Back when I had time to take kung fu and tai chi classes, I hung on to the hope of the 10k hour myth because I wanted to believe that all that time spent in class would turn me into some sort of martial arts champion — or at least help rid me of weight I had gained during a doomed relationship.
These days, I rejoice in the debunking of this myth because I know that showing up is only half the battle.
I quit kung fu and tai chi to join the inaugural and time-intensive Novel Incubator class, where I learned how to not just show up, but to focus. I’m no master, and I still carry around extra weight, but I’ve completed three novels and one graphic novel. So suck it, 10k hours (pretty sure it’s been over 10k hours at this point… still waiting to be crowned a genius.)
- Rejoice, slackers: You don’t have to commit 10,000 hours to be successful: “The secret to continued improvement, it turns out, isn’t the amount of time invested but the quality of that time.” Debunking the Myth of the 10,000-Hours Rule: What It Actually Takes to Reach Genius-Level Excellence.
- Climate change refugees and islands lost to rising seas are no longer the stuff of fiction. What lies ahead? These authors have some thoughts: Scorched Earth Day: 7 Novels on Environmental Collapse.
- Writer Mikki Kendall outlines why sensitivity reading is important, and why all writers should seek to better understand the communities they have chosen to represent in her post Diversity, Political Correctness, and The Power of Language.
- With so many social media options, it’s easy to overdo the LOOK AT ME, I WROTE A THING marketing. A self-proclaimed “publishing noob” wants to to know: How to Promote Your Book (Without Being Annoying)?
- You can write a well-crafted thriller and still be a pantser (a writer who “flies by the seat of their pants,” vs. a planner or plotter). Jennifer Hillier outlines her embarrassingly inefficient (but surprisingly effective) writing process. “I’m feeding my baby and one half of my brain is thinking how cute he is, and the other half is plotting my next murder.”
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