A Question of Doing
Thomas Edison said that "genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
That ratio has also been applied to success in general. One part idea, ninety-nine parts toil. Those who see their ideas through to fruition do so not because their ideas are better than anyone else's, but because they put in the hard work of getting those ideas from conception to completion. Success is a function of action.
I'm rather unlike most of the writers I know, who struggle with self-doubt, perpetually questioning whether they have any significant literary talent. I've never experienced any such misgivings, and I'm lucky for it. Since late middle-school, I've known that I was a good writer. Not great, or at least not yet. But good to be sure.
So I wonder, then, from time to time, why it is that on the cusp of 30, I've yet to finish my first novel. I've been working on it, off and on, for twelve years now. It's just more than 62,000 words long (to compare: the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne runs 63,600). That's an average of roughly fourteen words per day. Perhaps more importantly, only about two-thirds of the story I want to tell has been covered in those 62,000 words.
Mine is not a question of inspiration. I have conceived my story; I know it, beginning to end. Mine, then, is a question of perspiration. Of action; of doing. Of sitting down in front of the laptop and typing out the words necessary to tell my story. At fourteen words per day, I clearly haven't been doing enough doing. I certainly haven't heeded the counsel of Stephen King, he of the doorstopper bestsellers, who advised aspiring authors to commit 1,000 words to the page every day. At that rate, King assures us, the would-be novelist can produce a completed first-draft in just three months. The math adds up.
I have given a litany of excuses to myself and others concerning my failure to complete this particular project. For a long time, I rationalized that my tendency to divide my attention among half-a-dozen different projects at once was just how I worked. I trained myself to believe that I could only write effectively in the early hours of the morning. Eventually, I even convinced myself that my pitiful productivity was evidence that I wasn't ready as a writer to tell the story. But looking at it now, today, half-way through June of 2010, I have discovered that it doesn't even matter if any of my excuses were true. Because success is 99% perspiration, and mine is a question of doing.
So I'm starting today. Setting a schedule, and writing every day. Confining myself to the office from nine o'clock until eleven o'clock, disconnecting the Internet, and putting words on the screen. At 62,000 words into this project, I'm really just writing a 30,000-word novel.
I ought to be out the other end of this in about five weeks.
That ratio has also been applied to success in general. One part idea, ninety-nine parts toil. Those who see their ideas through to fruition do so not because their ideas are better than anyone else's, but because they put in the hard work of getting those ideas from conception to completion. Success is a function of action.
I'm rather unlike most of the writers I know, who struggle with self-doubt, perpetually questioning whether they have any significant literary talent. I've never experienced any such misgivings, and I'm lucky for it. Since late middle-school, I've known that I was a good writer. Not great, or at least not yet. But good to be sure.
So I wonder, then, from time to time, why it is that on the cusp of 30, I've yet to finish my first novel. I've been working on it, off and on, for twelve years now. It's just more than 62,000 words long (to compare: the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne runs 63,600). That's an average of roughly fourteen words per day. Perhaps more importantly, only about two-thirds of the story I want to tell has been covered in those 62,000 words.
Mine is not a question of inspiration. I have conceived my story; I know it, beginning to end. Mine, then, is a question of perspiration. Of action; of doing. Of sitting down in front of the laptop and typing out the words necessary to tell my story. At fourteen words per day, I clearly haven't been doing enough doing. I certainly haven't heeded the counsel of Stephen King, he of the doorstopper bestsellers, who advised aspiring authors to commit 1,000 words to the page every day. At that rate, King assures us, the would-be novelist can produce a completed first-draft in just three months. The math adds up.
I have given a litany of excuses to myself and others concerning my failure to complete this particular project. For a long time, I rationalized that my tendency to divide my attention among half-a-dozen different projects at once was just how I worked. I trained myself to believe that I could only write effectively in the early hours of the morning. Eventually, I even convinced myself that my pitiful productivity was evidence that I wasn't ready as a writer to tell the story. But looking at it now, today, half-way through June of 2010, I have discovered that it doesn't even matter if any of my excuses were true. Because success is 99% perspiration, and mine is a question of doing.
So I'm starting today. Setting a schedule, and writing every day. Confining myself to the office from nine o'clock until eleven o'clock, disconnecting the Internet, and putting words on the screen. At 62,000 words into this project, I'm really just writing a 30,000-word novel.
I ought to be out the other end of this in about five weeks.