{"id":4092,"date":"2012-04-29T13:11:16","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T18:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=4092"},"modified":"2012-12-31T05:08:24","modified_gmt":"2012-12-31T11:08:24","slug":"how-long-does-good-writing-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2012\/04\/29\/how-long-does-good-writing-take\/","title":{"rendered":"How Long Does Good Writing Take?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/40607660\" width=\"475\" height=\"267\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/40607660\">10,000 hours (Failed Writer Series #11)<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/yuvi\">Yuvi Zalkow<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve known more than a few people who have tried something creative a handful of times, not been pleased with the results, and moveed on to something else. It&#8217;s like they really think a) it&#8217;s <em>that <\/em>easy or b) that they miraculously have what it takes to start out strong.<\/p>\n<p>I <a title=\"My review of Ann Patchett's The Getaway Car.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2012\/01\/22\/the-book-pile-the-getaway-car\/\">previously reviewed Ann Patchett&#8217;s wonderful essay about writing, The Getaway Car<\/a>, which is full of wonderful points like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhy is it that we understand that playing the cello will require work,  but we relegate writing to the magic of inspiration?\u201d \u2026 \u201cIf a person of  any age picked up the cello for the first time and said, \u2018I\u2019ll be  playing in Carnegie Hall next month!\u2019 you would pity her delusion\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good writing takes time. Quite a bit of time, in fact.<\/p>\n<p>While I always wrote, I&#8217;ve been at it seriously for almost 23 years&#8230;and I&#8217;m just starting to feel like what&#8217;s in my head makes it to the page.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not to say I didn&#8217;t have some successes along the way, but it takes time &#8212; and not many people are willing to put in a couple decades (often with no pay, or very little pay) to finally reach the point of writing well.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think of Yuvi Zalkov&#8217;s video? Does it really take roughly 20 years of effort to be a good writer? If not, what do you think it takes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10,000 hours (Failed Writer Series #11) from Yuvi Zalkow on Vimeo. I&#8217;ve known more than a few people who have tried something creative a handful of times, not been pleased with the results, and moveed on to something else. It&#8217;s like they really think a) it&#8217;s that easy or b) that they miraculously have what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[24,30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4092"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4819,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions\/4819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}