I can’t finish a novel,” I have found evidence that you may write a novel in the future and no evidence that you cannot. Case dismissed.
This Shelf Life got longer than anticipated. I love it when that happens. It means you have to check back on Tuesday for the stunning conclusion to this epic court case. Same Shelf Time, Same Shelf Channel (SHELF-span). Don’t miss it.
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