The Learning Curve I

Another great guest post on Larry Brooks’ Storyfix.com by Art Holcomb (Dogs of War, Eternal Warriors, Killer Instinct) got me thinking about the arc of my writing career. He used the oft-cited rule that, whether it is knocking a little white ball into a small hole or flying a gargantuan sky bus full of several hundred people, becoming an expert at a given task takes approximately 10,000 hours of study and practice. This is not good news to someone coming to this craft relatively late in life.

Yes, there is Colonel Sanders and Anna Mary Robertson Moses (AKA Grandma Moses who started an art career in her seventies!) but when you look at successful authors, most of them either published their greatest works in their early years or, if they had a later best-seller, had already been writing, teaching or working as journalists for years.  Michael Crichton completed a medical degree but was already writing novels in school and never practiced a day of clinical medicine.

For me, when I do the math (I love math but not this kind) the 10,000 hours puts me somewhere in my 80’s, or at best about 70, even counting time served. I will have to pray for the genetics of my grandmother who lived to 93, and hope for ever-improving medical prosthetics.

Even that is on the assumption that my brain will still function if my body does not. Of course by then they should have prosthetic parts for the brain (read my second novel).

Yet there is hope. Steve Martin published his first novella, Shopgirl in 2000 at age 55. Since then he has written Pleasure of My Company and his latest, An Object of Beauty. All three are powerful and sensitive sketches of characters so real you can almost touch them. I like to think that they are a product of his six decades of human experience, although being a creative genius helps (major mentor alert).

So how am I, at this age, never having published anything, going to get a major novel in print? One part talent, one part informal education and about eight parts fantasy…yes, I know the odds, especially with the clock ticking. At my age, I am facing the deadline of the Divine Editor.

But I am an optimist too. As I was mulling over the issue of the 10,000 hours, I remembered a comedy routine by Mr.  Martin.

He sits on a stage doing his usual zany comedy and suddenly zones out, turning his head back and forth three or four times. Then his attention snaps back to the audience and after an ‘embarrassed’ pause, he says “Pardon me, I was just playing tennis in my mind.”

Then there was Terry Brooks’ comment about only being half there in conversations with his friends, always having his latest plot running in the back of his mind.

These examples recall a phenomenon that I experienced early in my music career. I did not start playing percussion and drum set until my freshman year in high school, so at the end of each school year, there were always a few new techniques that I was struggling to get down, Tympani tuning tricks, a double-sticking roll around the snare and toms, the double-kick on the bass drum. When the hot days of June arrived, I would just kind of give up and not touch the sticks until September. Instead of practicing over the summer, when I had more time, I would go hiking or fishing (or take calculus) and do nothing more than just think about the given drum move.

A funny thing happened in the fall. Invariably, I could sit down at the drum set at my first rehearsal, and, miraculously, my wrists and fingers knew just what to do. What was that about?

Now research into cognitive learning has answered a great part of that question. When two groups of pianists were asked to learn a piece of music, one practiced in the traditional manner with a keyboard and strings piano, playing over and over. The other group was set up with a virtual reality piano and music and never moved a muscle in practice. Yet when the two groups were compared, the virtual practice group did as well, in some cases better than the others.

I realize now, that rather than the paltry 10 hours a week that I can carve out of my life (they say it takes a minimum of 20 for a writer with a day job), I spend probably 25 to 30 hours a week, processing plot lines and scenes. I text message my home computer with quotes and ideas throughout the day. By the time I sit down to write, I already have a vivid idea of where I want the story to go.  And I have been doing this for years.

So, I know that I am not already there. I know that I have a long ways to go. But suddenly, being a true professional seems not so far off, a year, two perhaps. Certainly it depends on early success, the need to produce only polished and ready work while avoiding the trap of over-thinking my creation. But hopefully, I can get there by the express rather than the milk run. Hopefully, I will get something published while I still can remember my pen name.

So, back to the real task of….. where was I?

Pardon me, I was just writing in my mind.

Next week!

Steve