Whole words, whole sight

I’ve just read an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, ostensibly about golf, that I think raises some neat ideas about mastering any pursuit, most definitely writing included.

The article, by columnist John Paul Newport, is sardonically titled “Mastery, Just 10,000 Hours Away.” It explores research by cognitive scientists into the actual rather than apocryphal differences that distinguish prodigies from duffers, then segues into advice from such top golf instructors as Pia Nilsson, who works with Annika Sörenstam. From a writer’s perspective, here are the most salient comparisons:

1) It is not so much how talented you are, as how driven you are to put in the hours and indeed the years required for mastery. The figure proposed by experts as typical for most fields is said to be 10,000 hours or 10 years.

The article cites this effect in explaining both Mozart and Tiger Woods, each of whom began the equivalent of full-time study as toddlers. In Mozart’s case, it wasn’t until he was age 21 or so that he was able to bring forth the works for which he is now remembered - meaning it had taken him 18 years to develop what we carelessly call genius.¹

Ferocity of effort applies to writers as well. I remember coming across the shocking moment in Diane Middlebrook’s biography of the poet Anne Sexton wherein William Snodgrass, the equally brilliant poet who had been her teacher, mused that poetry “is a game where talent is cheap and where it is hardly the decisive factor. It seemed clear that Sexton was a person so driven that she would go on and do the work. And indeed that is what happened. At the time she came to Antioch she had published, I suppose, between four and six poems. The following year she published in something like forty different magazines.”

2) The article asserts that the right kind of practice can help anyone, even those getting on in age. A slightly tangential example of this when it comes to writing is Norman McClean, who at age 74 published the trilogy of semi-autobiographical short stories “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories.”

McClean began working on the trilogy only after his retirement at age 71. Superficially that would mean he produced a slim but definitive masterpiece in just 3 years, thumbing his well-tanned fisherman’s nose at the 10,000-hour, 10-year requirement.

But in fact, McClean had been a working scholar in his position as English professor at the University of Chicago: Wikipedia tells me his particular specialities were Shakespeare and “the Romantic poets.” Moreover, the University of Chicago has produced other fine writer-scholars, such as the literary critic Wayne Booth; it is my guess that McClean learned an immense amount of craft during his time there, both from his own scholarly writing and from his colleagues. All he had lacked was the opportunity to apply these skills to something he cared for more deeply even than Shakespeare, and retirement gave him that opportunity. It reminds me of stories of sudden enlightenment in Zen: the sound of a pebble hitting a stalk of bamboo may suddenly awaken a monk - who has been laboring in zazen for 10 years or far longer.

3) The best kind of practice for a golfer is not smacking a bucket of balls at a range, nor even working to “fix” your swing; it’s focusing on things like pre-stroke stress reduction and slowing down your air swing into a 30-second long tai chi ritual, to reveal “blind spots” in your awareness of the position of your hands and limbs.

Performance experts call this sort of thing “deliberate practice.” Deliberate practice takes the golfer out of his or her comfort zone (i.e. out of banging balls down the range) in search of better performance. Of course this is exactly why most golfers - Mr. Newport included - avoid exercises like the 30-second swing. They don’t like being uncomfortable; they would rather stay bad than endure the discomfort that someday might make them good.

Some but not all of this applies to writing. Those of my writing students who fear both writing and reading are typically those who will benefit the most from getting out of their comfort zone - and who are least inclined to do so, at least initially. And I push all my students to get out of the flat valley of cliches and generalities they’re used to, and hike up the hard slopes of specifics in search of factual and emotional accuracy.

But writing isn’t golf, so the equivalent of an excruciatingly slow practice swing for a writer may be something more like free-writing in a journal, in which you give up trying to produce polished prose, looking instead to make discoveries. Such exercises are actually aimed at reducing discomfort over the long haul. Still, a certain amount of unease is always present in authors who care.

Here’s an idea to conclude with: In your own writing, think of areas where you’d like to improve. Now think of examples of “deliberate practice” that you’ve either used with success in the past, or have never tried but would like to try. Finally, go ahead and set aside some time to do so.