Deliberate Practice and Projects December 4, 2020 I've mentioned before[1] the idea of having a writing project in which you can go wild and do whatever you want and not have to think about publishing or even showing it to anyone else: the "for me" project. But in addition to being fun, projects can also be useful--you can use them to improve your writing skills. If you write the same thing (or essentially the same thing with minor variations) over and over again, you're not going to improve much. This is where deliberate practice comes in. "Deliberate practice" was first studied by K. Anders Ericsson[2]. It's used specifically to strengthen those areas in which performance is weak. It's the difference between swinging a golf club over and over again and breaking down the swing into parts, then practicing each one until the whole swing improves. It's all about making up for shortcomings, rather than adding to strengths. For a writer, that means stretching yourself in ways that--by very definition--are uncomfortable. You may be a great creator of plots, say, but not so good at characters and inner monologue. Deliberate practice would have you try to write a character-driven story in which the reader only hears the thoughts of that character. If you're weak in dialogue, it would have you write something dialogue-heavy, such as a play or a script. The best way to find out what you're not good at when it comes to writing is to ask others--your beta readers, your critique group. Another way is to look at what sorts of things you don't like to write (or are afraid to write). Once you know where your weaknesses are, you can come up with a project to make yourself stronger in those areas. For example, I feel I'm weak when it comes to character and inner monologue. So I set myself a project of writing a story with a tight first-person POV. Just to make things interesting, I added in the idea of an unreliable narrator. With those two conditions in mind, I started plotting out and working on a short story. It's one of the toughest things I've tried to write, with lots of false starts and mid-course plot adjustments. It's been a very uncomfortable experience--I often feel out of my depth; sure that I won't be able to complete the story or that it won't hold together or the result will be unsalable. At the same time, I know the only way to get better is to confront the problem head-on using deliberate practice. So I keep working on it. I'll let you know if the story sells. As a writer, consider doing deliberate practice by taking on a special project that will strengthen yourself where you're weak. (For those keeping count, that's a total of three projects I think a writer should have going on at any one time: the main one, the "just for me," and the deliberate practice project. Enough to give you something to work on if your enthusiasm for one or the other project temporarily flags.) [1] https://www.andrewgudgel.com/blog/just-for-you.txt [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson (c) 2020 by Andrew Gudgel email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com