They haven’t been exposed consistently to Deliberate Practice around writing.
“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”
Deliberate Practice:
- Talent is not enough. Practice is the difference between good and great. The practice in writing is yes, directly writing but it varies. it means that you spend an inordinate amount of time writing and writing and writing and writing. And that the writing you do isn’t always the writing you want to do. A good writer—-one who can turn on and off the facility, the ability should have a box full of short stories, essays, etc.—-even something like Quora—at this writing, I have about 1600+ blogs on here, another couple of thousand of blogs and articles on my own Kyle Phoenix Blog, plus dozens of poems 9I’ve won awards but don’t like writing or performing them), hundreds of short stories—-some published in collections or magazines), plays, screen scripts, professional writings, magazine and newsletter articles, dozens of manuscripts and 100+ published books. At last updating my CV was over 30+ pages.
- Expert performance is hard work and requires repeated actions. I had written thousands of comic book stories, hundreds of short adult stories (under 50 typed pages), several long form manuscripts—-about a half dozen, a full 2 hour screenplay that I wrote and directed and probably another hundred school assignments—-but the majority of the work, aside from a few dozen published newspaper and magazine articles, was not non-fiction. I published my first 3 non-fiction books and was taking educational policy/law school classes where I was having trouble writing legal briefs. I'd worked as a securities litigation paralegal for years, worked in corporate America writing umpteenth reports, but was stumbling. I decided to challenge myself, deeper, and write 2500+ of these Quora Q&A essays. It might seem simple but the complexity and memories and translation of my experiences, talents, knowledge, learned knowledge and suppositions and ideas, plus personal history, makes this an addictive and intensely invigorating training space. I use this mainly for learning how to craft an essay, a story, an idea, to convey a point, to explore an issue. But that translates back to my other work in strengthening those muscles in writing—-my writing having increased in its talent depth from almost 10 years of doing this exercise. What that means is that I’ve accrued about 50,000 hours so far of reading/writing, which funnels back into becoming, the overall talent. But I’m always looking for ways, deeper ways and lessons, to teach me more, more than I know now, reiteration of what I know, new ways to teach and practice, what I already know. My next long-term foray will be into Master Class online, just sitting listening, doing the exercises from experts further along than me, in divergent paths, to again—-further develop my talent.
- Focus - break it into manageable parts. It’s also important to not become overly focused in the effort. Most people keep writing until they hit the wall and then have nothing, nothing more to give to the process, their project. Instead what I’ve learned to do and my mentors (about 12 of them directly around writing) have taught me is to do other things. Rest, relax, explore, even do other artistic things. While doing a lot of intensive writing, preparing my first professional manuscript on the recommendation of a mentor, Raymond Federman, spending eight to ten hours in the computer lab, formatting and printing to create the perfect 300+ page plus manuscript to be sent to Ronald Sukenick, at a university publisher (it eventually was pulled apart, he published several of the sort stories, then the short stories were expanded into two collections of short story books and a full novel)—-I was burning out. I was also maintaining a full school schedule, which included fiction and non-fiction projects (I never submitted the same work twice in classes, even to different professors)—-so for the summer my mother sent me a full painting set up with canvases and brushes and paints. She’d read that a lot of writers did a similar artistic endeavor but in a different medium. And I began painting/drawing. I’ve done so for years, now all of that interest and burgeoning talent funneled into graphic design (which I did professionally for a short time) but more importantly to designing book covers and book layouts, today. But what I was able to do was sort of splinter my overwhelmingly large perspective of writing into other spaces, other dimensions of creative thought—-giving both respite and enhancement to the whole talent-skill. That then allowed me to come back to a massive project where I was trying to professionally present at a young age—-24?—-to world leaders/experts, my burgeoning talent. By taking breaks, trying out new things, focusing on sometimes very isolated parts of writing——poetry, dialogue, description, essays, etc.—-I’ve been able to come to master and control the output.
- Goal setting and perseverance is key. Initially as a child, writing those 1000+ comic book in 2nd person scripts—having discerned from the Marvel Try Out book the format—-I wanted to write both compelling scripts, with my own original characters. I found already popular characters limited because they must default to a companies’ vison. I wrote scripts with all kinds of machinations and characters and heroes and villains—-90% of it in the 2nd person present tense. This went nicely with almost writing full fiction manuscripts in the 3rd person and then experimenting, and eventually publishing a novel, Tranny, in the 1st person. There was a point from starting and then through school—-my first handful of mentors on my writing and reading in high school—-being able to explore and do as much in the multiple forms—-past, present, future, non-past, etc.. But I kept doing it, thousands of times, handwritten first, then typing stuff up, then starting a small amateur comic book production company as a teen, then working on chapbooks, magazines, newspapers in high school and undergraduate college. Diversity and developmental gradation.
- Feedback in the moment. … And this brings me to mentorship, teachers, classes, workshops, other students critiquing my work. When I see folk online seeking help, guidance, etc.—-they often want a mutual admiration society, they want to be stroked for that precious paragraph they’ve eked out. A whole PAGE! They want everything that has poured out of them to be spun gold and anyone who says anything like—”No, boo, that ain’t gold.” is trying to attack them, destroy them, sack their village, pillage their moms. In fact the mark of true talent—-a space of concentrated development, is being able to take criticism. Integrate criticism. use it. If you can’t handle being told your work is a swinging, stinking pile of shit—-you with a few hundred, a few thousand hours, (pressing to Ericsson’s idea of 10,000 hours to achieve expertise/mastery) are not really advancing. You’re sort of masturbating.
Most people haven’t done that much focused work into anything besides school (that you were gently but legally forced to do) and a job/work (where you were more encouragingly pressed to do for resources to survive) and through the advent-trap of the internet, think they can write or should have 10k hours worth of skills available because they can physically write, perhaps even think up an idea. One wouldn’t declare one’s self a doctor——because of watching some medical shows. nor a lawyer, nor even a long shore man—-yet because we have pen/paper and keyboards——folk are willy nillying putting down pabulum books and declaring, over their blaring TVs and reductive movie My Lists—-that they, are suddenly imbued with the skill to become a writer. because…they can….write words! Words!
Having spent tens of thousands of hours doing the thing, writing, before a dime was tossed at me—-my first cash being $125 for a poetry reading at the Buffalo Yacht Club—-somewhere between 10 to 12 years from when I first started writing in earnest, I can tell you that writing is like everything else, a developed skill. What has occurred now is the internet in a form of reductive democratization——has made the availability and accessing of writing (and the uploading) easier, cheaper, available to the masses without substantial barriers to entry. (Like medical school or law school or even training and apprenticeship to become a long shore man.)
Then it was another decade before I got my first book royalties deposit/check and could buy my beloved steaks from exclusively that money, generated by book sales, and then more and more and more cash slowly dribbling in, now consistently for over a decade. This royalty stream (s) coming from multiple eBooks, paperbacks, hardcovers, and even now articles, blogs, videos, TV shows, teaching presentations that are filmed, etc.—-all an extension of my “writing”. It takes time—-5 to 20 years—-which falls in line to Voltaire’s examination of Mastery, at the first level—-approximately leaning back into the above breakdown of Mastery process from Anders Ericsson, the preeminent scholar about mastery and development of skills-talent, for commercial success.
The Hours Broken Down
The first 2000 hours of writing are mimicry, one doesn’t start edging into discovering ones “voice” until 5000-7000+ hours of consistent, diverse, focused, applied, critiqued writing. By then you’re committed to getting to 10k. One learns this from mentors—-landmarks, points of advancement, what stage you’re in and how to get out of it, how to judge a good, bad and horrible project and the true test—-when you the person/writer are not “enough” (man, woman, liberated, mature) to complete a project that was your idea —-which is what so many lack—-they don’t know where they are, because they want to mimic their favorite writers/genre—-but it lacks originality, creativity, innovation.
I’ve taught a few dozen writing classes, been in as many/more as a student, and therefore critiqued and been critiqued by several thousand folk, face to face, and I can tell you there were maybe a handful from those thousands, perhaps a full dozen, who were real, true, committed writers. Two of them have published, were mini-superstars in school and classes and referred to publishers by my mentors.
Most weren’t near talented because of:
- their obsession with their favorite genre,
- their lack of ability to get a copy of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style—-I use to marvel at the professor/writer Carlene hatcher Polite telling hundreds of writing students to get the book, to learn their tools—-but now years later, having had decades of students and reading so much work—-I see why so many writers want but labor—-bad grammar. lack of mastery of the English language and writing it. I watch students and online people give all kinds of reasons why they, under a thousand hours or so of writing should be breaking grammar rules or the biggie NEVER get an editor.
- They can’t handle the truth.
I’m going to tell you the truth about thousands of pieces I have written—-quite a few of them were not good, were messes, were dumb or obtuse, but something happens in the trenches of those thousands of hours/pages>>>>you find pearls, pieces, snags of possibility, and good stuff. You learn how to stitch together the good stuff, to not be so obsessed with the bad stuff. In fact, you learn to see the bad stuff but not condemn yourself with it.
The novel Free
This right here, this writing online, is my mental break/writing “gym” workout (so I’m much looser with my structure, grammar, ideas, rants-flow and purposefully edit it only with a light touch after 24 hours——rather than my professional capability to clean up something to make it presentable/salable. (
This writing space, here, is my Writing PornHub, personal=skill pleasure get off. This is my X-Men Writing Danger Room.) from working on a novel Free (and other works——generally half a dozen other books and other projects).
Free is about 500+ pages now. I originally thought it would be 250 or so but then I started sewing in-layering interesting structural ideas that expanded pages in the before editor 12 Drafts. Its been in the general stages of Drafts #1 to 5 for about a year now, I dreamt the plot and had some work ideas and personal pieces useful to its exploration.
- First, a drug kingpin announces to a city he rules, he’s going to kill his lieutenant son, in a few days, but it has nothing to do with business. No one should interfere. (250 pages)
- Second, I wanted to lace in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons, some of the structure, the sexual revenge of Merteuil. (Another 100 pages to get to 350?)
- Third, as I was examining the relationship of Dom and his son Free, it then pushed to examine Dom’s father and other father’s of other characters. How had fatherhood or lack thereof gotten them to this point in time? (400 pages)
- Fourth, how is Black/Latino manhood-sexuality tied to fatherhood? (500+ pages)
I then saw his manhood-fatherhood-cultural spiral from these two characters—-which was born from my running workshops and groups, and so many men of color talking about their fathers trying to kill them. Which reminded me of my own father trying to kill me——and once you get a hook like that and then an insight, you’re cooking with fire.
No faeries, no ghosts, no vampires, no werewolves, no fae, no billionaires, no damsels in distress.
One of my toughest mentors, Irving Feldman, in his class would void all the genre bullshit and have us write three 10 page (typed) stories about people interacting, talking, moving around—-nothing flamboyant or fantasy, just a story.
The above gives me both weight and balance to work through. I’m about 95% done with the 8th to 10th drafts; I’ll do my own heavy narrative edit of it before the editor—-I do 12 Drafts and it should be published by summertime.
Now I’m at the stage where I only need to record stuff/generally work out the plot points-characters, but it doesn’t have to be perfect—-I’m literally filling in the filler.
My big challenge has been sexual humiliation that characters do to one another—-so I’ve been combing heavy, dark sex sites and then narrowing down to what works—-I have about 20 scenes/scenarios—-in the final edit as I go through an entire manuscript. I can see myself reducing it to 3–5.
I also have a big violence scene, several, but one involves many people—-which I’ve never done before but Dom points out that “men explode and women implode”—-and when he said that—-I thought if Free did something to a man and a woman, how the same level of barbarity would have them act differently—-explode/implode. Sometimes your characters tell you about the world they live in and its’ people. For several of the scenes/chapters I’m always looking for new ways to convey information—-learned from the world’s premier experimental writer—-Raymond Federman. His greatest most impactful lesson to me, in my first series of classes with him as a student and then becoming his TA, was that “the margin of the page does not exist”, it blew my mind. (I was 23/24 years old at the time and had written maybe 15,000 hours, thousands of pages, by then.)
In each work I try to play with the layout of the work itself, the words, the page, the way they visually look.
I have several experimental attempts—-
- one is Free’s mother, Maya, reflecting on her horrendous love life, ex husband, lost fiancée and now an affair with her dead fiancée's young son, who she suspects is a stand-in for her adult son, who is the spitting image of his divorced father. Free happily plays with the sexual confusion. Tension between him and his mother, adding a layer to his character. But her question of why she’s in all this drama nagged me to find her father—-Morris——and I thought about invisible father’s who disappear—-as Maya's did when she was 6. He visited her and his estranged wife, they saw him back to the Amtrak station and weeks later the family in Detroit, reported that he never got there. I thought a lot about disappeared Black men, played with that and then wrote a chapter about Morris, where I purposefully disappeared him with the text itself. Fun, fun, fun.
- Another Maya inspired chapter was her attempting to cook Jamaican Escovitch Fish for her fiancée and his violently attacking her, as my aunt had been by her husband, for the peas and rice not falling separately from the spoon in the cooking pot.
But then layering in Points 5 & 6 & 7
Fifth-experimental pages—-Morris (Maya’s father),
- then 30 people from a nightclub over the span of 2 years before and after a violent event—-but only in one or two sentences; then a news article about the violence;
- then a whole chapter dedicated to a sympathetic lynching—-I wanted to take a heinous event and upend it by looking at the price of racism to the racist;
- finally a focusing of so many of these social/racial/manhood maladies through a fast psychiatric-genetic interview/explanation.(An Additional 20–30 pages)
Sixth-Ntozake Shange, a fantastic writer, wrote a novel Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo—-which I loved but it wonderfully interwove actual recipes. I thought, like a pin on a board—-one day I’ll find a novel to play with that.
With the chapter on Maya, Carlos and Jamaican Escovitch Fish, I was able to find two old Jamaican lesbians who own the best Island Foods’ store in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and they notice the frenetic, frantic Maya. They, having been women who held red snapper in one hand, and a carving knife in the other——see where Maya is going to end up.
It gave me a space to examine how older women nourish and help younger women—-as they teach her to calmly prepare Jamaican Escovitch Fish. (Finding appropriate recipes and ways to present them, to have characters relate them was a way that I’m playing with familial, cultural connection and what it means when a parent can’t or won’t teach a child a recipe—-the recipes often standing in for parental love given and withheld.)
Seventh-Dostoevsky played with the polyphonic—-multi-voices/identities happening in a novel and I had done touches of that before, but when I found these other men, other fathers, I really worked on finding their identities, not as placeholders for issues, but instead as deepening points of characters, of culture, of the milieu of the novel itself. The invented city of Northchester becomes real because the populace of the book are sort of side stories and voices about that reality.
Why those attempting to write fall down the rabbit hole of Inconsistency.
Consistency in writing is therefore about thousands of hours of writing and recognizing through teaching/learning, feedback, critique, time, reading good work—-the gaps, fallacies, lies of one's own work. Then it’s about all the things you’ve studied, about the tools of writing, how to make sentences dance—-pirouette, boogie, twerk, hippity hop and gyrate, like bebop popping on a slick hot cast iron skillet. Then it’s a liberal dash of been there and done that and seen that and liked that, but having achieved more than proficiency with the prior, having adeptness at the manipulation of the current, as you lead readers to exactly where you want their MINDS to be. That’s some heavy shit right there. it takes a lot of work to understand symbols, grammar, words, ideas, humans to be that consciously manipulative.
People get stuck because writing is not linear—-it’s spherical in creation. It is outside of time. It is both imaginative. but to be understood, must establish in its’ creation a level of foundation in order, to again, manipulate to the imaginative. Folk try to write from A to Z—that’s amateurish. When you really hit a writing Stage, advancing level, you understand that there are many drafts and editing's ahead so this first draft, is basically like eating a meal—-something entirely different will be coming out in a while.
In order to be a good technical writer, one must have a high level of control, which means a mastery of the rules of grammar. No one was more surprised than I, after 20 years of teaching, when I stood before a Columbia college class I was teaching, and accurately diagrammed a complex sentence. That’s called automaticity and it translates into writing because I practice it every day—-again another book reference Blink by Malcolm Gladwell explains this to a T—-generally 1 to 3 sentences into reading a person’s piece I can tell whether it’s worth going through deeper, if I’m scrolling through works. I can see in a blink your level from Amateur/Sucks in Amateur to Amateur Working to Intermediate, to Intermediate to Advanced to Master Level to Master Level And CANI (Constant And Never-ending Improvement).
Blink—I literally have developed the skill-talent of reading and writing and recognizing bad, not so bad, pedantic, mimicking, neutral, possibly good, good, very good, great writing. Whether that be my own or others. (It also translates professionally to things like reading resumes—30 seconds is the average time you have for someone (me) to put you in the Yes, Maybe or No pile. Numbers-monetary values, etc., people managed, direct accomplishments. Everything else is ishkibibble.)
Having read a few Stephen King books, I think the most damaging book he’s written is On Writing—-because it became a sadly, deeply, obsessively followed Amateur's (only) Bible—-there’s something about people, Americans, following fame, the famous. What would be more impressive would be reading his list of Must Read books—-yeah, all the wannabe writers never do that.
One cannot write well without being well read.
I also scoff at pictures of bookcases and series of books that all look alike. A bookcase should be a wild maelstrom of different writers, books, types of books, creativity in fusion—-not a cleverly constructed—-”Look I bought ALL of the books in the series!” of multiple series.
(I’m not even going to talk about the trilogies from amateurs that are really singular books droning on too long without editors. The beauty of an editor is they will directly tell you how books get published—-cost per page. While they might appreciate your worldbuilding to well over a thousand pages—-you got 450 pages to tell your story, pal. Many folk talk themselves out of a good book by including every idea in the Final Published Draft.)
My above 500+ pages—-(oh there shall be pruning a plenty)—-I type scenes knowing they might or might not make the final cut. I work assiduously on each scene, every chapter leading to another, to answering, picking up, moving, elucidating, a point. You’d be surprised how much shit you delete when your face is held to the asphalt of editing.
In a final sympathetic nod—-as sympathetic as I can get as a writer/teacher, having been an editor, (and working on writing a sympathetic lynching before I delve into Race War: Hated, Hunted, Haunted, yes a trilogy. lol)——-what I will offer is that most people create very little in their lives—-even their children, healthy emotionally, get up and leave. Think of it like someone obese who somehow lands some male/female supermodel. They want the sex-orgasm-date to last forever. Folk want their mutated little gremlin creation where they’ve mentally masturbated, to last forever.
When you graduate to Intermediate to Advanced levels you recognize that each idea/project, even this musing, is like a passenger on a crowded bus
“Get the fuck out of the way, please!”
That’s what you’re trying to do, if you’re not in love with the idea of masturbating with your gremlin. You recognize that each gremlin is like a lesson, a slimy jellybean advancement so you want to get past it as fast as possible to get to the next one—-the next one hopefully being 1 inch more challenging and then the next where you try to write from a male perspective rather than a female then the next where you try to describe a musician playing an instrument then the next where you deal with a suicide then the next where you write about an old woman taking a younger lover then the next where you examine the social lives of circus performers then the next where you write about a rock star who isn’t lonely then a housewife who kills her children then a businessman who molests children in different cities then a dwarf who is a sex worker then a little girl in Mexico who works as a dishwasher because of her cleft lip then a fat guy who is in a car accident then why your mother didn’t like you then why you didn’t like your mother then that sex dream you had about your brother then those hairs on your legs that swirl around and a woman notices them in the park then how children can be evil to animals and then finally how I always intended to bring this to a gremlin conclusion or in some editing found it to tie it up after mentioning women’s lit, Russian writers, French playwrights, non-fiction writers and pulp fictionists.
Consistency and dedication is lost due to lack of consistency in preparation, and not having been trained, how to be dedicated.
It’s kind of good. I was just laying in bed, cuddled with my wealth of pillows and comforters and thinking on what my next moves were going to be. Two books had arrived from the printer (of course there are minor corrections, but that’s to be expected.)
Rewind.
I was on the #5 bus headed up Broadway to the post office to pick up this box of books. And since it was just a short jaunt of a few blocks, I had my phablet and was listening to music but hadn’t brought along a book. So I was thinking.
I was thinking about a past relationship and as I am inclined to do—-getting a little steamed about the thought, person, argument. Replaying it in my head and looking at it from a new angle—-which was spurred by a spontaneous dinner with a colleague a few weeks ago and she’d asked me about my dating life, as we’d talked about hers. I laughingly told her a comment a guy had made, judgmental but complimentary, yet it had taken me a couple of years past the relationship, to realize he meant that he was intimidated by me. It didn’t help that my bus ride, weeks later, was to pick up a book that had included bits and pieces of that relationship, fictionalized.
This is why said gumball was rolling around at the back of my mind. I get to the post office——frightened there will be a long line in the middle of the afternoon—-no line! I wait maybe 30 seconds and hand my slip to the attendant and a minute later have this huge box in my tote bag. I open it in the park across the street and the books are brand new and sexy and pretty and heavy and smell good and when I page flip, the text is crisp and visible.
I start smiling and beaming, overjoyed.
I realized, running mentally through past classmates and friends and folk who wanted to be writers that I’m standing here with more of my books, adding to the passel selling around the world. I’m not just blooming with gratitude and joy, I’m grateful that I’m not living the tortured life of some other folk.
I made a decision over 10 years ago to step out of the matrix known as Corporate America——having done financial work, securities litigation work, a host of things, a strong resume——for education and then used my time to control my schedule and to simply write.
Write, I do.
When I was young, scoring 6,7,8 grades ahead of my own peers on Standardized tests and imagining what I might be interested in, I was writing. I never took my writing “business” seriously so after undergrad I went into companies because they were “serious business”. You get to go up in the elevator and you have a desk—-that one!—-and it’s yours and you decorate it. Eventually I didn’t decorate as much because I was consulting so there were time limits on how long I would be there. I made it a point to not get comfortable. To not make that part of my identity. For about 10 years or so I didn’t know what the alternative to that corporate identity was….because I liked business, liked the intricacy of it, had owned several businesses as a child/teenager.
I even had friends/schoolmates who sailed into CA, never to be heard from again…..until I saw FB pics or them on the street—-fatter, a lot less hair. I realized they had a desk and probably decorated it, perhaps even the Holy Grail——an office—-a room, a little room in a bigger office, that is yours, but not really yours.
But I get to—-write even this blog post—-write a novel most of my working time, my work now taking up about 5 hours of active working. The other 35 is my writing Kyle stuff. I’ve been offered several promotions, could get all ambitious and hungry, and play dirty games……but I can literally feel the days, the hours, when I write less at work. When work takes up too much of my attention away from my Life’s Purpose.
I’m living and creating my Life’s Purpose. Yes, I know when I die, but I often think about what happens if I die this year? To the books? The TV show? I then think in production plans and product plans, I have to make an Exit Strategy plan for me, in case of death.
I used to think my giftedness meant I could do anything, that I could simply focus and learn and master anything—-which I sort of can. Which for awhile provided a whole range of possibilities.
Then I found this one, good thing to do well, very well, and it all clicked.
I’m walking down Amsterdam, swinging my tote bag full of books I’ve written, good books, and I’m beaming like the sun. I start to think of the ex and friends, near and far, and how they’re going to that desk, maybe in an office, inside of a bigger office, and how I’ve made the conscious choice not to.
It’s not what I expected, but I am happier with myself, little ol’ me.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
