Thursday 14 June 2012

Persistence and Practice Works

I've just made 5 Roman blinds for my house.  The first two took a lot of swearing and are a bit wonky, the third involved a lot of unpicking and resewing and the fourth has copious quantities of my blood spread between the 4th and 5th bar where I stabbed myself with a pin and didn't notice until it was too late. The fifth is just about perfect and took a quarter of the time of the first blind.

In other words, I got better with practice.

Same with writing.  It's a lovely idea that writing just pitches up on the page without any effort on the writer's part but It's Not True.  If you do a lot of it (of anything!), you get better and more efficient, and you have confidence that you can succeed.

Persist. Practice. Get better. Succeed.

5 comments:

Writer Pat Newcombe said...

Yes - practise may not make perfect but it certainly does make better!Hope the blinds look nice.

Chris Stovell said...

I've recently made just one Roman blind - it hovered dangerously close to the bin several times and it nearly killed me, Yes, you're right, that's exactly like writing a book! I'm currently on Book 3, I don't think it's very much easier, but I do know now that the only way to reach The End is to stick with it and not throw it in the bin!

Philip C James said...

I'm seeing the difference already between what I wrote in December, and the ease and fluency with which I write now.

And setting up a spreadsheet showing how many words I need to write each month to complete the first draft by end of year has helped. Especially as it shows me that if I exceed this month's target, next month's target will be lower. Greatly motivating...

Alison Morton said...

How very true!

I'm now drafting book 4 and it flows a great deal more easily than books 1 and 2 and a little easier than book 3. And I have learned so much from courses, conferences and mentors but most of all from other writers.

But the key remains "write more".

Sarah Duncan said...

Thanks Pat, the blinds do look nice; the first two are a bit wonky but no 5 is a masterpiece!

Chris - but I bet the blind looks lovely now. You're absolutley right - it's not that it gets easier, just you know more about what you're doing.

Phil - the word 'spreadsheet' fills me with doom and makes me anxious, but whatever motivates you, do!

Alison - glad to hear it's going better. And you're right, the key is always to write more.