Practice Makes Perfect

The average person seems to think the first piece of work produced by a writer should be a fully-formed example of their talent.  It must, so they think, be of such recognizable quality that it will instantly find acceptance in the marketplace.  By contrast, no one expects someone with musical talent to sit down at the piano and immediately create a symphony, nor are they critical of the first daubs of budding artists or less than perfect stitches from a person taking up needlework.  Strange, isn't it?

 

The fact is, any creative endeavor requires a learning stage.  Musicians practice constantly, singers do voice exercises every day of their lives.  People learning to knit, crochet or do needlepoint start out on small projects to develop their skills.  Painters take classes, copy the work of the masters, or paint in series to learn techniques and train their themselves to see differences in light, shadow and mood.  So it is with writers.

 

We must be allowed to study, to write gibberish, to learn by trial and error the art of capturing characters, settings, emotions and plots in words.  Writers should be allowed to write "starter" pieces, to begin stories and abandon them or toss pages of manuscript if they don't work. The people around us, and even we ourselves, need to accept that failing to place a manuscript with a publisher the first time out of the box doesn't mean we're no-talent failures.  It means we tried something that didn't work--and need to try something else that will.  It means we need to study books on writing, take workshops and, above all, to write something everyday.  It means we need to polish our writing skills with practice until they become of salable quality.