A Quarter Million Words

[TyredSoul]

It has been said by people more well-versed in writing than I that an aspiring novelist will have to slave over nearly a quarter million words before he or she actually understands the craft.

The more I think about this, the more I realize it is "true" and the less I hope that it is.

Discuss.

[RIGg0rMORtis]

This is true for pretty much everything. You're not really an artist until you've filled a thousand canvases, you're not a golfer until you've hit ten thousand balls, etc and so on. Hell, according to Malcolm Gladwell, the amount of time you put into something can be the most important determination of success, more so than any innate talent. In "Outliers", he writes that success in any kind of field or skill is largely dependent on the "10,000-Hour Rule," i.e., practicing a task for more than 10,000 hours.

It's dispiriting to think that such a colossal investment is necessary, but if you think about it, it's actually kind of encouraging that success may just be a result of a brute force, too-dumb-to-quit mentality.

So hunker down and get typing. Hey, by writing this, I'm 139 words closer to greatness!

[Coop]

At 3/21/11 10:30 PM, RIGg0rMORtis wrote: Hell, according to Malcolm Gladwell, the amount of time you put into something can be the most important determination of success, more so than any innate talent. In "Outliers", he writes that success in any kind of field or skill is largely dependent on the "10,000-Hour Rule," i.e., practicing a task for more than 10,000 hours.

I'm not sure I agree with that - by the time I have spent 10,000 hours playing cricket, that's over a solid year of playing. 52 weekend cricket matches, which is about 3-4 years of cricket seasons, including the practice and the Wednesday night leagues. I'm still not really that good.

Writing, I'm really not sure how much I've done, but I think that the BBS has been a massive contributor to my practice - I know that I can type much faster now, thanks to all of the practice that 20,000+ posts has given me :P

[Version2]

At 3/23/11 07:25 PM, Coop wrote: I'm not sure I agree with that - by the time I have spent 10,000 hours playing cricket, that's over a solid year of playing. 52 weekend cricket matches, which is about 3-4 years of cricket seasons, including the practice and the Wednesday night leagues. I'm still not really that good.

It's more of just a general rule of thumb, and I've really only seen it when it relates to more cerebral activities. I'm not sure that it relates all that well to sports and physical activities because of all the variables your body introduces (general fitness and health, age, injuries, ect.).

But the thing I think everyone forgets when talking about the 10,000 hour (or million word) rule is, that's about how long it will take to become an expert. It doesn't take that long to become proficient at something. If you're aiming to become an expert, then yeah, study, and write until you know everything there is to know about writing. But if you're just writing just as a hobby, don't worry about it. Get to where you're comfortable, then just have fun.