Jennifer Pelland's post, over here, on how writing seems to get harder as one gets better at it is the inspiration for this entry of mine.
She's right.
But the thing is, it applies to everything you do. Because as you get better at it, you start attempting to do harder things. And what happens is that the harder thing you were trying to accomplish seems just as hard--if not harder--than the thing you were trying to do before. So you wind up feeling like you're not making any progress, right?
And if you're trying to learn an iterative thing, where each new skill gets overlaid over all the old skills, and you still have to be doing all those old things competently, and then while you're doing that, doing the new thing too. Which makes you feel like a complete yoob, because here you are suddenly unable to do this simple stuff you were just doing kind of okay. And well, yeah, of course, because now you are trying to juggle those three balls while standing on one foot.
The trick, I find, is to every so often go back and try to do the thing that was just *killing* you six months or a year ago, all by itself. And you will usually find, if you have been conscientious in practice, that you actually can do that thing much better and easier thank you could have before you started working on the harder thing.
In fact, I find that I never actually learn how to do something until I start trying to learn the next step after that one, because that's when my brain internalizes the thing I was trying to learn, makes it automatic, and starts consciously working on the next bit.
We forget, once we master a skill, that it took work to master it. Also, we forget that learning hard things is a lifetime commitment. (The arts, science, human relationships, many sports and games--these count as hard things. If you can do it for twenty years and still uncover nuances of technique or knowledge, it's a hard thing.)
And now I need to go practice guitar and do some math before I leave for climbing.
Also, I think I have too many challenging hobbies.
The problem is, I *like* them all.
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Comments
I've yet to adjust my thinking in a manner that lets me abstract writing into components like that. A few things, I can do that with -- I can set out to improve my descriptions, for example, and write one on its own as an exercise. But most things, no. They're too tangled up in everything else for me to tackle them consciously and deliberately. I have to approach them indirectly.
This is similar. It is also similar to what I do in my day job, wherein I write code for ungrateful people. I noticed that I seem to spend 80% of my day wrestling with a problem that I couldn't solve. This is the same proportion of my day as it was ten years ago. I have spent ten years wrestling with insoluble-to-me problems for most of my day... except that the problems that stump me now are far more complex than the problems that stumped me then.
Writing is the same.
BTW, can I ask you to give me advice on how to get over my writer's block? It's been bugging me for years now, since I lost a friend who I wrote a lot with. We just wrote fanfics and silly stuff like that, but my writing improved and developed immensely when we worked and since I lost her, I just can't seem to write and I keep feeling that I'm useless without her...
Any advice? Others have said I should read more, well I can't possibly read more than I do. ;)
But perhaps the answer is to write anything, even if it sucks?
I have plenty of experience with psyching myself out not to write. (And I can't afford to have writer's block, It would be like having plumber's block. I don't write, I don't eat.)
I dunno. Just remember, it's not a performance art, and if it sucks, it sucks, you can fix it later.
I guess for me it's mostly about being afraid... Yes, performance anxiety. I'm scared someone will shout at me to stop writing because I suck.
I guess the trick is to write if I want to, and not care if it sucks or if someone thinks it sucks...
Like you said, for fun and just to write. :)
Thanks! I think this will be helpful to me.
What is most interesting is the way different skill sets for each compare and contrast, and feed into each other. Josh Waitzkin said that learning t'ai chi (his second skill) taught him more deeply about how to play chess (his first skill), and I'm finding that true (though on a much lower skill level!!)
http://community.livejournal.com/equest
The most relevant bit is actually this:
My favorite part is when I get off after a good ride all excited thinking, "Yeah, we've really come so far! What a nice balanced trot (or whatever) that was! Now we're getting somewhere. We couldn't have done that a year ago! A year ago we were working on..." And then I stop and go, "Oh. A year ago we were working on getting a nice balanced trot."
And I mean, the overall trajectory is upwards, and my standards grow higher. That year-ago trot is our starting point now; today's "nice balanced trot" is a new level of nice. But it's still a moment of utter dismay and then, "Right, then. Back to work."
Also:
My Chinese teacher - native-born Mandarin speaker, linguist, lifelong academic, in her sixties - was still learning Chinese the day she died. And I do mean learning: new vocabulary, characters or meanings she hadn't met before. She would allow, if pressed, that a dedicated student could call themselves literate after forty years' study - but you could tell she didn't really believe it.
Sometimes I wonder.
That's when I go back and cut adverbs and feel mighty because I wouldn't have done it not so long ago.
Some skillsets stick better, I guess.
It doesn't matter how much it sucks when you write it, as long as you make it better when you revise.
"It's all down hill from here"
"What Could Happen?"
"How Hard Could That Be?"
But i find some things easy, which means i don't want to do them any more. But then on the other hand, at age 60, easy things that make money are fine, most days.
And, personally, i have given up hobbies, it's just different work.
"A Change is as good as a rest, gov'ner"
And yes, i am giddy over finishing that fucking book... Wheee....
"You 'ave to keep yer wits about you, doncherknow?"
My muse is a cockney this week.
So thank you, kindly.
You're doing good work, you know. And it's important that somebody does it. The problem is it's exhausting and frustrating.
Heh. And sometimes also how much we did actually grok of what we were doing before. I went back to Boston last weekend to sing in a goodbye concert for former fellow performers who are returning to Australia and bemused myself with the degree to which I felt comfortable with what was being demanded of me (mostly sightreading music I'd never seen before) compared to the current daily demands.
Competence is a shadow quality for me - I don't see it in myself until I'm reminded of it, usually in an unwatched area.
You're doing good work, you know. And it's important that somebody does it.
Thank you. Wholeheartedly agreed - went back to school specifically to do this (much to my classmates' collective horror and my resulting amusement). The bandaids-on-open-wounds aspect of it gets to me, so ultimately I want to go into national advocacy - but man, I'm learning a LOT, about law and otherwise.
Yeah, total respect.
I'm a one-trick pony. This is the *only* thing I'm any good at. It's hard for me to imagine the guts it takes to walk away from a professional skill to do something else.
And hey, you play the guitar. I have no idea how well? But I think that's wicked cool - and I guarantee you it is a skill I will never acquire.
Also, you write like blazes.
In fact, I wouldn't say I play it, so much as I practice it.