Learning Through Practice

Writing may seem like a simple activity: all you have to do is put some words on paper, right?

Well, no.

In reality writing —just like hitting a baseball or playing a musical instrument —is a complex activity demanding the exercise of many different skills. If you want to learn a complex activity, though, the best way is to identify the different skills you need and practice them separately. This is what a someone who wants to play baseball does when learning to hit a pitched ball: he practices swinging the bat first, just getting a feel for it; then he (or she) might practice keeping his eye on the ball, then keeping his wrists level; and so on. Someone who want to play an instrument practices in a similar way, by focusing first on one skill, then on another. Writers can learn in the same way.

Unfortunately, when we first learn to write, we almost never get an opportunity to practice. That's because we usually learn to write in school, and there we are typically forced to “perform ” as writers —that is, to produce writing that is “good ”(and will be graded) —without ever having practiced our skills. It's no wonder that so many people feel blocked or panicked when they sit down to write!

The practice approach to developing writing skills is totally different. First, all your practicing is done in private; no one will ever read your practice writing unless you choose to share it. This means that you have a totally safe place in which to learn. Second, there is no pressure to produce finished pieces of writing. You can stay with each practice as long as you need to. And third, you design your own learning path, so you can decide what you need to practice on any given day.

Practice is one of the main ways that humans learn. You learned how to walk, how to talk, how to drive a car, how to cook —all by practicing the activity. So you already have the natural ability to learn writing skills through practice. All you need to move forward is a willingness to devote some time and energy to practice on a regular basis.

That's because practice is based on repetition; and repetition is one of the key ways in which the human brain establishes new pathways. Repetition is one of the ways we learn.

So all of the practices in these lessons (and in the book) are designed to be repeated —not just once, but over and over.

Repeating practices does not have to be boring! The practices are very open-ended, so you can decide how you want to use them. And if you add some reflection to your practice sessions —what worked this time? how might you use the practice differently next time? —you will find that you take one step after another on your own individual learning path.

Your learning path will not be a straight line, though. Practice is not like learning in school, where everything is taught in a linear fashion. Practice lets you engage instead in what I like to call spiral learning: when you repeat an activity over and over, with attention, you are essentially moving in a circle —but at the same time, because you are learning, you are moving forward. Your learning, then, takes the form of a spiral.

There's one more important thing to know about learning through practice: it's essential not to respond with criticism to the writing you produce through practice. The purpose of practice writing is not to produce brilliant pieces of writing; it's to develop your skills and build your confidence in them. Then, once you know you've got trained “writing muscles, ” you can bring your skills to particular writing projects, just as baseball players bring the skills they've learned through practice, in private, to the games they play in front of paying crowds.

Suggested next lesson: How To Be a Writer