I had a good wake up call this morning when I opened my morning email from Daily Writing Tips.com to find their latest blog post: “How to Become a Writer”. The post began with a simple (yet enlightening) statement:
“In order to be able to call yourself a writer, all you have to do is write.”
It’s nice to remember that as long as you are writing with some regularity, you can legitimately call yourself a writer. Now, I’m aiming to make writing my profession, which is a bit different than just being a writer, but this still made me feel really, really good. Technically, I am already a writer!
Malcolm Gladwell. Image from http://www.gladwell.com
Even better, “How to Become a Writer” reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule. For those who have not yet read Malcolm’s super interesting book Outliers: The Story of Success, the 10,000 Hour Rule is based on studies that suggest that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert*. That’s 20 hours a week for 10 years (or 40 hours a week for 5 years, or 80 hours a week for 2.5 years … you get the picture). At my current pace (with a full time job and various other pursuits on the go) I expect I’ll become a writing expert in, oh, about 20 years. Jeepers creepers.
Although it can be disheartening to think of how many hours and days and years of writing I have ahead of me before I’ll be really good at it, it’s also very exciting.
Here’s why:
1) To become a great writer, all I have to do is keep writing. I’ll be writing for the next 20 years or so before I become great, but what’s the rush really? As long as I get there one day, the journey will be worth it.
2) It’s ok that I’m not a fantastic writer yet. How can we novice writers possibly expect ourselves to write perfect prose right out of the gate when we need to log 10,000 hours of writing time before we’ll even come close to being experts? I should remember to be kind to myself when I read over my first drafts (and second drafts and third drafts…).
3) I’d better start writing more now. If it’s going to take me 20 years to become a great writer, I’d better up my weekly writing time so I can shave some time off of those 20 years. For the past few months I’ve been aiming for 1 hour of writing a day, but if I could bump that up by even half an hour, I could cut years off the time it will take me to become an expert.
These three realizations have prompted a few changes in the way I think about my novice writing life, and provided a much-needed wake up call!
What do you think about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule? Have you logged 10,000 hours of writing yet?
* If you want to hear more about the 10,000 Hour Rule, check out this interview with Malcolm Gladwell.
Image source: malcomgladwell.com
[...] this isn’t true – good writing comes from hard work and a heck of a lot of writing (10,000 hours of writing, to be exact). But there’s still something alluring to me about learning what works for other successful [...]