A couple of days ago, I had a discussion with a friend of mine. He wants to be a writer, and received a harsh review on something he wrote, and was feeling a bit down. So, being the guy that I am, I wanted to help him. I read the review and while the guy put it in a pretty blunt and almost rude way, overall everything he said was correct. His story has bad pacing, his sentence structure and punctuation wasn't great, and the way that he attempted to create flow was more confusing than anything. The basic gist of it was, it wasn't engaging.
So I asked him, what writers he liked and how much he read. He named a couple of huge authors like J.K. Rolling and Stephen King, and a few other long-since dead authors, but then he told me something that told me his entire problem in one sentence. He doesn't read all that much.
I don't know any writer out there that doesn't read. And they read a lot. It pretty much fills up the rest of their time when they either aren't writing, sleeping, or doing their job. And even during the last one, sometimes they are reading short stories or poetry whenever they can. It's like a musician that doesn't listen to music, or an artist that doesn't look at other artist's artwork. It's gaining a frame of reference, and expanding your knowledge of your craft. As an artist myself, I probably look at images and speed paint videos at least 4-6 hours a week. And it's not just looking at them, going "Hey, that looks cool." and then clicking to the next one. I study everything about it. Their line work, their shading techniques, their framing of the composition, the color choices they made. I find every little detail and analyse it. Then several times, I've attempted to recreate it using my own techniques, or if I can't, trying to figure out the technique they used. Sometimes I find things I never knew existed, or a new way of doing something that not only looks better, but save me time.
The same thing goes for musicians and composers. The ones I know constantly have music playing if they aren't working on something themselves. Sometimes it's just for pleasure, but other times, especially with a new song they've never heard before, they are listening to every detail, every pitch of every instrument. Where they are accentuating certain parts, and where they are breaking things down. How they pace their song, and how they leveled each instrument so not one part is overbearing.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, if you want to be good at anything that is part of it. Let's go into something less creative. Mechanical Engineering for example. Working just by yourself, you may figure out how to repair an engine eventually. But if you watch someone else do it that already knows, you'll be able to do it much faster. If you watch several people do it, and put their techniques together, then you might be able to find an even better way than all of them. Getting into the engine, you might start studying how each piece works and it's relationship to every other piece, and possibly figure out ways to improve upon it.
Or how about salesmen. Even the greatest salesman in the world can learn something from another salesman. How to interact with people, or certain words to use in place of other words to make something sound fancier and more appealing. Even mannerisms, fluctuations in volume and speaking patterns, how to tell jokes and anecdotes...they all come into play and learning from other salesmen can improve your own style.
A book I think everyone should read is Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. In it he explains that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in order to truly perfect anything, which equates to roughly 3 hours a day for 10 years. Now, that can be accelerated by practicing more per day, so say 6 hours a day for 5 years, or 10 hours a day for three and a half...something like that. But it's the hands down practicing, and good practicing, for 10,000 hours that's important.
Studying is part of practicing. I don't claim mastery over anything (I wish I could though) but the things I am really good at I probably have about 4000-5000 hours doing, and much of that was studying. One thing I'm really good at doing is talking about Evangelion, and anime done by Studio Gainex. I have literally studied that anime, watching it so many times through, reading up on theories and discussing little nuances of the series and movies. The culmination of my work came when I was able to give a panel at Megacon and Anime Festival Orlando on the subject, the best of which was the one at Megacon where I was in main events and was given the honor of leading into them showing the first of the Rebuild movies. I had roughly 100 people in there, the largest crowd I had ever talked to, and afterward I had people stopping me in the halls and asking me even more questions, all of which I was able to answer for them, even if it was just a theoretical answer. Had I just watched the series once, I never would have had enough knowledge to do that.
What I'm trying to get at is that anything you want to do, especially if you want to do it for a living, you must practice and study. Studying doesn't just come from reading instructions, but seeing examples of your craft done by other people. If you want to design video games, you have to study video game design, and play games not for enjoyment solely, but look at everything they did and try to understand WHY they did it. If you want to act in movies, you must watch movies and see how other actors have portrayed their characters, studying everything from their voice to their facial expressions to their hand movements.
So, what do you do in order to practice your craft? And how many hours of practice do you think you honestly have? 1000? 5000? Have you already breeched the 10,000 hour mark?
(Also, side note, I've noticed that I have quite a few readers in Germany (or one that just keeps reading). To my German readers, feel free to comment below. I may not speak German, but I know how to use Google Translate, and I would be happy to hear thoughts from people other than my fellow Americans.)
So I asked him, what writers he liked and how much he read. He named a couple of huge authors like J.K. Rolling and Stephen King, and a few other long-since dead authors, but then he told me something that told me his entire problem in one sentence. He doesn't read all that much.
I don't know any writer out there that doesn't read. And they read a lot. It pretty much fills up the rest of their time when they either aren't writing, sleeping, or doing their job. And even during the last one, sometimes they are reading short stories or poetry whenever they can. It's like a musician that doesn't listen to music, or an artist that doesn't look at other artist's artwork. It's gaining a frame of reference, and expanding your knowledge of your craft. As an artist myself, I probably look at images and speed paint videos at least 4-6 hours a week. And it's not just looking at them, going "Hey, that looks cool." and then clicking to the next one. I study everything about it. Their line work, their shading techniques, their framing of the composition, the color choices they made. I find every little detail and analyse it. Then several times, I've attempted to recreate it using my own techniques, or if I can't, trying to figure out the technique they used. Sometimes I find things I never knew existed, or a new way of doing something that not only looks better, but save me time.
The same thing goes for musicians and composers. The ones I know constantly have music playing if they aren't working on something themselves. Sometimes it's just for pleasure, but other times, especially with a new song they've never heard before, they are listening to every detail, every pitch of every instrument. Where they are accentuating certain parts, and where they are breaking things down. How they pace their song, and how they leveled each instrument so not one part is overbearing.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, if you want to be good at anything that is part of it. Let's go into something less creative. Mechanical Engineering for example. Working just by yourself, you may figure out how to repair an engine eventually. But if you watch someone else do it that already knows, you'll be able to do it much faster. If you watch several people do it, and put their techniques together, then you might be able to find an even better way than all of them. Getting into the engine, you might start studying how each piece works and it's relationship to every other piece, and possibly figure out ways to improve upon it.
Or how about salesmen. Even the greatest salesman in the world can learn something from another salesman. How to interact with people, or certain words to use in place of other words to make something sound fancier and more appealing. Even mannerisms, fluctuations in volume and speaking patterns, how to tell jokes and anecdotes...they all come into play and learning from other salesmen can improve your own style.
A book I think everyone should read is Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. In it he explains that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in order to truly perfect anything, which equates to roughly 3 hours a day for 10 years. Now, that can be accelerated by practicing more per day, so say 6 hours a day for 5 years, or 10 hours a day for three and a half...something like that. But it's the hands down practicing, and good practicing, for 10,000 hours that's important.
Studying is part of practicing. I don't claim mastery over anything (I wish I could though) but the things I am really good at I probably have about 4000-5000 hours doing, and much of that was studying. One thing I'm really good at doing is talking about Evangelion, and anime done by Studio Gainex. I have literally studied that anime, watching it so many times through, reading up on theories and discussing little nuances of the series and movies. The culmination of my work came when I was able to give a panel at Megacon and Anime Festival Orlando on the subject, the best of which was the one at Megacon where I was in main events and was given the honor of leading into them showing the first of the Rebuild movies. I had roughly 100 people in there, the largest crowd I had ever talked to, and afterward I had people stopping me in the halls and asking me even more questions, all of which I was able to answer for them, even if it was just a theoretical answer. Had I just watched the series once, I never would have had enough knowledge to do that.
What I'm trying to get at is that anything you want to do, especially if you want to do it for a living, you must practice and study. Studying doesn't just come from reading instructions, but seeing examples of your craft done by other people. If you want to design video games, you have to study video game design, and play games not for enjoyment solely, but look at everything they did and try to understand WHY they did it. If you want to act in movies, you must watch movies and see how other actors have portrayed their characters, studying everything from their voice to their facial expressions to their hand movements.
So, what do you do in order to practice your craft? And how many hours of practice do you think you honestly have? 1000? 5000? Have you already breeched the 10,000 hour mark?
(Also, side note, I've noticed that I have quite a few readers in Germany (or one that just keeps reading). To my German readers, feel free to comment below. I may not speak German, but I know how to use Google Translate, and I would be happy to hear thoughts from people other than my fellow Americans.)
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