After invoking the ‘10,000 hours to mastery’ thing a few times, a friend has pointed out, with characteristic grandmotherly kindness, that Malcom Gladwell’s idea is, in a word, non-scientific. Or rather, wrong.
Or you could say, total bullshit.
One very good reason for this is that Gladwell isn’t a scientist; he’s a popularizer who summarizes scientific thought. This in his own words:
“I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research … for ways of augmenting story-telling. The reason I don’t do things their way is because their way has a cost: it makes their writing inaccessible. If you are someone who has as their goal … to reach a lay audience … you can’t do it their way.”
Critiques of Gladwell’s idea that 10,000 hours turns anyone into a pro are easy to find on the web now, though they are a bit harder to find than positive reviews of his work. Gladwell responded to this criticism by saying: “No one succeeds at a high level without innate talent.”
Which makes you wonder… where the hell did that 10,000 number come from in the first place, if not a close read of the actual science?
The answer contains a sliver of hope for those toiling away at stuff for what feels like a long time.
Looking at great classical musicians, you see people who practice. A lot. The kind of practice that the 10,000 hours suggest makes someone great. However, a recent study has found that practice accounts for only 20% of the success of these musicians. Leaving something else to explain the other 80%.
Some call this thing talent. But who knows? It could be beneficent angels or aliens. Whatever. What science doesn’t know, science doesn’t know, and that’s the point in being careful about Gladwell, and in fact, most popularizers of science. Sometimes telling a good story means playing with the facts.
So where did that idea come from? That time invested equals mastery?
People often work hard at things they are good at, and I say this like Gladwell, based on anecdotes, life experiences, and intuition. It seems often to be true.
People who are good at things often seem to work like crazy on them.
So. If you find yourself wondering about that 10,000 number, and trying, and failing to figure out how the hell you even count hours, to become a writer, when every single second of experience can be thought of as content if not practice, you can take comfort in the unscientific idea that your sticking with writing puts you alongside people who do succeed.
But this doesn’t mean you will succeed at the highest level automatically, without (mystery ingredient X, which I still refuse to call Talent. Let’s call it The Practice Multiplier. No. Let’s just call it ingredient X. That is more fun.)
Bottom line, which is why I think ingredient X and its lack shouldn’t stop you: Writing is Good. Writing is good for you, for me, for people who never publish a word, for people who sell a few poems or stories, for bestselling authors, and everyone and everything in between.
Writing is mindful. Writing is a kind of meditation. Writing reveals what you love. Writing reveals you to others. Writing is catharsis. Writing creates empathy. Writing is therapy. Writing won’t bankrupt you unless you do it all the time and make no money and insist the world owes you a living for it. (don’t do that.) Writing creates little in the way of greenhouse gas. Writing makes books which for many people are one of the main reasons to go on living. Books make culture. Culture makes humanity.
That’s a new one.
I will, with a clean conscience, advise writers to keep writing, for as long as they find it meaningful. If they are very sad, about their writing, about its reception, and find no joy it, I’ll agree they should stop, but not without suggesting they first attack that sadness head on, to see if something else is the cause. Though quitting for a while is fine.
I quit for 18 years. That was a mistake.
Did I write for 10,000 hours overall, in my first try, before I gave up? Maybe. Am I a professional now? According to SFWA I am. My few dozen sales might make me look professional to some. I’m gonna say I write at a professional level, though I do not make a living at it. Some days I add the word Yet, to that sentence, and other days I think, “oh. I must lack ingredient X. I am doomed.”
So I ask myself, is writing meaningful to me?
And I put in more hours.
