the 10,000 hour rule

This rule basically says that before you “strike it big”, you need to have about 10,000 hours of practice time behind you. Ten thousand hours equals out to approximately ten years.

This was brought to my attention lately when a friend bought me Malcom Gladwell’s amazing book Outliers.

Ten years. I am 36 years old. If I am successful at anything now it is because I have about ten years (or more) practice time behind me. Much of it has been hidden. After all, how much of the foundation do you see when you look at a house? Or a skyscraper?

The ten thousand hour rule indicates that if I am good at anything, and am starting to “make a go” of it, I have been building a foundation of practice and experience, for about ten years. The rule implies that I have had a few knocks and setbacks, and MAYBE a few minor or major events that you could call victories among the defeats. Or maybe the other way around.

I have been writing off and on since close to my last year of school. (That is a lot longer ago than ten years, and most of the attempts at poetry and what might have been considered childish or even wannabe prose have been discarded along the way.

But at the age of approximately 24 I began this habit called journaling. And I kept at it for approximately eight years. Some of it has yet to be seen by the eyes of others, and there is a lot that should probably never see the light of day again.

But I spent a number of years writing my first book, which is a memoir called Finding My Voice. I have kept several (yes, several) writing projects at some degree of simmer between low simmer to a near boil.

Some of what I have written has been good, and very good (so they tell me). Some of what I have written would be better off forgotten in the dustbin of nice tries failed attempts to string sentences together.

However… I have not written my best line… or book… or poem, yet. I might have written my worst one of each of those. (The reader may judge.)

If the 10,000 hour rule means what I think it mean, I have just finished laying the foundation for a sprawling, exciting and almost unbounded and limitless literary career.

And it started with scribbling on notebook paper. With pencils.

Over 10,000 hours ago.

Cheers!