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So I just finished Outliers, the new Malcolm Gladwell book. I have some issues with the book, but overall it was enjoyable to read. This is not going to be a review of it, I just thought I should mention how I feel about it before continuing and thinking about what I'm going to say.
In Outliers Gladwell posits that there is a magical number of hours of practice that separates 'experts' from everyone else. 10,000 hours of practice, he says. The Beatles practiced for 10,000 hours, Bill Gates practiced for 10,000 hours. He mentions in the book, though he doesn't go into this, that fiction writers can also achieve this. It was a passing comment no big deal, but it made me think.
I've been writing for so long I can't remember a time when I didn't write. I know that my style and voice are a product of mixing the voices of my childhood and practice. I am so much better then I was when I was thirteen then I was when I was nine. Its a matter of practice, and I am very aware of this. I very much doubt that I was imbued with a natural talent for writing -- more that I had a certain creative bent in my childhood because of my mother (both in the good way where she's an artist, and in the bad way where I needed to escape into my own fantasy world to avoid her).
I'm going to say something I don't like saying -- I think I have some sort of talent now. Not that I am amazing, my writing will sweep aside Shakespeare and I will be able to look down on everyone else -- but I'm better then the average person, after all I have all that practice.
But how much practice? How much have I written and since when? I can certainly tell you about the past four years with quite a bit of clarity. I don't write every day -- time constraining me with classes and so on, plus I get writer's block (which is why I'm writing this now, avoiding something I'm writing) -- but when I do think I average seven hours in a week. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but for the most part I would say seven is pretty average for me. Multiplying that by the fifty two weeks in a year, and by four for the number of years I come out to 1,456 hours writing in the past four years. The number is probably lower -- probably around 1,200 hours of writing, but I can't tell exactly.
Five years and further back I am less aware of the amount of time I would spend writing. In this I am counting all fanfiction and RPing, though not poetry writing (probably because it takes like, three seconds to write a poem). For about a year I spent hours and hours and hours RPing (and this, I believe is the time that I got in so much of my time practicing). I would say during this time I would probably have written more then I do now, an average of about twelve hours a week writing. That comes to 624 hours spent writing (which is probably a little low).
Before that though, I'm pretty sure it was much less. I believe I began to write almost daily when I was about ten, so make that five years, but it was much less then now, so I would say maybe half an hour a day? That totals 910 hours in those five years.
So my total for the ten years I've been writing is about 3,000 (2,990) hours. Which means I'm a little less then a third away from being an 'expert' as it were. Comforting to know since I'm no where near good enough for myself. If I keep going at this rate though, I only have about five more years until I am an expert, which is also rather comforting...
Except I'm stuck and can't seem to write anything at the moment. *stares at novel editing* Somehow this did not help...
In Outliers Gladwell posits that there is a magical number of hours of practice that separates 'experts' from everyone else. 10,000 hours of practice, he says. The Beatles practiced for 10,000 hours, Bill Gates practiced for 10,000 hours. He mentions in the book, though he doesn't go into this, that fiction writers can also achieve this. It was a passing comment no big deal, but it made me think.
I've been writing for so long I can't remember a time when I didn't write. I know that my style and voice are a product of mixing the voices of my childhood and practice. I am so much better then I was when I was thirteen then I was when I was nine. Its a matter of practice, and I am very aware of this. I very much doubt that I was imbued with a natural talent for writing -- more that I had a certain creative bent in my childhood because of my mother (both in the good way where she's an artist, and in the bad way where I needed to escape into my own fantasy world to avoid her).
I'm going to say something I don't like saying -- I think I have some sort of talent now. Not that I am amazing, my writing will sweep aside Shakespeare and I will be able to look down on everyone else -- but I'm better then the average person, after all I have all that practice.
But how much practice? How much have I written and since when? I can certainly tell you about the past four years with quite a bit of clarity. I don't write every day -- time constraining me with classes and so on, plus I get writer's block (which is why I'm writing this now, avoiding something I'm writing) -- but when I do think I average seven hours in a week. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but for the most part I would say seven is pretty average for me. Multiplying that by the fifty two weeks in a year, and by four for the number of years I come out to 1,456 hours writing in the past four years. The number is probably lower -- probably around 1,200 hours of writing, but I can't tell exactly.
Five years and further back I am less aware of the amount of time I would spend writing. In this I am counting all fanfiction and RPing, though not poetry writing (probably because it takes like, three seconds to write a poem). For about a year I spent hours and hours and hours RPing (and this, I believe is the time that I got in so much of my time practicing). I would say during this time I would probably have written more then I do now, an average of about twelve hours a week writing. That comes to 624 hours spent writing (which is probably a little low).
Before that though, I'm pretty sure it was much less. I believe I began to write almost daily when I was about ten, so make that five years, but it was much less then now, so I would say maybe half an hour a day? That totals 910 hours in those five years.
So my total for the ten years I've been writing is about 3,000 (2,990) hours. Which means I'm a little less then a third away from being an 'expert' as it were. Comforting to know since I'm no where near good enough for myself. If I keep going at this rate though, I only have about five more years until I am an expert, which is also rather comforting...
Except I'm stuck and can't seem to write anything at the moment. *stares at novel editing* Somehow this did not help...
