The 10,000 Hour Rule: Is This The Key To Becoming A Better Writer?

For those of you who haven't yet heard of the 10,000 Hour Rule,  it states that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill, any skill.

That means that it would take 10 years of practicing a skill 3 hours a day, or 5 years of practicing it 6 hours a day, to become expertly proficient. 

While I am not convinced that becoming proficient really requires 10,000 hours, the premise behind the rule certainly does make sense. The more time we spend doing something (ie: perfecting it), it stands to reason that we will become more adept at that particular skill.

Writing is no exception. The more I write and the more I blog, the more comfortable I get doing it. With experience, I have found that it is easier to pull information to write about and to generate new ideas. I have also managed to become more proficient with Blogger and Wordpress, website design, HTML & CSS coding, and using Social Media networks. 

I can also see great progress as I move forward with my writing, compared with my earliest essays and blog posts. I am fairly certain that as I continue writing in the future, I will continue to grow and become better at the craft of writing.

The question then is whether my skills come from continued practice, or am I innately gifted and talented at the art of writing? I love to write and always have. Crafting stories is something that I began doing in my early childhood days and have always been good at it. Writing and storycrafting just come naturally to me.

So, could the reason that the 10,000 hour rule seems to work is that only people who are genuinely interested in and talented at something will put in the time and effort required to become proficient?  

I don't know the answer to that question, but I will say that having a desire to do something, combined with practicing that skill to increase your proficiency, certainly seems to be the winning combination.

I know for instance that I will never be a mathematician. Why? Because I absolutely hate, hate, HATE, math! It is something that I always struggled with, and never performed particularly well in. To be honest, I really don't think that even with 20,000 hours of practice (not that I could ever force myself to contribute 20,000 hours of my time to such a boring and nonrewarding endeavor), that I would ever be proficient enough at math to call myself an expert. I may be wrong on that, but I doubt it!

So, I guess I would have to say that the real key to becoming a better writing is a combination of talent, passion, and practice.

How to Finish What You Start: A Five-Step Plan for Writers

As I was reviewing some other author's blog posts last week, I came across an excellent post by Ali Luke of Aliventures. Ali is a writer and writing coach.

The post, "How to Finish What You Start: A Five-Step Plan for Writers" described me to a tee. I am that person who has a drawer full of unfinished manuscripts with more ideas coming each and every day, and the person who has had multiple blogs around the internet that have just sort of fizzled out. I have always been a starter and not much of a finisher when it comes to writing.

So imagine how offended I was (at first) when I read Ali's step #1 which states: Stop starting new projects!! My first reaction was one of immediate resistance, "But, I am a creative person. Having all these new ideas makes me feel alive!"

As I kept reading, I realized that Ali wasn't telling me to quit having ideas, just to stop trying to act on each and every one of them! Hello!! How easy is that! Just stop trying to enact them all! It almost made too much sense.

Her suggestion is to create an idea file where ideas can be jotted down to be revisited at a later time after you complete current writing projects.

I was simply amazed at how this first step hit home for me. I have always believed that if I had an idea, that I needed to jump on it and get started it with it immediately. As a result, I always ended up going Mach 10 with my hair on fire trying to juggle everything I wanted to get accomplished. This led to a quick burnout, and caused many of those great ideas to be left dangling incomplete for weeks, or months, or even years.

It never once occurred to me in all my years to just stop beginning new projects! Which leads to Ali's second step: Assess Your Current Projects.

In this step Ali encourages us to organize all of our current incomplete projects. For me this meant really taking some time to sit down and review each and every unfinished project and evaluate it for plausability. Is this project or idea something that is still relevant? Can I envision where I want the project to end up, and can I complete it? Maybe, the project is one that is no longer consistent with the direction that I want my writing to go.

Ali suggests to divide up your writing projects into three categories:

• Active Projects - these have a definite purpose and still excite and inspire you
• Dead Projects - these are no longer consistent with the direction you want to go and can be let go
• Dormant Projects -these still hold promise and you want to complete them in the near future

It is very hard to let go of ideas that seemed so promising when they first came to me, but I am only one person, so I realized that I just had to let some of my writing projects go that weren't in accord with my current writing mission and purpose. Once I decided to do this, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

For me the hardest part of this process is the third step: Choose One Project To Focus On. I have spent so much of my life having way too many irons in the fire, that it was hard to imagine focusing the majority of my time and energy on just one writing project. On the other hand though, this step makes so much sense, that I was embarrassed that it had never dawned on me before. After all, the easiest way to finish something is to just keep working at it consistently until you are done, allowing few distractions to get in the way.

So it was at this point in the process that I made an agreement with myself to dedicate myself to completing the paranormal romance manuscript that I have been intermittently working on over the last 6 months or so. With the exception of maintaining my two blogs, I am not going to write on anything else until my first manuscript is finished.

Finished. Just thinking about finally having an end product to show to the world makes me feel almost giddy inside! But, how exactly will I know when it is finished? That brings us to Ali's fourth step: Decide What Finished Will Look Like. 

At first glance this step may seem sort of silly, but think about it. If you're a perfectionist like me, finished is a lot harder to categorize. If I am going to put my name on something and send it out into the world, I want it to be the very best creation that I can make. The drawback to this line of thinking is that nothing is ever perfect, and by trying to get something perfect, I could drag the manuscript on and on indefinitely.

So I came up with two guidelines that will help me determine when my manuscript is "finished."

First, I will not edit any of the manuscript until the final chapter is complete.

Second, I will only allow myself two rewrites at maximum before I send it off to an agent or publisher.

Once I have completed those steps, then it is time to move on to the next writing project and only revisit the manuscript after a request by an editor for revisions.

Lastly, Ali suggests to Set Some Milestones (And Begin Hitting Them)! Setting small goals along the way is a great way to keep yourself motivated and to be able to track your progress. I think for my current manuscript, I will set goals of one chapter at a time.

I would just like to thank Ali for a great article. Reading it really has changed my perspective on my writing and hopefully by following her 5 steps, I will finish that first manuscript in no time!!