Guest Post: Thousands of Hours

Today I have a guest post from my good friend, Liz Chapman! She's an actress and a poet and several other things, but most importantly a good friend to me and Seve. I've asked her to muse about the craft of writing. You can check out her blog here.

My mom recalls the first word I ever wrote. “Snake.” I’m not sure what sort of psychological implications that particular word has, but I like that my mom remembers that. (She does not, however, remember the first word I ever said.) I think I’ve always been a writer. I hate phrases like that. “I’ve always been a writer.” It’s absurdly pretentious. But I guess it’s true. I didn’t realize it until 8th grade or so, and even then, it wasn’t some earth-shattering realization. The fact that I wrote things didn’t seem noteworthy to me. It was just something I did.

The earth-shattering realization I’m having now is that if I have any sort of aptitude for writing, it’s more because of repetition and practice than any kind of innate talent. I don’t have an enormous publication record that started when I was 11 or something crazy like that. But I have been keeping regular journals since 8th grade. I’ve been blogging for around ten years. My minor in college was English. And after doing something fairly regularly for long enough, you start to figure it out.

Have you heard of the “10,000 hour rule”? Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea in his book, “Outliers.” The basic idea is that if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you become an expert at it. I think the truth is probably more complicated, but I think I agree that time equals expertise.

Take Ray Bradbury. When Ray Bradbury was a kid, he used to hang around traveling carnivals and circuses that came into town. When he was 12, the carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, touched Bradbury with his sword and said, “Live forever!” Bradbury said later, “I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.”

And when he says he started writing every day, he meant it. He wrote 1,000 words a day. Every day. And he says that for the first ten years, most of it was pretty bad. And then, when he was 22, he sat at the typewriter and wrote out the short story “The Lake.” It took him two hours, and when he finished, he said that he was sitting at the typewriter, weeping, because he realized that he “had turned a corner in becoming a writer.” He said he realized that he’d written the first short story that was really good. After ten years, a thousand words a day of writing.

Here’s what’s truly beautiful about that story. He persisted in doing something every single day for ten years before he felt he was any good at it. That’s amazing. Maybe I’m just a crappy person, but I can’t think of a single thing I’d be willing to do for ten years without being good at it. I’m too impatient. I think I’d give up after a few months. My track record of trying new things has a pretty steady pattern: If I’m okay at it, if I can figure it out, I keep going. If I suck, I tend to give it up.

But I’m learning a valuable lesson from Bradbury, and from Tina Fey, and from fellow English teachers, and from every other talented and accomplished person that I admire. That for the majority of people, there’s this uncomfortable beginning and middle stage of just not being any good. You may have one glimmering tiny moment of success, and if you’re passionate about something, it can sustain you for a year. And then you’ll have another little glimpse of success, and that will carry you through another year. And then, after a long while, you’ll turn a corner, and the moments of accomplishment will happen more often, with fewer times of not being any good.

I think it will always be difficult. Writing, I mean. Or acting. Or teaching. Or anything. I don’t think you ever get to a point where it’s easy. But if you do something enough, you’ll get to a point where, like Ray Bradbury, you look back and realize that you’ve written 27 novels, and 600+ short stories, and that most of them are pretty good.

Or maybe you’ll just start with a guest blog post or two.

(Thanks to the Ray Bradbury website and Random House Audible’s audiobook “The Fantastic Tales of Ray Bradbury” for the stories!)

Voices

Nathan Bransford had a really great post recently on the temptation of abandoning social media. I've only done so when pregnant, because . . . you know. I threw up a lot and got reclusive and kind of crazy. But I've been tempted to leave again, because writing a book is kind of like being pregnant, the throwing up and the reclusiveness and the crazy.

I've been thinking about the culture with each account, though. My Art & Artist post was more in the vein of Tumblr, where we embrace righteous anger and are unabashed in our confessions of depression and anxiety and Netflix bingeing. Why I posted it to Blogspot, where we apologize before describing human emotions, I'm not sure. Probably because I don't have a wide audience. I know all of you personally and consider you my friends, where on Tumblr they're all my friends too, but I've never seen the faces behind the avatars. And Twitter's more like one big cafeteria where we all get to together to tell jokes and engage in that strange mix of cynicism and kindness.

But Tumblr allows itself to be honest and gritty because the culture is all about anonymity, and never handing out your handle to your in-real-life friends (which I've done . . . for some reason). Blogspot (or regular blogs in general) are more about marketing and promotion of your real self, and therefore require highlighting and censoring where appropriate. You have to choose your voice carefully, depending on which venue you choose. And you know what kind of voices to expect from each venue.

But sometimes the voices can be so overwhelming. The internet is just so many voices, and even when I agree with the anger, or join with the laughter, sometimes by the end of the day I feel jumbled and confused and can't find where I am mentally. And I still don't know where to add my voice, despite the years I've had to choose. Where can I discuss my frustration over my faith while having it still be understood that I'm faithful? Where can I post about my children and marriage without feeling like I'm revealing too much of my personal life? Where can I post about fear and anxieties without inviting eye rolls or cruel comments?

I don't know, man, I don't know. Sometimes I'm tempted to turn this blog into a cold, professional website where all the posts are gone and it's simply a basic listing of who I am, in the impersonal manner, and what I offer, and where you can contact me. And to dive into an anonymous Tumblr to satisfy that weird desire to publish my thoughts. I don't know, man, I don't know.

St. Vincent & David Byrne have a song called "I Should Watch TV" where the opening lyrics are:

I used to think that I should watch TV
I used to think that it was good for me
Wanted to know what folks were thinking
To understand the land I live in
And I would lose myself
And it would set me free

This is the place where common people go
A global franchise; one department store
Yes, there were many awkward moments
I had to do some self-atonement
Well, if I opened up
Well, it would set me free

I feel this way about the internet, but the difference is that TV is one sided; it talks at you whereas the internet engages with you. It's the screen you reach through and other human beings reach back in return. With that knowledge I don't want to give in to shyness or fear, I want to keep reaching.

It's good to lose and it's good to win sometimes
It's good to die and it's good be alive
Maybe someday we can stand together
Not afraid of what we see
Maybe someday understand them better
The weird things inside of me

The Dire Dash

I came across this photo while searching through some folders today. This photo was taken in a moment of desperation, while I was crying in a borrowed car.

This was just after I had dropped my camera during a wedding photo shoot. My grandfather had lent me a neck strap because I didn't own one at the time, and I soon found out that the strap was faulty. I had been standing on a chair trying to get an interesting shot of the bride having her make-up done when my camera fell from my neck and onto the floor with a thud. At least it didn't land on the bride, I remember thinking. But when I picked up the camera to continue, my lens wouldn't focus, the shutter speed wouldn't adjust, and I couldn't access the menu. The camera I had saved up for for a year was suddenly rendered useless, and I didn't have the means to repair it, much less get a new one. The next day I was scheduled to fly out for the sole purpose of taking my mother's author photo.

My uncle, who had invited me to shoot the wedding with him, must have seen all this cross my face. He tried to console me saying he'd been there before when he dropped his Canon in a stream once. He immediately offered me his car keys and told me to drive to a local camera shop to have it checked out, see just what the damage was, and get an estimate. Perhaps the mirror just needed to be adjusted, perhaps it was a simple fix.

I drove around Portland lost, not because I didn't know the streets but because I just couldn't get myself together. So much more had happened that day to lead up to that awful moment. Seve and I stressed about our finances, stressed about finding a job. Stressed about leaving Simon behind for the day for a photo shoot none of us were being paid for. Stressed over a thousand other things I can't even remember now.

I eventually found the camera shop where a kind man in a paisley shirt named Tom fiddled with my camera only to tell me he wasn't sure what was wrong, not specifically, but something on the interior must have been damaged and it would likely be cheaper to replace the camera than repair it. An estimate of about $1000 was given to open the body and find out for sure. Having held my emotions in check up until this point, I headed back out to the car where I locked myself inside. Cried. Felt stupid.

At that time everything felt so dire. It's weird to look back on it now. I remember praying, though I don't remember what I said. It wasn't all about the camera, but some group of words all blubbered together about everything I was terrified over. And after that prayer, I picked up my camera to take a shot, which actually took. The lens whirred and the shutter shutted and that's where the picture for this post came from. So, this shot, this boring shot of a borrowed car's dashboard, actually means a lot to me, as it was the revival of my camera in my moment of need. And my camera works fine to this day.

Thanks for letting me borrow your car, Uncle John. Thanks for the neck strap, Gramps, but unfortunately I'll just need to buy my own. Should have bought one a long time ago. And thanks for my answered prayer, Father. Things have worked out after all.