How many times has someone mentioned to you that they’d like
to write a book—or that they have a great idea for a book? I’ve heard those
statements, or similar ones, more than once. Sometimes people come across as
thinking it’s not that difficult to write and get published. And if you haven’t succeeded, what’s wrong? Those of us who have been writing for awhile
know how much work it actually takes to get even close to being “good” at it.
Or do we? Today, author Dorothy Love
shares interesting and encouraging information. ~ Dawn
Writing
Toward Excellence:
The Ten Thousand Hour Rule
By
Dorothy Love
You’re discouraged. Contest judges, agents and editors are
less than enthusiastic about your most recent effort. Maybe time constraints are weighing you down.
A second job eats up most of your productive hours. Kids must be driven to and
fro. A parent gets sick and suddenly you’re a caregiver. Off and on for years,
you’ve worked on a novel. Or many novels. Or a nonfiction book you’re dying to
publish. You despair of ever landing that first contract , or you’re worrying
that your first books won’t be good enough to land you a second one. You wonder
whether you should give up.
Here’s my question: How many hours, total, have you devoted
to your writing? Five hundred? A
thousand? Five thousand?
In his fascinating book, Outliers
The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
describes a study conducted at the Berlin Academy of Music. With the
advice of the academy’s professors, a team of psychologists divided the school’s
violinists into three groups. In the first group were the excellent musicians,
the so-called “stars.” In the second group were those judged to be “good.” The third group comprised of students with
the least potential to ever play professionally. All of them had begun playing at around five
years of age, and for the first few years, all of them practiced for two or
three hours a week. But beginning at around age eight, the students who would
end up in the “excellent” group began practicing more than anyone else: six
hours a week by age 9, eight hours a week by age 12, sixteen hours a week by
age 14, until at age 20, they were playing and practicing over 30 hours a
week. By the age of 20, the “stars” had
totaled ten thousand hours of practice, in contrast to the “good” players who
had amassed eight thousand hours, while those in the bottom group had practiced
a total of around four thousand hours.
Studies of basketball players, chess players, master
criminals, and yes, fiction writers yielded similar results. Neurologist Daniel Levitin: “… ten thousand
hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with
being a world class expert—in anything. It seems that it takes the brain this
long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
What can writers learn from this?
To move from average to good to excellent, you must write
with intent, with an inclination of spirit and soul, with an eagerness to work
and to improve. Secondly, be patient.
Unless you have a trust fund that allows you to write to the exclusion of all
else, it will take a very long time to get to the ten thousand hour mark. But
every hour that you are writing or revising counts toward that goal of
excellence. Don’t quit before you get
there.
How many hours have you practiced so far? How many hours did
you practice today?
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Award winning author Dorothy Love is the author of
sixteen novels for preteens, young adults and adults. After a long career in
the general market, in 2009 she moved to Thomas Nelson to write Southern
historical fiction. Her popular Hickory Ridge series winds up this November
with publication of EVERY PERFECT GIFT.
Currently she’s working on a new historical novel set in the South
Carolina Lowcountry, set for publication in 2013.
To find out more about Dorothy and her books, please visit:
twitter: WriterDorothy
