Practice Makes Perfect

But what practice are you trying to perfect?

In his book Outliers Malcolm Gladwell posited that to become really good at something (other than sports), you needed to practice for about 10,000 hours. He's been quick to point out that the 10,000 hours of practice isn't enough by itself.

James Clear espouses the concept of “deliberate practice.” He describes a mindfulness approach to practice involving experimenting and refining. He also points out that you need feedback – usually measurement and coaching. Without the feedback, it's only repetition.

Repeating the same mistake over and over just makes it harder to stop.

New writers have been told to write a million words and throw them away. Maybe it was David Eddings. Perhaps Jerry Pournelle or Ray Bradbury. Maybe even Elmore Leonard[1], but the point being that it takes that long to get good.

But where do writers get valid feedback?

Clear points to coaching.

A good mentor can help a new writer. Working with such a mentor is the gold standard of coaching but busy writers have their own work to publish. Finding the right mentor can feel like trying to find a marriage partner. Right or wrong, a mentor can change your life “for better or worse” as the saying goes.

A lot of writers swear by critique groups. The upside to them rests on the supposed expertise of your fellow group members. The downside comes when the critic's vision for what your story needs to be doesn't match your own. Or when the feedback feels more like “I needed to find something wrong so I'm going to hammer on this.”

Some writers hire editors to do a developmental edit on the manuscript to help point out the flaws that might be invisible to the author. We tend to see what we think is on the page, after all, not necessarily what's actually written. This can be expensive over the course of your apprenticeship. It suffers from the same drawbacks as critique groups. Most developmental editors have a framework. If your story doesn't fit that frame – like you're trying for a four-act, kishōtenketsu story but the editor keeps trying to shoehorn it into three-acts with appropriate stakes to drive the story forward.

I am not knocking either of those two paths. Finding some good experienced writers or editors to pursue your craft with can be beneficial. Choosing the correct critique group or editor feels a lot like dating. If your partner only wants you do it their way, it might not be a good fit.

Beta readers offer another path. You offer the book to some trusted readers to tell you what they think of it. For new writers, finding those readers can be nigh on impossible. For established writers, finding good ones takes time and effort.

I've seen authors ask beta readers to fill out a 20-question survey about the story in detail. That's probably not a good approach when you're asking somebody to do you a favor. Personally, I ask “Does the story work for you?” and let it go at that. I usually get a lot more feedback, but I leave it up to them as to how much or how little.

Again, “This was great!” is less than optimal, but welcome, nevertheless. I always keep in mind the advice Neil Gaiman gives:

“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

If coaching seems problematic, then measurement must be pointless.

You can only measure so many things. Hours spent putting words on the page. The number of words you put on the page today. The number of cups of your favorite beverage it took you to spend those hours and write those words.

None of those things really matter if you're not thinking about what you're doing. If you're not experimenting and refining. You can't really measure an experiment except by trying it out and that means publishing.

What's the point of writing something and stuffing it in a drawer? A lot of authors have done it. While we occasionally hear about somebody's work being discovered after they've died, I suspect some real geniuses have never been discovered because their heirs just tossed the piles of paper out.

Those seeking the traditional path have the worst path to walk. Submitting manuscripts into the void, competing for the limited openings. They measure their progress by how many rejections they get, how many partial – even full – requests that didn't pan out.

Some will look at their writing and think “I need to get better” without considering that the rejection might have nothing to do with the work and more to do with the fact that the publisher just signed a book last week that's too similar to the one you sent them. Or they're having a bad day at the coffee machine. Or they didn't like your query letter. You just never know. It can take you weeks or months before you get any actual feedback from an agent or publisher and years before the books get offered to readers.

What do you do in the meantime?

Self-published authors offer their books to readers within a few weeks. I'm not suggesting the process is any less rigorous in terms of production and distribution. Just that the author can agree with their editors or not. At least that got the feedback. True, the books might not sell but that's hardly different from being traditionally published.

The abbreviated timeline represents something more important to a writer.

Closure.

We're trained to make things better. We draft and polish until the story shines. Sometimes we polish too much, taking the edge off and ruining it.

What we're not trained in is letting go. Pushing the ugly duckling out of the nest to swim on its own for better or worse.

You want feedback? Get it from readers. Even not selling is feedback of a sort.

The first few books will fall flat. You'll be tempted to shotgun a bunch of niches to see which one you get traction in. That's seldom effective, but a lot of people try it.

Getting your first novel out the door represents a giant step on the road to improving your writing. Once it's gone, you can look back and think about what you might have done differently, perhaps better. Maybe the ending could have been stronger. Was the main character too perfect? Or maybe too stupid?

Reflecting on what you wanted from the story compared to what you got can be pretty effective feedback. You have to let it go – publish it – before you can reflect in any kind of meaningful way. Without that step, you're just doing another draft. A draft that may not be better, might even be worse.

It's just repetition, not deliberate practice.


Next up: All-in Or Wide?


1. Woodward, K., “One Million Words To Competency,” Who Said It First?” March 14, 2014.