One of the emerging “rules” over the last decade has been the 10,000-Hour Rule. I first read about it in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Basically, if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you’ll become an expert at it.
I remember at the time thinking of some aspiring writers I have met over the years and wondered if the rule could possibly be true. I knew they must have written for at least that many hours, but were they really “experts” at writing?
Every Sunday morning I receive the Brain Pickings newsletter. Love this! Last weekend I was happy to read a new psychological study overthrowing the 10,000-Hour Rule—and it makes so much sense! We need to spend focused, quality time – not just biding our time and filling it with the act of writing (or whatever field you want to be an expert in). If we are not seeking advancement, stretching our comfort zones, learning from more advanced writers, we will just become “proficient”—according to “Debunking the Myth of the 10,000-Hours Rule: What it Actually Takes to Reach Genius-Level Excellence.”
What does this mean for writers?
- Critique groups rock–but make sure you are surrounded by writers who improve your work and who you learn from. If you find writers in your critique group are less advanced, you may be doing them a favor—but what about you?
- Writing classes are gold! Learn about new areas of writing and publishing. My friend poet Angelika Teuber recently gave me a great example. She said she was in a class where one person said she was waiting until she retired to write her memoir. The instructor’s response: Why don’t you pick up a cello then? Don’t expect you know everything about a subject you have never learned about. Always look for something new to learn in your field, and don’t postpone educating yourself.
- Keep writing. Persistence is a big theme in the research. Without your focus to keep going, someone else will take your spot, and some other publisher will publish your book.
Write Naked 
I am not sure if I agree with #2 & #3 – the first thing I think of are those who either pioneered certain techniques or innovations and began therefore as outside the circle or even those who remain so. What would have happened to writers like ee cummings, Frederick Seidel, Virginia Woolf (let’s say THE WAVES), James Joyce (FINNEGAN’S WAKE), Christian Bök (EUNOIA), Samuel Beckett (all), Burroughs (most), Joseph Ceravolo, etc. in a writing class or writer’s group? Or even Ernest Hemingway (I am trying to imagine him conceding a point in a class about a need to vary or alter his style!) – I was going to also mention Eliot and ‘The Wasteland’ but then I realized he had Pound as a sort of teacher – and maybe you could say Beckett had, to an extent, Joyce, that Hemingway had Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein (another non-writing class candidate), Burroughs had Ginsberg – it seems as though most of the literary innovators I can think of (at 7:00 in the morning) did need SOMETHING, but it was more in the order of a sympathetic, empathetic voice or guiding hand or a push on the back to publish, one that had the lightest of touches and never focused on accessibility as a fundamental requirement of the prose of fiction of their friend or quasi-student – you could argue that this would also occur with a group, but it seems to me less likely. And there are a thousand exceptions to this rule (I think of the stories that Raymond Carver’s work is practically unrecognizable as such before Gordon Lish put his hands into it) – but less often, I think, with those whose style ushered in a whole new sensibility.
Follow up: I guess what I thought and missed saying in my above comment (again, 7:00 AM) is that I did not mean to suggest that writing classes and critique groups are not essential or helpful or meaningful – I think they are all three, but not to all people. But I also think that those who might shy away from them often know that’s what’s best for them – and the essential work that might take place in workshop or such still goes on, but more privately, and often with a single individual who is acutely familiar with the writer’s work and intentions. Again, you could say that this would be the case with a writer’s group (and I am certain often is) but it seems as though you might run the greater risk of the familiar ‘rule by committee’ dilution unless the entire group was in tune with the writer’s aesthetic (and again, this is still possible, too, but runs a higher risk of not-possible the larger the group might be, and the less familiar they might be with the writer.)
I agree! I think the main hurdle for writers is recognizing what is quality feedback/guidance for them. (The idea of Hemingway in a critique group would be a fantastic comedy sketch!) I have to wonder what the affect of 10,000 hours spent in the wrong type of writing/mentorship may have on a writer? What bad habits or skills develop as a result? How does one prescribe re-training? Maybe Salinger’s way is best: Burrow yourself away in a cabin and write with no interruptions. I’d pick a warmer clime than Vermont though.
It was worse than Vermont–it was New Hamshire! (at least that’s what my people from Vermont say.)
I agree with what you say, although I imagine you could also say the same about a person who sequesters him or herself away and writes – bad ideas and skills will perhaps ping pong around in the brain and bear fruit, or at least, larger and more il-suited ping pong balls. So I guess that undermines the argument I presented in the first place. Another morning well-spent!
That’s right! Mixed up my New England states.
It’s OK. I wrote ‘il-suited.’ perhaps I meant ‘insulated.’ Perhaps I should join not a writing group, but a support group for sloppy brains and fingers.