220,000 words, 10,000 hours

Gemstone is rolling towards a conclusion. At approaching 59,000 words I think I am drawing closer to the end game, though it is getting hard to write currently as this is the point I begin to worry that there is likely to be not only a thread left idly hanging but a whole rope with a noose poised to strangle the plot.

My Nano 2012 effort has drama, conflict and action. Because it involves people not liking each other as well as people hiding their motives there are inevitably going to be moments when I wonder if I have forgotten an important strand. That's the joy of writing the way I do; it's a rollercoaster of wondering and wandering rather than a smooth transition from planning to achieving.

You would think I'd have learnt by now, but it seems I never do.

Of course, 58k words is nowhere near 220,000. Even my numerical skills wouldn't pretend that it was. But this is my fourth year of Nano and while I have hit the finish line before the end of each November with the smallest 'success' being 52,000 words I estimate I have now written the best part of 220,000 words in all four books. Throw in my penchant for on-the-fly revising and even in one spectacular case wiping out two thousand words as I just didn't like what they were doing to the story, it is a fair bet I am on the way towards a quarter of a million in total.

So if that explains the 220k figure, what of the 10,000 hours?

I have no idea, and would probably shudder at the total, of how long I have actually spent connecting up all those words and dropping the odd full stop and comma in among them. Even at my modest typing speed (going back to ensure for example that the word 'today' has not come out as it usually does when I am at the keyboard as 'toady') we are talking a lot of time spent.

The 10,000 hours though is, I once was told, the basic qualification for mastery in any skill. Guitar playing, car fixing, cooking, chain-saw juggling... Every skill needs time to develop.

Despite the popular idea of passers-by plucked off the street to reveal a staggering talent and become hit recording artists thanks to television shows like X Factor, the reality is all those successful people have practised and practised. They have put in their 10k hours. Talent, after all, requires work and dedication as well as an opportunity.

So for a writer 10,000 hours is all the time you were trying to write those stories and that novel, or even that sprawling trilogy. It was gathered while doing newspaper or magazine articles or even thoughtful letters to the local paper (or in my case, week in and week out providing copy for a football programme for more than a dozen years as well as writing manuals for training purposes). I was learning the craft and disciplining myself to getting it all done on time. Yes, I have had those bleary-eyed two in the morning times when nothing seemed to make sense and yet I had to keep going.

If there is one good thing from Nano –– and I am sure there are many good things to emerge from all this furious writing and agonising –– it is to get people to set a target, complete it on time and acquire a huge chunk of that 10,000 hours mastery along the way.

I am not, for a single moment, imagining what I have done is 'great' and nor do I believe that everyone else's efforts in Nano are destined for the next best-seller. I am fully aware that it takes a lot of lipstick on a pig to even make it look remotely presentable. Some indeed may become best selling authors, and good for them. But with each word, each effort, eachNovember, every Nano participant is getting nearer and nearer to what professional writers have already done. All those hours of typing and scribbling will slowly add up.

The leading authors have achieved their 10,000 hours already and may well have the certificate on the wall, though the small piece of paper in the frame may look suspiciously like a cheque.