“This isn’t practice, it’s prodigy, playing around”

I wrote that piece of shit years ago. Let me be more specific. I wrote that horse-shit lie years ago before I appreciated practice. Before I read books like Bird by Bird, On Writing, and Writing Down The Bones. Before I understood the importance of daily practice. Before I really tried writing a book.

Right now I’m three chapters into a small novella with a bigger word count than anything I’ve ever written. I’m damn proud of myself and damn ashamed that I haven’t done something like this sooner. At least I can claim ignorance. Growing up I was a natural at a lot of things, better than some people who practiced all the time. So It’s taken over a decade for life to knock me on my ass enough times to realize that practice is something most people actually do, even those people who are really good. Those people practice better.

That’s all I’ve been doing lately, learning how to practice. It’s all about what you’ve heard all your life. Daily goals that you can meet. That gradually get harder when you’ve notice it’s getting too easy to accomplish. That’s where I got practice wrong so many years and gave up so many things.

Running, I gave up running because it made me. I added an extra lap everyday. Every-fucking-day. I ended up in physical therapy with a lot of pain and left with a mild withdrawal to an electrical current cranked up to ten flexing my lower back for me.

So what am I saying? Not much. Nothing that you haven’t heard a million times before from a few hundred people. Practice makes perfect. I’m saying a lot when I say that you have to practice practicing.