Why I’m Proclaiming Myself a Non-Expert
On some topics. That I still intend to talk about.
On a virtual writing workshop, the instructor was pepping us up.
“You don’t need advanced degrees. You don’t need years of experience. You are an expert! Own it in your writing and pitches!”
In the late 2010s, this advice was everywhere. Find a niche topic (the kind that doesn’t have a formal discipline), dig deep via personal research, and use the word ‘expert’ in your branding a lot.
You ended up with a lot of blogs by people with odd, informal-sounding areas of expertise. It kept making me of this SNL sketch about a ‘flirting expert’:
The advice was not as terrible as I’m making it sound.
It signaled a commitment to growing in an area of knowledge, and was mostly directed at sincere and self-critical writers who tended to undersell themselves (at least, that’s how it seemed in my writing workshops).
But that’s not me.
