Do you really need 10,000 hours to be a good writer

Do you really need 10,000 hours to be a good writer?

Reading time: Less than 3 minutes

Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion that in order to be really good at something, you need to spend 10,000 hours doing it. In his book Outliers, for example, he described how the Beatles had spent more than 10,000 hours in Hamburg, Northern Germany, staging concerts and honing their craft before they became the well-known band we all still know today.

But, in fact, Gladwell wasn’t the person who’d done the research on the 10,000-hour theorem. Instead, it was the work of psychology professor Anders Ericsson, from Florida State University. And he argues against Gladwell’s interpretation.

Now, I’ve read Ericsson’s new book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise and I think you’ll find his suggestions interesting. In it, Ericsson spells out his advice for how to become an expert at just about anything. I think recommendations are useful to writers as well. Here is what he says:

You may not need 10,000 hours — or, you may need significantly more.  The phrase “10,000 hours” is simply a symbol to represent a lot of time. If you spend two hours doing something each day, every day — with no time off for weekends and holidays —  it will take you 10 years to accumulate 10,000 hours. That’s a lot of time, isn’t it?  Yes, and that’s Ericsson’s message. Even if you have buckets of talent, you still need to invest a lot of time and practice in order to become an expert. Furthermore, you need to do it in a very specific way. Just playing an instrument, just running, just writing, or just ________ (insert whatever other task you want to become really good at) for 10,000 hours is not nearly enough, even though it’s a lot.

You also need a mentor. As writers, you might think your best mentor would be an editor, but that depends.  Some editors simply take your text, mark it up and return it to you. That kind of utilitarian relationship will improve your final product but it might not be enough to turn you into a great writer. For a mentor, you need someone who can challenge you, identify your specific problems, and, most of all, help you identify what Ericsson calls the “mental representations” you need in order to become a better writer. A mental representation allows you to visualize in your mind’s eye specifically what you need to do in order to write well. Some editors can help you with that; others can focus only on the text. Remember that all great athletes and all great musicians have coaches; the idea only seems strange in other contexts.

You need to approach your work differently. Doing something over and over again — carefully logging your 10,000 hours — is not enough. Not nearly. This has been proven in music — Juilliard students who practice their pieces from beginning to end are less successful than the students who focus only on those passages that give them difficulty. It has also been proven in medicine — doctors who have been practicing for 20 or more years do worse in some objective measures of performance than those who are more recently out of school. Don’t expect your work to be fun. It’s hard to become better at something. It may even make you feel bad — “tired, stymied, frustrated” — according to a New York Times article on what’s known as superaging. But the bonus is these efforts will help keep you mentally sharp into old age.

You need to understand that ‘knowing’ is not the same as ‘doing’. You may have theoretical knowledge, but do you have skills?  To be an expert at something, you need both. For writers, here is where an effective editor can make a big difference. You need the feedback to know what you’ve done in a less than ideal way and you need the chance to fix it. (This is where I disagree with a great many editors who simply impose their own “fixes” on writers. To me, it’s far more effective to identify problems and let the writers fix them themselves, with guidance if necessary.)

You need to limit your practice. I know this sounds counterintuitive — especially with all the talk of 10,000 hours — but consider the kind of investment involved. This effort to improve is very hard work and must be sustained over a very long time (at least 10 years). Don’t burn yourself out by doing too much at once. Says Ericsson: “when you’re really attending 100% and stretching yourself to really change, that time is actually limited.”

I know the 10,000-hour rule sounds daunting, but don’t take it as a rule. Instead, focus on the small but difficult tasks you can accomplish every day.  If you’re going to be spending a lot of hours doing something, it makes sense to make those hours as productive as possible.

Breaking into screenwriting is one of the most difficult paths you can choose in life. As such, you can be sure that to master it you need to approach it with the seriousness of a professional baseball or basketball player in how they approach their sports. Malcolm Gladwell popularized a guideline derived from Anders Ericsson's research--to become a master at something you need to practice for 10,000 hours.

I'm certain this is true of writing, as well. Ericsson is more specific than Gladwell and discusses things such as deliberate practice. In screenwriting terms this would be akin to writing exercises to master individual pieces of a screenplay.

I outline the above because one of the things that often gets lost in discussing how to become a professional screenwriter is the hard work it takes. Reading screenplays, practicing dialogue and scene construction via exercises, writing multiple screenplays and teleplays... they are all part of directed practice that leads to mastery. It's grueling and hard and takes a lot of work.

TLDR: 10,000 hours was an arbitrary number; it focused on physical activities; it applied to children who had committed to deliberate practise (rehearsal / self-assessment / improvement) before age 20; it was not a monomaniacal focus but included multi-disciplinarian "dabbling" in related fields which reinforced each other.

Great concept to sell a book, though.

Positive take-aways? Any amount of self-assessing multi-disciplinarian practise is good, more is better, there's no special number after which suddenly become "a master". Don't get hung up on it.

I don't think the 10 thousand hour rule means talent will somehow sprout from you. With 10k hours you can write a well crafted screenplay that is completely uninspired. I don't believe you can grind out great story telling by just doing it over and over again especially when you don't have the talent to create a compelling narrative.

Story is really king, all the other things you learn, crafting a well made screenplay is all pretty secondary to being able to create a compelling and memorable story. Even if you have a haphazard screenplay with a great story you can get people to help refine it. I've had colleges take a word document completely out of format and format it to screenplay because it was worth making. Story shines above all things.

There are so many examples of great film makers who clearly didn't put 10k hours into their writing or their script and turned around with something incredible.

I think people need to have a realistic understanding that some people just aren't cut out to be story tellers no matter how hard they try.

You should spend 10k hours study story telling rather than blanket screen writing. Writing in any format has inspirations in all forms of story telling and you should try to spend 10k hours learning about telling a great story rather than 10k hours learning how to construct a screenplay.

I'm a big subscriber to the 10,000 hours theory. At the end of last year I created a toggl account (It's like a project based time logging tool) both to tally my hours as I move toward 10,000 and to keep track of my writing habits, how long I spend on different projects, etc. So far I've done just over 1100 hours of writing, rewriting, outlining and the occasional in depth feedback/analysis in script swaps since november 2018. Aiming for 2000 logged hours a year, and estimating about 1500 hours of writing before I started logging them, so 7400 left which means I'll be an expert screenwriter by the first quarter of 2023 haha.

Obviously getting your 10k hours doesn't mean you'll all of a sudden be good enough, or that you won't be good enough until you reach them, but I think it's a good way to chart your progress, and if you consider post 10k hours as the point at which youll basically have fully realized the potential in your writing ability, it's an encouraging thought that even if you're happy with your writing at say 2000 hours, you still have plenty of improvement ahead of you.

It Takes 10,000 Hours to Become an Expert in Anything: Use These 4 Techniques

Mastering a skill takes serious time. Here's how to make the most out of the hours you put in towards mastering your craft.

10,000 hours.

That's how long it takes to master your craft, according to bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell. Whether you want to become a better leader, an expert in marketing or a master of a language, it's going to take time. With all of the new social media platforms and business opportunities, it's easy to get pulled in directions away from developing your core skill.

To truly excel you have to double down on mastering your craft, whatever it may be.

For me, in 2014 I started writing articles on marketing and leadership. However, I didn't get much attention on the pieces.

The reason was simple, I wasn't a strong enough writer.

So I went back to basics and wrote, a lot. I wrote for business blogs, on LinkedIn, Medium, etc. -- all with the intent of developing my craft.  

As I sit today, I'm still a long way away from my 10,000 hours, but I'm committed to getting closer to it daily.

By committing to improve my writing skills, I'm simultaneously turning myself into a better communicator. This has been helpful outside of articles, in places like emails to prospective clients, coworkers, etc.--the road to mastery has its unforeseen benefits along the way. 

Here are 4 ways you can take steps towards mastery daily.

1. Set aside time to practice daily

If you don't set aside time to work on developing your skills it will happen sporadically and often yield no results.

Getting better needs to be part of your everyday routine.

One way to do this is to set aside time every day in your calendar to focus all of your attention on skill development. This technique is called time-blocking and can help you become more productive.

Remember, tools are often useless if not sharpened regularly.

2. Get mentors to help move you forward

Getting a mentor, someone who has done what you're trying to do, can propel your development forward much faster than doing it alone. They can also safeguard you against potential blind spots along the way to mastering your craft.

3.Understand you're a work in progress

Tom Brady wasn't able to throw a football overnight nor was Jeff Bezos able to create Amazon into the powerhouse it is today without committing massive amounts of time towards their skills.

You are a work in progress, never a finished product. Leonardo Da Vinci once said, "art is never finished, only abandoned." This quote emulates a lot of how you need to think about mastery--you will continually improve until you die.

4. Take one step at a time

Getting to the top of the mountain in your industry starts with one step in that direction. Similar to the point above on being a work in progress, you have to plot out what small activities you can do daily that will help you towards mastery.

For New York Times' bestseller, Tim Ferriss, he makes himself write two pages a day of material. This keeps in the act of consistent writing, regardless of if the writing is great.  

Becoming an expert at something comes at a price, and that price is a combination of time and effort.

Gladwell's 10,000 Hours: A Useless Goal For Fledgeling Writers

I stumbled up on a blog post by Jared Sandman via Twitter yesterday in which he tackles Malcolm Gladwell’s idea that any skill takes 10,000 hours of practice to master. Many have addressed the flaws in this idea, but Sandman looks at it from a writer’s perspective:

I generally write two pages in an hour (maybe three if I’m really cooking).  That means I would have to write 20,000+ pages before my work is worth publication.  20,000 pages is the equivalent of fifty novels.  If you don’t know what you’re doing by your fiftieth book, you aren’t paying close enough attention.  Most professional novelists won’t reach that goal over the course of their whole careers.

I tweeted a link to Sandman’s blog post, and a few people pointed out that it takes a bit longer than 200 hours to finish writing a novel because the process goes beyond how many words you can bash out for your first draft.

I use Paymo to track my time, not just for paying client work, but for my own projects as well, so I can say with absolute confidence that my current novella, which is 32,525 words long, has so far taken me 127 hours. That breaks down into 5 hours of research, 39 hours for the first draft, 72 hours for the second draft (including analysis), and so far 11 hours on the third draft which I am probably 60 percent of the way through. I have still to finish the third draft, incorporate beta reader feedback, and do a copyedit. If we estimate another 23 hours for that, to bring me up to a nice round figure of 150 hours for 32,525 words, then that’s 216 words per hour.

If we apply Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule then I should throw away my first 2.16 million words. If we assume a novel is 100,000 words, then I should set light to my first 21 novels. But no matter that Sandman’s maths might have been a bit simple, his point is still robust. If I haven’t got to grips with how to write a book within 21 novels then, frankly, I’m never going to.

Sandman brings up Ray Bradbury’s ‘million bad words’ idea as well:

A better litmus test, perhaps, comes from Ray Bradbury.  Bradbury said every writer has a million bad words in them.  The sooner you get through that first million, the faster you get to the words worth sharing.  In other words, you must write the shit out of your system.  I agree with that assessment, though I wouldn’t ascribe an arbitrary number to it.  Each person has a different “million word” mark.  Some may be more than that, others a bit less.

I think he’s spot on to say that arbitrary numbers are a bad idea, but misses out the fact that there are other things that go into being a good writer than writing. Reading, for example. And not just letting yourself get absorbed by a good book on a regular basis, but reading with one part of your brain watching what the writer is doing and how you are reacting to it.

For a writer, reading should be mindful. You should be aware of when the words are working and when they are not. Was that a beautiful turn of phrase or a particularly clunky section that could do with an edit? Are the characters well-rounded or flat? Does the plot work, or does it have holes you could drive a tank through? What would you do to fix it? What would you keep? What would you cut?

Reading alone, however, doesn’t make a writer. There’s also the research, the observation, the film critiques, all those books on writing that are genuinely worth reading (and all those you buy and discover are rubbish). There are workshops and writing groups and masters degrees in creative writing. There’s mulling over ideas as you fall asleep and plotting scenes in the shower.

And what about authors who are also professional writers of another ilk? Do my thousands of hours writing reports for clients make me a better writer? Or the millions of words I’ve written in blog posts? The hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written as a journalist?

How much of that falls into Gladwell’s idea of “dedicated practice”? If you include everything that it takes to become a good writer it starts to look an awful lot like 10,000 hours isn’t enough. Perhaps 50,000 might be a more realistic number, although you’d have to redefine “practice” pretty comprehensively.

To be honest, I’ve never much liked Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule. One things I’ve seen over and again when working as a consultant is that as soon as you begin to measure a behaviour, people will change in order to score well. If you measure engagement with a wiki through the number of edits made, for example, people will edit more but they won’t necessarily be any more engaged with the content.

The 10,000 hours idea gives people a goal to work towards, but is it the right goal? Does it encourage the fledgeling author to learn their craft or does it simply encourage them to sit down and churn out words?

If you want a simple rule to help you along your path to authorial excellence, I’m afraid there isn’t one. Sitting down and writing regularly, daily if possible, is a good idea, but by itself it won’t get you where you need to be. Mindful reading, careful observation, engaging in other types of writing — especially writing to deadline when you don’t want to — and learning how to interpret criticism are all essential.

But this complexity is one of the reasons why I love writing. As someone whose career has had more to do with ‘moving swiftly and in an uncontrolled way’ than ‘an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress’, I rather like it that writing requires so many different skills. I might not have always been putting pen to paper, but I’ve spent a lot of time learning other stuff that’s directly applicable to my authorial life. Isn’t that better than simply ticking off each hour as you count down to some magical goal that doesn’t mean anything?

Busting the Myth of the 10,000 Hour Rule

Let’s start with breaking down the myth of the 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell uses several examples in his book when introducing this rule: one is the research done by Ericsson that focused on violin students at a music academy in Berlin. The study found that the most accomplished of the students had put in 10,000 hours by the time they turned 20. Gladwell also estimates that the Beatles put in 10,000 hours of practice playing in Hamburg in the early 1960s, and that Bill Gates put in 10,000 hours of programming work before founding Microsoft. Hence the 10,000 hour rule was born: put in your 10,000 hours of practice, and become an expert in a given field. Pretty easy, right?

But upon closer examination, problems start to emerge.

First of all, Ericsson says, the number 10,000 is totally arbitrary. It’s catchy and easy to remember, but not really based on anything substantial. It’s the number of hours these promising violinists had put in by the time they were 20 years old. By the age of 18, they had put in an average of 7,400 hours, but the 7,400 Hour Rule doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it? And even at 20, they were very good at playing the violin, and probably headed to the top of their field, but they were not yet experts.

On top of that, Gladwell misunderstood that 10,000 hours was an average, and not all the best violinists had put in this number by age 20. In fact, half of the best hadn’t put in 10,000 hours.

Hmm. That’s definitely concerning, but are we sure that the 10,000 rule isn’t true? It sure seems like plenty of hours to master something. And if it isn’t true, what do we know about practice and how to master a craft?

Well a few things we know for sure are that not all practice is created equal – and not everyone starts from the same place.