Recently, the music school I attended as a child held its 55th anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, and I had the chance to play in the alum orchestra. Since it had been a while since I’d played my violin, I spent a lot of time in the weeks leading up to the concert learning the notes and practicing my part. This experience got me thinking about the importance of practice and how it relates to writing.
Like playing an instrument, writing requires practice. Sure, we can experiment and try things on the fly. We can repeat things by rote and hope something works. But if we really want to get good at our craft, we have to practice and we have to go about it in the right way.
There are four different components of practice—warm-ups, technique, repertoire, and performance—and all are essential for the practice to be effective. Let’s look at each of these components individually and how they translate to writing.
Warm-Ups
In music, these are the warm-up exercises you do to make your fingers limber and get them moving with elasticity. In sports, these are the stretches and routines you do to wake up your muscles so you don’t get cramps in the middle of the big game. Warm-ups are an essential part of a practice session because they get your body ready to engage fully.
In writing, we also need to warm up. Just as we need to get our bodies ready for music or sports, writing requires preparation of the mind. This might mean taking a few moments to think about the passage you plan to write that day or doing something to get your mind ready for creative work. For some, this type of preparation might be a sort of pre-writing ritual, like doing a few minutes of meditation, lighting a scented candle, or turning on a special playlist.
The key with warm-ups in writing is that we don’t just dive into the work cold. We take a few moments to prepare ourselves, therefore making our writing session more productive.
Technique
In sports, we do drills. In music, we practice scales and etudes. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to argue with my violin teacher. “What’s the point of these exercises?” I’d ask. “It’s not like I’m going to get up on stage at Carnegie Hall and play an A minor scale.” My teacher would just tell me to play my Bach. Of course, I would inevitably hit a tricky passage and start to stumble. She would then smile knowingly and say “There’s that A minor scale, Gabriela.” And, of course, she was right.
Contrary to popular belief, scales and etudes are not exercises in futility and they don’t just exist to irritate musicians (though sometimes it can feel that way). These exercises serve an important purpose because they allow us to isolate difficult techniques and practice them in a safe space. Then, when those same techniques come up in a difficult piece of repertoire, we’ll already have the muscle memory in place and the music will come more naturally.
The same thing is true in sports. You’re not going to perform a drill in the middle of a competition or a game, but if you’ve practiced that skill often enough, you’ll have it ready when you need it. The idea is to practice the skill in isolation first, until it feels natural and you can perform it on demand.
Writing also requires mastering techniques, and I am a firm believer in practicing those techniques outside the context of your work-in-progress. Why? Because if you use your current project as practice, you run the risk of breaking your book. Instead, I advise writers to use the Petri Dish technique. I’ve discussed this technique in the past, but what essentially boils down to is three steps:
- Identify the thing you need to practice.
- Do writing prompts that help you exercise that tricky technique.
- Apply what you learned back into your project.
You can certainly use characters or the world from your current project in those exercises, but don’t put pressure on yourself to write something that will go directly into your book. Instead, give yourself the freedom to experiment and make a mess.
While musicians and athletes work on technique during just about every practice session, in writing we can get away with doing so a little less frequently. In fact, once or twice per week should be more than sufficient. Of course, if you run into a technique that requires more focused practice, you may need to increase the frequency of your writing exercises for a period of time.
Repertoire
This is an area that many writers neglect. They are so focused on whatever project they’re writing that they don’t think about broadening their repertoire. In music (and other performing arts), repertoire is a huge part of an artist’s development.
One of the most significant aspects of my musical education was the year I spent learning jazz theory and improvisation at college. Not only did I learn more about scales and arpeggios than I had ever learned playing classical music (and I played a lot of scales in my day), but it also stretched my mind in understanding how music is put together. I started hearing music differently because jazz gave me a whole new perspective. Playing outside of my comfort zone was one of the most impactful experiences of my musical career.
The same thing is true with our writing. We can sometimes get stuck in a particular genre or style and it can be good to shake things up a bit. I know several writers who do challenges or short story contests as a way to break out of their usual genre and try something new. And if writing in a different genre is not feasible, at least try to read a book or two outside your usual selections. The idea here is to broaden the scope of your writing so you’re not stuck on a single genre or style.
Remember, there’s a lot you can learn from genres outside your own. Romance and contemporary (book club) fiction are great for understanding character development. You can study mysteries to learn about plot, thrillers to learn about pacing, and horror to learn about tension and release. And, of course, when it comes to world-building, nothing beats science fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction. When you read outside your genre, you can see different techniques in action and apply them to your own writing.
Performance
Sooner or later, we need to put our words out into the world and to many, this can be nothing short of terrifying. Publishing our work—whether it’s an ebook, a newsletter, a blog post, or a freelance article—is a scary but necessary step if we want to build a writing career. Putting our stories out in the world is the writing equivalent of getting up on stage and playing a sonata.
The key with performance is understanding what kind of feedback to consider and what to ignore. In sports you might review the video after an important game and make mental notes on what to do next time. In music or theater you might study a recording of yourself so you can improve for the next performance. But in writing, things are a little bit different. Once your work has been published, once that newsletter has been sent or the magazine is out on newsstands, it becomes very difficult (if not impossible) to change things.
One piece of advice I got early in my career was not to read my reviews, either good or bad. I think there’s something to that advice. Unlike watching a game tape or performance video, there’s not much we can get from reading reviews that will help us with the next project. When a work is pre-published, critique can be incredibly helpful. But once that work is out in the world, feedback becomes less useful because there’s very little we can do in response.
In sports and performing arts, performance gives us a goal and something to work toward. The same is true in writing. It’s important that we engage in performance by getting our stories in the hands of our readers and allowing our work to be read. At the same time, it’s also crucial that we develop clear boundaries on how to handle feedback and protect ourselves so we don’t derail our ability to produce more work in the future.
There you have it, a rundown of the four areas of practice—warm-ups, technique, repertoire, and performance—and how they apply to writing. When it comes to implementing these different components, I recommend a routine like this:
- Every day: Warm-up by keeping your hand in the game and spending at least a few moments thinking about your work. If you’re sitting down for a writing session, take a few minutes to prepare yourself and get in the zone.
- Every week: Try to do at least one exercise to help you build your technique. You can use characters from your work-in-progress if you wish, but don’t pressure yourself to write something that will definitely go into your book.
- Every month: Do one thing that pulls you outside of your comfort zone and expands your repertoire. This could be a flash fiction contest or reading a short story in another genre.
- Every year: Publish something. Depending on how you publish, it might be more often. For instance, if your main mode of publishing is a newsletter, your cadence might be more like once a month or every other week. If you’re publishing book-length work, once a year might be more your speed.
As with everything at DIY MFA, your mileage may vary. Try out the above routine and see how it works for you. If necessary, make adjustments. As we always say at DIY MFA, there’s no such thing as a “best practice,” only what works best for you.
Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!
P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.
