“Write write write. Writing is a craft not a gift. You have to practice.”
Lev Grossman, Author of The Magicians
Nobody watches a pianist nail a Chopin nocturne and thinks wow, they must have just been born knowing that. Nobody sees a basketball player drain a three from half-court at the buzzer and assumes they never touched a ball before the game.
But writers? Writers we give a pass to.
We assume the good ones just have it. Like the story was already in them, fully formed, just waiting to leak out onto the page. And if yours isn’t coming out that clean. Well, maybe you’re just not one of them.
That’s ridiculous. And we wouldn’t accept that logic in any other discipline.
The piano player practiced for years before they sounded like anything worth listening to. Lebron has touched a basketball more times than you’ve had hot meals. The craft came from the repetition, not the other way around.
Writing is no different. It just gets away with the myth because the practice is invisible. Nobody sees the terrible first drafts, the abandoned chapters, the scenes that got cut because they were genuinely bad. You only see the finished book on the shelf.
So, the next time you sit down to write, and it comes out awkward and clunky and not at all what you imagined. Good. That’s what practice sounds like.
Keep going.
Andrew M. Friday 