Day 4 of the Habits of Great Writers Challenge
Twelve years
ago, I was a member of my middle school orchestra. (I played voila, thank you
very much). The orchestra teacher was kind of psychotic, which is a great thing
for a public school (please note my sarcasm) but she did teach our class one concept
that stuck:
“Practice
makes permanent.”
She stressed
that even if you practice endlessly, you can’t guarantee that it will be
perfect. If you practice the wrong hand position or the wrong finger placement,
it will be permanent, and definitely not perfect. Therefore, practice makes
permanent. It was a pessimistic lesson for a bunch of 7th graders,
but it was an important one.
In the case
of orchestra, “Practice makes permanent” is a bad thing, or it can be. However,
in the case of writing, it’s a good thing.
If you write
daily, then it will become easier to pick up the pen or turn on the laptop and
start pecking away. Writing 300 words a day will turn into 500 a day and even
hopefully 1000 words daily. Luckily though, there’s nothing permanent in
writing. That’s what editing is for. There’s just something permanent in the writing habit.
So I
practice. I open my story document – saved on my Darth Vader USB drive
(borrowed from my boyfriend) and I write. Some days I just stare. Some days I
add comments: “This needs work.” “Describe the character here.” “WHERE’S THE
TENSION?!”
You know,
helpful reminders. A few days later, the document will be full of comments. Some
days it so full of notes that it’s tough to look at. But with work, and a
little writing, I can have it comment-clean and a few pages longer within a
week. Then the writing, re-reading, editing, extending process starts again. It’s
a long one, and it’s definitely confusing, but there’s always progress. And
progress is the point, as well as creating the permanent, but not always
perfect, writing habit.
Here’s some
helpful blog posts on creating a writing habit:
