“You can always get better at something you suck at.” - Hypocrites, teaching first year medical students.
It’s difficult to be certain whether Hypocrites actually said those words, but I know he was thinking it. Or maybe it was me. I’ve been saying it for so long now that I can’t figure out from whence that statement came. But I know I like it because it’s absolutely true.
I’ve been picking up the guitar off and on since I was 12 years old. Notice how I wrote “picking up”, not “playing”. Let’s be clear, there were stretches of several years when I didn’t touch one. And sometimes when I did, I had - and I can’t stress this enough - absolutely no idea what to do with it. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I decided to start an old-guys, 80s tribute band that things got, mildly, serious. And the beautiful thing is, I’ve done nothing but get better at it. Mainly because I was impressively shitty in the first place.
Guitar playing is a lot like writing and…well, basically every other skill in life. You get better when you focus your attention on it.
Hey, thanks a lot, Scott! We all appreciate the kindergarten lesson on how to do stuff.
Yes, it may seem brain-paralyzingly obvious that the skills we develop in life take practice. What I’ve found, though, is that a lot of people don’t realize all the things they could do simply because they think they’re no good at it in the first place. How many times have you heard someone say “oh, I’m not very good at that” or “I’m not very fast” or “I’d like to sing, but my voice is bad” or “I’d love to be featured in one of those documentaries on Netflix but I don’t know the first thing about serial murder” and so on. More often than not if you ask them if they’ve every really tried, they’ll tell you “no”. That’s like me saying that I’m really bad at Latin. This is completely true. However, I’ve never attempted to learn Latin so my statement doesn’t really hold much water, does it? Which leads us back to our opening statement.
You can always get better and something you suck at. Or, if you prefer… Your focus determines your reality.
Yes, there are physical and mental limitations to what we can do. However, there is something intellectually disingenuous about claiming those limitations without taking a little time to test them out first. When we engage this thinking we do ourselves a profound disservice, especially if what we think we’re no good at is actually something we’d really like to do. And it’s shocking to find out how little time getter better - and even good - really takes.
Stephen King has famously stated that if you don’t read and write for at least 4 to 6 hours every day, then you can’t be a good writer. Moreover, it should be “easy”. Now, with all due respect to the greatest horror author of the modern era, that is a fantastical statement…and not in the super-awesome, mighty Pegasus riding a cloud of lightning on the side of a conversion van kind of way.
King is absolutely correct that writers should be reading and writing every day, but he seems to take a quantity over quality (or perhaps quantity implies quality) point of view. The sheer volume he advises is onerous for anyone who has a day job. Moreover, it discourages new writers because it sets an almost unattainable goal. Imagine feeling like an automatic failure because you can’t focus every waking hour outside of your 8-5 on getting better at writing. Especially if you’re still trying to learn that goddamn guitar solo on Rainbow in the Dark.
There’s no doubt that King has the “receipts”, as the kids say, to back up his statement. He’s been writing since he was eight years old and has sold about 147 trillion books…I’m rounding up. But his perspective might be skewed. He cut his literary teeth in the 60s and early 70s: the era of rotary phones, Viet Nam, and whatever the hell this stuff is. The landscape was radically different. The internet was over 30 years away. There were approximately three people writing horror and no one remembers the other two. Not only was horror a virtually unmined resource, but fewer people were writing in general. Publishing houses were on the look out for whatever was new and exciting, and folks were clamoring for exactly what King had to offer. He sold his first book, Carrie, in paperback for $400,000 in 1975. That’s about $2 million in today’s money. One book and he was set. I’m sure he’s never looked back.
Now, it’s important to differentiate between a good writer and a successful writer. There are elements that make for good writing but it’s still mostly a matter of taste. In his advice, King may have been thinking about his own idea of what is good and how that relates to selling books to a publisher. For him, being good or even great was a necessity if a writer wanted to be successful. A vibrant accessible internet didn’t exist at the time. The opportunity for new writers to circumvent traditional publishers, the gatekeepers of literary success, and publish their own work was still a futurist’s dream. Well, sometimes writers aren’t good or great. Their timely. They understand the market and their audience. And they’re constantly growing that audience. That’s the opportunity the internet offered. Once it arrived, people jumped on it. Writers started multiplying like tribbles at a Duggar family potluck.
It’s true that King wrote constantly, at least he used to. He also drank constantly which, he admits, became a crutch. In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, King also states that he wrote most of The Shining in one sleepless night in the lobby of the Stanley Hotel. To that I’d like to respond by quoting the late great Rick James: “Cocaine’s a helluva drug!”. But for those of us not using mind-altering performance enhancers (which King quit in the late 80s, well done sir!) or possessing the paranormal ability to crank out 25,000 words in a single night, how do we get in enough practice to go from suck → mediocre → good.
According to James Clear, it’s not about the volume at all but the consistency. His article Continuous Improvement: How it Works and How to Master It talks about tiny, yet consistent, improvements
In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. (In other words, it won’t impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don’t.
Here’s the punchline:
If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.
This is why small choices don’t make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term.
As you can probably tell, this technique could be applied to any number of skills, habits, or life goals. We’ve seen it work in language, music, and certainly in fitness/weight loss. So, why wouldn’t it work in writing? Well…it does. What if you only had an hour to read and an hour to write each day. That’s thousands of words read and potentially more than a thousand words written. Potentially. There’s always the matter of getting those ideas out of our heads and onto the paper/computer screen. They don’t always flow as easily as we’d hope. Maybe we should ask some friends to help.
Guitar playing is another perfect example. Ask any good teacher. Most of them will tell you that 15 minutes every day with a guitar is enough for even an advanced beginner to show excellent improvement. How a student practices and what they focus on in that practice session is more important. Are they struggling with new chords? Do they need to practice their scales to get better finger dexterity? Maybe they need to learn to identify the notes on a fretboard so they’ll always know what key they’re in while soloing.
According to Aaron Matthies at Guitar Gear Finder, even focused practice sessions of more than 20 minutes should be separated by short breaks. In fact, practicing for too long offers very little benefit:
The start of any practice session is an important time because it will stick in your memory due to what is called the ‘Primary Effect’.
Make the most of the first few minutes of a practice session because whatever you practice then will stick in your mind.
The end part of a practice session is the most important part and it sticks in your mind the most due to what is called the ‘Recency Effect’.
Finish your practice session with the most important thing you want to improve in your playing.
As you can see, the middle of a practice session is the least effective part.
This is why long practice sessions are horribly ineffective. A long practice session stretches out the middle period, so you end up with most of your practice session wasted as shown below:
Matthies notes that, yes, if you want to become great you’ll need to up your practice time. Long practices aren’t detrimental to progress, they just offer diminishing returns. But that’s a strategy that needs to develop over a long period in anything we want to master.
Imagine if the average person who swims a few times per week tried to copy the Olympic swimmer’s training routine. They would burn out on the first day. Their body wouldn’t be able to handle the training volume and their body would be wrecked for the next week.
So we see, going “balls out” even as an experienced guitarist can end up hurting our progress if only for the fact that we waste a lot of precious time. But if you still think quantity is where it’s at. Here’s a link to Steve Vai’s 10-hour guitar workout. Have fun.
So…back to writing. How does all this apply? You can treat writing sessions in the same way, like focused practice. Do you struggle with dialogue? Write some for 15-30 minutes a day. Would you like to get better at setting scenes or pacing? Do the same. And then go read lots of different authors from books to blogs to fantastic newsletters like this one. You’ll probably pick up just as much or more than you would reading a single book - especially if it’s boring - for several days (or in my case, weeks). It’s still learning. It’s still practice.
Besides, you’ve got a life to live; family, kids, iguanas, a fantasy football team, a Furries “party” every Thursday at nine. Hey, the world puts a bevy of constraints on our time. And it doesn’t get any easier. You’ve just finished the latest episode The Last of Us. Season 3 of The Mandolorian starts TODAY! (I seriously didn’t know that until two minutes ago). You even subscribed to Peacock so you could watch that awful Wonder Woman sequel (ugh, I had high hopes), because you just can’t get enough of this guy:
Now get to it. But start (or if you’ve been doing it for a while, continue) slowly. Don’t dwell on what published, successful, and very wealthy authors say…well, maybe a listen a little. Just remember this. Very few - if any - people pick up a pen, start writing, and vomit out thousands of lines of greatness. It simply doesn’t happen that way. But again, I hear cocaine helps. Just don’t give any to this big boy. He’s cut off.
aww, if it helps any, i've been at the guitar since the age of 10 - on and of - and i swear i played better back then than i now do as a musician!
i liked this post, Scott, it's really well-written.
Breaking the practice up is very good advice, as is regular practice. It also helps with getting into the flow, as it takes the massive pressure off having to sit through regular disciplinatory practice sessions!
Makes me want to pick up that guitar again, now! :)
Glad you liked it. During my research I found that Guitar Gear finder article which I thought was fantastic as well.
A little every day can turn into a lot. I probably need to pace myself a bit :)