In an effort to win the heart of Zelda Sayre, F. Scott Fitzgerald finished his first novel, This Side of Paradise, at age twenty-three. Truman Capote caught the attention of Random House publishing with his story Miriam, just shy of his twenty-first birthday. When Ernest Hemingway was twenty-six he wrote The Sun Also Rises, and Mary Shelley completed the manuscript for Frankenstein at nineteen. Perhaps it's just my own insecurities leaving me feeling rather inadequate with this knowledge, but I suspect I'm not alone.
Photo woodleywonderworks
Let's start by acknowledging that we're probably not as naturally gifted at writing as the once-a-generation aforementioned authors. Pause… whew. Now that we're alright with that we can move on to becoming good, possibly great, writers. There's one problem, though. We want to be good, possibly great, writers right now.
Writing, a Profession
A recent trend has become common among writing teachers and writing bloggers and within writing circles that we are writers simply because we choose to write. If you hold a pen in your hand or a keyboard at your desk, you are a writer. While this ideology has proven valuable for creating the identity of a writer, it has also performed a disservice to other professions.
For a commercial airliner to even consider hiring you as a pilot, you'll need to have logged approximately 3,000 hours of total flight time, including at least 1,500 hours in a multi-jet engine, and at least 1,000 hours as pilot in command of a turbine powered aircraft. These are just the minimum requirements, and anyone that's ever been up in a single engine plane will tell you that an hour in the air takes much more effort (and money) than an hour at the keyboard.
Consider doctors. After undergraduate school for pre-medicine, there's the Medical College Admissions Test, then four years of medical school, then 3-5 years of residency.
In Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book, Outliers, he suggests the key to success in any field is a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of 10,000 hours. Bill Gates spent 10,000 hours programming before graduating high school. The Beatles performed live 1,200 times from 1960-1964 before making it.
I don't know about you, but I haven't logged anywhere near that many hours of writing yet. So why do I expect to write like a professional?
Read, Write and Be Patient
If you've been around The Write Practice for a while, you've probably seen this quote from Stephen King: “If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.” Read books ranging from James Joyce to J.K. Rowling to R.L. Stine. Take the good and the bad and learn from them. Mimic their writing styles to find and perfect your own.
Find time in your schedule to write. Most people don't have a schedule that allows them to write all day, so whether it's here for fifteen minutes or waking up a little early before your regular job to work on a story, remember those hours add up.
Most of all, be patient. If a man has aspirations to be a skilled carpenter, he won't want to give up if his first time in a wood shop doesn't produce a beautiful armoire. Unless you've put in your time and effort reading and writing, you shouldn't expect to write an incredible short-story or novel on your first attempt.
Do you get frustrated that you're not as good of a writer as you would like? Is it possible you just haven't put in the amount of time needed for quality writing?
PRACTICE
Write about someone who expects to be a master at an art, task, or profession although they have little experience. Be sure to include the frustration that ensues.
Write for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, please be sure to give feedback on a few practices from other writers.
Write Practice seems to be reading my mind just lately. Thank you for this!!! I find it all very frustrating, and I always feel so guilty if I haven’t written anything for a few days. I just keep telling myself I will get there if I keep going. One step at a time.
Here is my practice:
Today I practiced glancing for witches. This isn’t about
fortune telling or anything. It’s the trick of being able to identify a witch
from a normal person. Charity is looking over my shoulder as I write this,
saying I shouldn’t say ‘normal person’ as if witches are not normal – they
might find it offensive, and anyway, who’s to say that it’s us that are normal
and the witches who are abnormal?
So, glancing is about identifying the witches from…non-witches.
It’s all to do with the glimmer. Witches have this silver
coloured hazy cloud around them that you can only see from the corner of your
eye. This means to have to look straight ahead whilst at the same time
focussing on people at the side of you.
Ms Loveheart sent us off into town for the day to practise.
I was sure I was going to go cross eyed or something, it’s really difficult!! I
got some really strange looks from people too, glaring at them and trying to
look sideways. I bet a lot of people
thought there was something wrong with me. Maybe there IS something wrong with
me if I can’t do this! Charity recons she saw one or two witches on Steep Hill,
but she didn’t tell me at the time, or I could have had a go at glancing at
them myself! Personally I think she just made it up to keep Ms Loveheart happy.
I’m starting to feel a bit panicky about it. How on earth am
I ever going to be a Witch Hunter if I don’t know who the witches are? I’m bound to end up getting turned into a frog
or something.
One weird thing happened though. After we got back to the
house, we were in the kitchen making tea and I just happened to catch a glimpse
of Ms Loveheart from the corner of my eye. She was standing near the window,
and I guess it could have been a trick of the light or something, but I could
have sworn I saw a glimmer around HER. Only it was gold instead of silver. Maybe
she is a good witch like Glinda from The Wizard of Oz? The good news is that if
I DID really see it, then I CAN glance for witches after all.
Good job Kate! I didn’t like the reference to fortune telling, because it didn’t seem at all related, but the rest of it read so well! The teller’s voice was well done. I could easily picture her frustration.
Thanks Mirel! I put in about the fortune telling because I think isn’t glancing a gypsy word for fortune telling?? I thought it was, and i didn’t want to confuse the reader, but it looks like I did anyway…haha
Oh well, guess I’m just not up to date with my Roma…
I’ve searched the encyclypaedias but there’s no mention of glancing as used in fortune telling, only ‘referring obliquely and indirectly to something’. Would this be the same as the glancing you mentioned? I have come across the word in a scene with a gypsey fortune teller.
I’m responding to your reply because I think in a Romany setting there’s a huge story waiting to be told .
I did a little research online into the Roma community for my nanowrimo story last year. There are a lot of interesting facts about them, and I suspect there are MANY tales to be told. I can’t remember where I read about glancing though.
I liked the fact that something is weird with Ms Loveheart. This is a nice twist. Add a few setting details, write a few more chapters, and I would read it.
Thanks James! I’m glad you said that because its for my WIP – writing a little bit every day, and The Write practice is helping inspire me!
When you are ready for a different pair of eyes, I’m looking for a few online critique buddies. I’ve loaded up my first three chapters at vozey.wordpress.com. Beginnings are the most important part and I know if I can get the reader hooked on the first few pages, I can make a good impression with the rest of the book.
Good Luck!
Yes I saw that James! I will take a look! Bear with me a little bit (kids, work, homelife etc), but i am more than happy to take a look.
Oh yeah, I get frustrated. Especially because when you think about when the dream started, and you think you’ve been writing for such a long time….but of course when you really think about it, you have been writing for such a long time, just not always with consistency, and also not writing enough.
So I get frustrated. I eat a chocolate. Then I get back to it.
And on that note, I’m going to go write now.
I really appreciated this post as I do most of them.. I wrote consistently for about 6 years and just stopped after college. I am getting back into the swing of things but boy is it hard.
I loved this post. Being a writer takes time. Lots of it. I say we don’t judge what we have accomplished for at least a decade.
I do it for fun. Yes, I have the thought that no one would ever want to read it. But, that doesn’t matter. If we wrote what we thought other people wanted to read, we would end up with garbage. We have a tendency to wear our hearts on our sleeve which we leave in safe that is in our vault that has two-foot-thick walls of titanium. When you write you SHOULD pour yourself into the work. We should write as if no one is going to read it. Because if we think that someone is going to read it, we tend to censor the most important things we want to write.
I agree. Writing for me is an activity of pure inspiration. I can’t drive myself to do it, which is why I have to earn a living in other ways. I have recently found that I can, even in the midst of a crazy schedule, find time to write a little, and when I do, I feel more grounded and integrated with my life. I never want to lose that feeling by forcing my writing into a box of prepackaged munchies for general consumption. I do however work on writing in a way that is comprehensible and interesting to as many people as possible without producing a lot of jargon or adding more babble to an already babble filled world.
I think of my story in terms of my goals. I want to write something that I feel is good. I don’t start thinking about it from outside of myself until I begin a serious edit.
“I can’t drive myself to do it” I agree and disagree. If you truly don’t want to do it, you won’t do anything good if you tried. Yet, sometimes we need to make sure we are behind the wheel when it is time to drive. And sometimes all it takes for me to write a whole chapter is to sit down and write the first sentence.
I didn’t realize I wanted to be a writer until I took a creative writing class while an undergrad some 20 odd years ago when my professor told me I had potential. No teacher had ever told me I was good at anything. I wrote like crazy and won a few contests and then life set in. I had children and started teaching. I thought I would write during the summers. Boy, was I wrong. I was worn out from the school year and had to play catch up on everything else. It wasn’t until my children were grown and gone that I started back. At 51, I just graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing from SNHU. Now I write almost every day. I’ve completed two novels and have two more underway. But have I learned everything there is to know about writing? No, and I’m not sure I ever will. That doesn’t stop me from trying.
I loved this post. Thanks for allowing me to share.
Getting better at anything requires a little pride and a little humility. When you think that you can’t get better at writing you won’t. Good Luck!
Thanks for the post. I’m also a Malcolm Gladwell fan. I am curious about the balance between reading and writing, though. At what point does reading become a distraction from writing? Ideally reading and writing should go hand in hand. Reading inspires writing, and writing informs reading. But there are times when I fall asleep in my reading. That’s not bad. I love reading for pleasure and escape, but I’m not sure I should count those hours toward my 10,000. 🙂
Great question! I think there are really two kinds of reading: passive reading where you’re just reading for entertainment or inspiration, and deep reading, where you’re studying ever sentence and trying to understand how the author is doing what he or she is doing. The former, while fun and important, probably won’t move you toward those 10,000 hours. I’d argue that latter, on the other hand, does, especially if combined with practice in the lessons you’ve learned from that author.
What do you think?
I think there are many kinds of reading, but the reading I find most satisfying belongs to authors who write the way I do. I read lots of really fine stream of consciousness writing and writing rich in imagery because it pleases me and satisfies me from a writing point of view as well as a personal choice. Authors such as Colum McCann, Louise Erdrich and Wallace Stegner are some of the authors I admire a great deal and would like to emulate. The reading I do right before I go to sleep is usually not as refined and more on the lines of a fast moving, entertaining story rather than deep, rich literature. We like all kinds of food from gourmet where we savor every bite, to the fast food we pick up on the way to somewhere else. Why can’t our enjoyment of books reflect the same?
I find the deep reading SO hard to do. I just get lost in the words and the worlds and end up realising I’ve just read 5 chapters without paying attention to the craft. Which really attests to the quality of the authors that I’m reading, of course, but doens’t help me any!!!
I’ve yet to try this, but I might just have to. If you LOVED the book, read it again. How did they do it? Still don’t know, read it again.
Another approach is what I am planning to do for the final revision of my WIP novel. Take one sentence at a time, then re-examine the paragraph. Then, take a look at the scene. Write down what you like about it, what you don’t like about it, things it does to keep the tension, how the characters are developed in the scene. Rinse and repeat until the end of the chapter. Then, critique the chapter as a whole.
That’s what I was trying to say!
I agree, Joe, though I also think a certain amount of reading for pleasure is required. You don’t feel the joy of speed mucking around in a Porshe’s engine. You need to experience the parts and the whole.
I read on a website that we must read like writers, which means always thinking of what the next scene should be, searching for hidden bombs (an oblique mention of something to happen later), characterisation, dialogue, etc. Read with a pen and notebook by your side.
Here is my practice:
Teenagers aren’t supposed to be ambitious. Movies and media tell me that if I’m zealous about anything, it should be drugs, sex or blind rebellion. Sometimes, I feel alone. I have higher ambitions that that. I don’t see any reason why I can’t start right now. I’ve been writing longer than many published authors anyway, and have taken every shot of advice given to me. Professionals will slap me on the back and smile, as though it’s refreshing to see someone so young and yet so sincere in what they want to do. But when I try to enter the same world that grown up writers are living in, they shoo me away and say I’m too young. “You don’t have enough experience.” “How much can you REALLY know about writing?” It frustrates me because to a certain degree, I know they’re right. Even though I’ve read every book i can get my hands on, and written every day for seven years, I still lack something called life experience. My better instincts tell me that I should just wait; finish high school, finish college and then I’ll see how much better I am. But the other part of me is ready, and doesn’t want to wait. Not necessarily because I’m impatient, but because I know I have the tools, and it feels as though if I don’t use them now, they will become stale and cold if I don’t put myself out there soon.
There are so many voices, and I don’t know which one is right.
I’ve been chasing dreams since I was ten. I’ve never stopped. The dreams may have changed over time, but I’ve no regrets. Don’t let anyone put limits on what you can do.Most people want you to accomplish nothing so they feel better about being too cowardly to dream.
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
by E.E. Cummings
Thanks for this! I am a cummings fan but did not know this one.
This and Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven are probably my two favorite poems.
very good. I had nearly forgotten how much I hated being told I was too young, when I was too young. Now I am too old, and I don’t feel old at all. You will find your voice and then no one can stop you.
Someone once said only old people should be allowed to write, because they have a lifetime of experiences to relate.Lol.
The voice inside, that quietly insistent one, is telling the truth. Get it out there, girl! You will write different things, and differently, when you are older, but you will not be able to write then what you can now.
In the word (singular) of Neil Gaiman: Write.
Still, I’d love to hear about successful authors (if there are any) who didn’t even START until they were almost 40… :-/
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Frank McCourt
Mary Wesley
Richard Chandler
Harriet Doerr
Richard Adam – Watership Down
Lots more, I’m sure
I’m 42 and I only started last year…keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks for this great list!!
Well, I remember your practices. I think you are doing great.
Thanks James!!
glad it’s not just me! 😀
awesome, thank you. 🙂
Mark Twain. He was 41 when he published his first novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Wow. Thank you for the reality check. I’ve probably actually written for 1/10th of that. Yet I’m encouraged to see the forest for the trees – I want to “make it” and be successful NOW. Yet any level of greatness takes incredible discipline, which I have so little of.
I’ve got in at least 1000 of those from school and college.
Another 1000 or so from writing on my own…
If we all write for 6 hours a day for the next 5 years, we should easily get those 10,000 hours under our belts. Imagine all the novels, poems and short stories we could write in that time! Who’s with me?
Ha! Who has time to write for 6 hours a day!
I bet if you hit the half way mark, you’ll be better than most of today’s writers.
Let’s write literary quality novels! Who’s with us!?
I’m trying!
I’ll be with you Sara. 🙂
Hi, this is my very first practice, eek!:
She sat with pen in hand, staring furiously at the blank
blank blank of the page.
She felt that old hot sensation prickling at the back of her
head, burning up through her head around to the front of her forehead –
concentrating between the eyes. It quickly spread in little waves and ripples
over shoulders and settled in the very pit of her stomach.
She recognised this sensation as the chemistry of
inspiration working its curious alchemy over her thoughts. Let them be gold
this time, let them be gold, she thought to herself.
But nothing came out.
She put down the pen and, chin in hand, flicked her eyes
over the cafe – checking to see if anyone knew, if they were watching, seeing
her fail.
It just wouldn’t happen. She stopped and thought some more
about the plot. Ran through a quick literary analysis of her characters:
“A brilliant but confused young artist, she hasn’t produced
anything for too long because, like her country, she has stagnated in terms of
creativity. She begins to panic and gives up on the creative life, and as her
life unravels she begins to question whether art means anything in the real
world at all.”
“A couple who have lived a bohemian and rebellious lifestyle
have not acknowledged the depth of the impact that their puritanical
upbringings have had on their attempt at liberation.”
She could write an academic essay about the work before she
could make the plot come together.
So she stopped. Like she always did. Her work had so much
meaning, if only it could come into existence, she thought to herself. And if
it didn’t just pour out onto the page like the porridge from the magic cooking
pot in that fairytale, what did it mean about her as a writer?
It meant she couldn’t hack it, she thought, as she always
did. “I just can’t hack it” she said out loud before she realised what she was
doing. She looked around, expecting to meet laughing or questioning or even cruel
eyes.
But no one looked up. No one was listening.
My practice:
“Mom, this is the one.” I scrutinized the desired birthday bike, on the webpage that remained standing after more than an hour’s intense sifting today alone. A sinewy geometry of charcoal and tangerine, this bike would scratch a nameless itch in my 12 year old son. How do you solve the puzzle of needing to be tough, to let out a little of that mean tide that rises in its time, and not wanting to let go of the gentle side? The contours of this BMX bike looked like they fit in that hole.
The online videos always make it look easy. Perhaps what distinguishes the best professional coaches in any sport is the ability to put into words exactly what muscles need to do, and in a way that makes sense to someone else’s muscles. I have not seen any online teen BMXers able to do that.
Bike acquired (and assembled), he nearly turned back at the park. Older kids, and some younger, were showing off tricks, and there was nowhere to practice alone. Hours later, he’d had only a hint of being able to lift both wheels. Weeks later, only a little more. He was mad at the bike, mad at me, mad. A week of real coaching in the summer (oh, only in America!) brought him face-to-face with some concrete, and the concrete realization that
this was not his road to that ineffable coolness. I don’t know when or if he
will know that he already had that puzzle piece when he entered that park,
stuck out that week of coaching, and gave every try his all.
It may be just me, but I felt kind of lost. I see the emotion and can feel some tension in it, but there are parts that I had to reread a few times to understand, and other parts I simply didn’t quite understand what you were trying to say.
If someone would second that the piece needs more clarity, I might suggest trying to write your ideas out simplistically first, and then lay on the details and description.
I’ve struggle with clarity in the past. For me, I was trying to graduate from simplistic writing to a more stylistic prose. It takes time and practice.
I really liked the ideas that I could understand. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks James! I wondered if it needed a tighter focus when I was writing it, and I think the bike park scene is the right place as it is the emotional crux. Does that seem right to you? I see what you mean about simpler language first, then add on.
We are asked to “write for 15 minutes” and I always struggle to balance the dump-it-on-the-keyboard part with the clean-it-up part, all in around 15 minutes. This time I was doing both, sentence by sentence (dump, revise, place period, repeat) but I think I should reject that process.
Getting something down in these practices is fine, but you aren’t limited to 15 minutes. The time limit is just to help you get start within 15 minutes. Spend as much time as you want writing and revising. I, personally, am not afraid of long posts. They are usually the best anyway.
The 5 types of Anti-Heroes is open again. Looks like it got skipped since it was broke for a while. https://thewritepractice.com/anti-heroes/
Well, if I take this post at face value, I’ll never be a writer. I apparently don’t read enough, mostly cause I read too slow. Often I read at the end of the day and most of the time I wake up two hours later to find the book is on the floor and have no Idea what page I was on. Maybe it was a tough day at work or maybe it was one too many beers after that tough day at work. In any case the net result is the same. “Where was I … ?” Then you start the power-skim of the pages to try and figure out if you’ve read this or that. You know, you’ve done it, I know you have.
Still, I’m not going to let that totally shatter my delusions of writing something of worth someday. It’s always been there, that oft-times annoying, I don’t know, pang if you will, to pen something that others might find interesting enough to give up a few hours of their time to read. They’d have to read it because my monotone, nasally voice would most likely scratch their eardrums and cause any substantive worth of my words to be lost to sensory annoyance. Kind of like “that” teacher, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Icky-Voice-Bore-You-To-Death that we’ve all had at least once in our curricular careers. And besides, most speakers gain their validity through writing. Maybe that will spare you all the sensory disappointment of my speaking voice. After all, I’m not a writer yet.
Well, my fifteen minutes were up, I don’t know, at least seven or eight minutes ago, but look – I wrote something! No, it doesn’t make me a writer, I was however, an editor. Still, one can hope. So I’ll keep reading and sleeping and skimming and re-reading and writing and editing and who knows – maybe some day I’ll be a writer?
What you put out is pretty accurate, I feel that the article is relatively stable in terms of content as well as valuable information. I love it.
Thank you, this is just what I needed to hear! Great post.