Practice Makes Perfect

I heard Anita Stansfield speak again at a church fireside last week, and I went up and talked to her afterward about the things I learned from her class at UVU.

We talked briefly about the concept of practicing 10,000 hours to become a grandmaster author, and she said something else that helped me out. She said that if I were practicing the piano, I would just practice over and over until I perfected a song. But when we're writing, we expect to be able to write something great the first time. I'm trying to look at my writing that way now. I need to just practice writing without feeling so serious about writing the Great American Novel every time I sit down at the computer.

So at the top of a blank page this morning, just to remind myself of what I was supposed to be doing, I wrote: "This is called PRACTICE. Imagine you are practicing the piano. Not every run through a song has to be recorded and sold. Practice writing with the same idea. It doesn’t have to fit with the rest of the storyline. You don’t have to go back and figure out exactly who said what before what you’re writing now. You do not have to use these exact words or even these very scenes in the final draft. Really. This is p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e!!"

Yes, I do think it's helping. And, yes, I did count those 79 words toward my daily wordcount. ;o) (But I'm not going to count this blog post, so I better get back to writing.)