Getting Started

Well, I’m already late on getting started with this, but at least now it’s started…

Sometimes, as the years comes to an end, I get sucked in to the notion of reflection and resolutions.

Usually I’m pretty rational. I know that most resolutions fail. I know that most of us will continue to make the same mistakes we made in past years.

Reflection can be a nice way to step back and away from our year and see if there’s anything we can take from it and hopefully learn from it so we don’t keep making the same mistakes year after year.

That all having been said, I find myself looking for an interesting challenge in the coming year and it’s one that has me equal parts nervous and a bit scared, so maybe that’s a good indicator that it’s worth thinking about and, maybe, committing to.

I’ve always wanted to write more and haven’t taken the time. I just don’t. Now, whether that’s out of fear of the results not being worth reading or just because that’s not where I’ve chosen to invest my time, I just don’t know.

I think there’s some credence in Malcolm Gladwell’s notion, from his book Outliers: The Story of Success, of the “10,000-Hour Rule” which posits that the key to success in whatever you want to do rides in large part in practicing that craft for something around 10,000 hours. Whether the actual number is 4000 or 20,000, the fact remains that you’re not going to become good at something without a large number of hours of practice.

Back to writing. I wish I did it more. I lack the practice in the craft. I’ve lacked the discipline to do it regularly. I’ve lacked the opportunity for feedback that comes from sharing what I would write, even if I did write, if I don’t put that writing out there.

So my thinking has revolved around that idea, that goal. Given 10,000 hours at even 10 hours a week (assuming that I have to work for a living) comes to roughly 1000 weeks or, for the sake of round numbers, call it 20 years. I’ll be old at that point. Okay, old(er).

But, whether I put in 10,000 hours or 1000 hours, I’ll be that much more practiced in the craft after that time than where I am now. And given that I do take pride in my ability to communicate, I will get better with time and practice and study. Because I do have to study.

I’m as old as I am (which is old) and I still don’t have a good grasp on the rules of how to write dialogue. Where do the quotation marks go relative to the punctuation? I’ve been reading for more than 40 years and I haven’t internalized those rules yet. Yes, that’s mechanical, but you have to understand the mechanics and those mechanics need to stop being something you have to think constantly on before you can use that same energy to think about all the other parts that make up writing.

Sinclair Lewis said “It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.”

Using that definition, I’m clearly not a writer. I’ve discouraged myself for most of my life.

To be fair to myself, I do enjoy writing. Friends and family will tell you that I won’t say in one sentence what could probably be said in a paragraph. Ask me a one-line question and you’re more likely to get a paragraph or two back than a one-liner. When I was courting my wife, I absolutely loved writing back and forth with her and still do. She writes well and interestingly and I try, too.

But, my writing is to a small audience. Usually one or two folks or a small group. It’s typically business related or about day-to-day personal things.

In thinking about a goal and how to keep working towards it, I decided that it had to include some tangible goals. In my field there is an acronym that’s (over-)used to help with making goals and that’s that they should be: SMART. The original attribution of this goes back to an article in Management Review by George T. Doran. For a goal to be SMART, it has to be: Specific, Meaningful/Measurable, Attainable, Relevant/Realistic and Timely/Time-bound. (Note: There are lots of variations on what each letter could stand for, but we’ll go with these for now.)

Here’s what I’ve come up with.

• A minimum of 1000 words per week
• Vacations are allowed but I will not break the schedule – which means pre-writing is allowed
• Published to my blog at http://www.mossor.org/blog weekly by end of day Sunday
• The first will be this one on January 6th and end with December 29th
• The subject will vary from week to week from stories to anecdotes to, probably, random ramblings
• After the posts are up on the blog I will post a brief note on Facebook and Twitter
• Comments will be on but I will not commit to publishing all of them

That would seem to satisfy all the requirements of a SMART goal.

What I want to get out of this is some practice at writing, some discipline of doing it on a somewhat regular basis (besides furiously late on Sunday) and at least the opportunity for some feedback which seems like a must if someone is going to improve. I could write for 10,000 hours but if I don’t share it and get feedback, odds are it’ll be nearly as atrocious at the end as at the beginning.

I’ll need to give some thought to other opportunities for feedback. I could take a Creative Writing class at the Community College and try and use that as a venue for feedback. I know there are opportunities for online groups. Scribophile is one that nets you feedback from a community of writers in exchange for providing feedback yourself. So, there are a variety of opportunities to expand the pool of readers and the amount of feedback, should I choose to make that a priority.

To start with, I’ll shoot for doing this for a week or two. That seems like a commitment I can keep. It certainly feels less daunting than the notion of doing this for a year.

So, for now, I’ll start thinking about material for next week!

Thanks.