Have You Done Your 10,000 Hours?

Photo from Sodahead.com

Welcome to Techie Tuesday here at More Cowbell!

This is the day each week when I unleash my inner geek and we talk about some groovy piece of technology or a technical point of writing.

Yesterday was a rollercoaster day.

I went to my part-time day job where we just had some layoffs, and the mood was somber to say the least. At the same time, the Love Revolution cranked up to lightspeed over at Kristen Lamb’s site with the launch of WANA International.

I am SO excited about this launch! I’ve been keeping my mouth shut for months and I just want to giggle because what Kristen Lamb and Ingrid Schaffenburg have created for us artist-types goes beyond my wildest imaginings.

Kristen and Ingrid have made a welcoming home for anyone who’s an artist at heart.

So without further ado, I invite you to visit us all at www.wanaintl.com and join us in WANA Tribe (yes, I’ll be doing posts on how to rock WANA Tribe). I promise to blog more about this later in the week but for now, all you need to know is:

• We’re having a big Twitter party on Friday (initial details here)! There will be prizes and balloons, and I’m hoping to sneak in a margarita machine.
• I am teaching classes for WANA International, and they start next week. We’re kicking Week 1 off with a choice of a 1-hour webinar (Triberr 101 For the Creative Professional) OR a week-long coaching extravaganza (Demystifying Triberr) that includes the webinar plus a whole lot more. Also, we just applied a Kickoff discount to the webinar. I hope to see some of you there. 🙂

And do you know what was lurking at the edges of yesterday’s crazy highs and lows?

Fast Draft.

All of you who hang out here regularly know that a bunch of us are getting started with a program called Fast Draft this coming Thursday. For all of you that haven’t had the pleasure of Candy Havens’ class, I’m going to give you a few of the basic rules.

Note: You still want to take at least one of Candace’s classes – there’s a WHOLE LOT MORE. This is just to help those of you who are on the fence so you can decide if you’re gonna try this.

Fast Draft – Basic Rules

1. Prepare

Get your scene list in front of you, or your list of characters. Outline a little if you need to. Do what’s required for YOU to hit the page with some fervor. (Note: Candace recommends Jim Butcher’s method.)

2. Banish your internal editor

Kick that vicious bitch out of the building until the revision process starts. The End.

3. Give yourself permission to write a crappy first draft.

Yes, I know…panic. Oy, the agony! Ahhhhh, the pain. Whatever. All of you with that inner perfectionist, take heart. Here’s what Candace told me and I believe her:

It takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something.

Ten. Thousand. Hours. That means if you wrote every second of every day for the next year, you still wouldn’t quite have become a master writer.

Do you know how freeing that is for me? People who are also not “Master Writers” are selling books every day, and being quite successful at it. It’s not about being the best of anyone out there. It’s about being the best writer that you can be TODAY. The more you write, the less crappy the next first draft will be.

Just. Do. It.

4. Tell your family you need two weeks to write your book.

This is the time when you arrange child care or trade sexual favors. Do whatever you need to in order to clear the decks for a few hours of writing each day. Kathy Owen has even sanded and caulked her tub in preparation for our Fast Draft this week.

5. Set aside a specific time each day to write and stick to it.

Candace calls this a gift you can give yourself, and a gift that you are giving your family. They’d rather see you just finish the dang WIP that’s driving you crazy, rather than lingering on for months or years.

The goal is 20 pages a day. My goal is to commit to the two hours and see what happens.

Which brings me to the last rule…

6. Believe in the magic to make it happen.

Candace quote: Your unconscious is a better writer than you are. Trust it.

Guidelines:

• The only excuse for not writing your pages is death or coma.
• We write every day, at least one page.
• We report our total every day, no matter what.
• This is a team effort. Our team is to keep our spirits high as we show up at this new scary job each day.
• When you feel crazy and crappy JUST KEEP WRITING!

What do you think? Are we riding the crazy train with all this Fast Draft business? How many hours do you think it takes to master something? Does anyone need help getting into WANA Tribe? Enquiring minds can’t WAIT to discuss all this grooviness here at More Cowbell!

Jenny