I have been reading a good (if uneven) book entitled  Talent is Overrated, which is actually less about talent and more about practice, which is something that is very important to me as a writer. I feel like practice is something that was not emphasized in grad school or in the writing groups. Which may be one of the reasons that so many people get an MFA and then within five years, stop writing. However enough about that. I am instead going to write a little bit about the helpful things I learned in Talent is Overrated and how I have been applying these ideas.

First off, Talent of Overrated is by Geoff Colvin, who is primarily a business writer/editor. This is not a book I would have picked off the shelf. However Jacob bought it, and talked about it, and by the time I finished it, I had unofficially renamed it the Art Of Practice, which is definitely a book I would pick off the shelf. The book talks about what makes experts and world class performers great, using specific examples. The examples are always interesting. The conclusions Colvin draws from them are often wrong. However he focuses a lot on specifics, which means that you, as the reader can draw your own conclusion from them.

The most important idea I came out of the book with was that practice should be specific. That the top athletes and musicians don’t just practice, or play pieces that they are good at. They actually focus in practice on the things that they are not great at. As a poet, often practice for me has been writing, and allowing myself to write poems that are sometimes atrocious as a warm up, or intensely editing a poem that is close to good, but not quite there yet.  But after reading the book I’ve started to challenge myself by writing in form, something I have always been scared of. Right now I am focusing on writing Sestina’s. I AM not very good yet, but I am improving. At first I kept getting bogged down in the strange math like elements in Sestina’s, but since I discovered the Sestina Builder. It figures out all the practical stuff, giving me the opportunity to really focusing on improving the writing.

Also I am devoting time, to just practicing, not even technically writing every day. Per the books suggestion I am keeping track of this time, monitoring to see how much work I am actually putting into improving my craft.