I recently read that the difference between good at something and being really good at the same thing is nothing more than a matter of time. Ten thousand hours of time, specifically.
10,000 hours.
That's
10 years of effort, at 20 hours a week. Five years if you're putting in
effort equivalent to a full time job - 40 hours a week.
Now
I've wanted to be a writer since I was very young. Specifically, I
wanted to write fiction. As life went on, however, and I grew up, I fell
into a different area of writing. I found out I have a real talent for
non-fiction writing. I'm good at writing articles, writing product
descriptions, writing essays. Make it real life, soemthing that I can
look at and describe with words, and I am in my element.
It's
very satisfying to work as a writer, and I'm grateful that I can make
money doing this. But I can't seem to just pack away those childhood
dreams of writing stories and books. Over the years I've played around
with fiction, writing this and that. The occasional short story, a few
pages or chapters of something larger - even a book once, with the help
of NaNoWriMo and a great online support group I hooked up with.
"Real
life" however, has always intruded, and I let my fiction writing go,
distracted by the demands of children, writing jobs that paid actual
money, and if nothing else, shiny, pretty hobbies that were temporarily
more entertaining than the hard and sometimes frustrating work of
planting your rear in a chair and coming up with something, anything, no
matter how stupid, just get it down on paper so it can be revised
later!
I want to write fiction. I'm never going to do
that unless I commit myself to it. This blog is my commitment, a public
statement of intention. I'm going to put in 10,000 hours of writing. I'm
going to start getting the ideas and characters living in my head out
onto paper, so they can make room for my characters and ideas. I am
going to submit. I am going to be published.
I can do
this, I know I can. I've got the talent. I just need to apply myself.
Butt, meet chair. Whoops! Tricked you, Butt. That was superglue you just
sat in. We're going to be here for a while.
