Avi

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Practice makes …

practice
Is this practice?

Musi­cians prac­tice. Ath­letes prac­tice. Air­plane pilots prac­tice. Vir­tu­al­ly all pro­fes­sions, which offer intern­ships and appren­tice­ship, are offer­ing prac­tice. The ques­tion for today is can, and do, writ­ers practice?

I asked some of my writer friends for their answer to this ques­tion, and all of them said, “Read­ing.” I have no doubt that read­ing (a lot) is required of peo­ple who wish to write. A musi­cian must lis­ten to music (a lot) as part of his or her musi­cal under­stand­ing. Still, no one con­fus­es lis­ten­ing to music with prac­tic­ing music.

Also, with­out doubt, if you have been writ­ing for a long time, you are, so to speak, a prac­tic­ing pro­fes­sion­al, and that prac­tice adds immea­sur­ably to your writ­ing skill.

But I am going to sug­gest that rewrit­ing is writer’s prac­tice. I thought about this as I labored today over a para­graph in a new project. Chang­ing the struc­ture, the words, the rhythm, the log­ic, the metaphors, etc., etc., of that one paragraph—trying to get it right—is prac­tic­ing my profession—writing. I believe it was the British writer, George Bernard Shaw who said, “Hard writ­ing makes easy reading.”

No one, no one, no one writes any­thing real­ly good unless they rewrite, which is to say prac­tice. Like every oth­er kind of work­ing artist, prac­tice makes … art.

4 thoughts on “Practice makes …”

  1. Thank you, Avi. You always pro­vide out­stand­ing advice! In the mid­dle of a rewrite now. All the Best!
    Gillian

    Reply
  2. Wow… It is unbe­liev­able what you have on your blog! 🙂 I’ve nev­er thought of this until now!!!
    ‑Megan

    Reply
  3. I com­plete­ly agree that readin, writ­ing, and rewrit­ing are all ways to prac­tice writ­ing. When read­ing, you learn more elab­o­rate words and ways of writ­ing. When writ­ing, well, let’s just say that your first book prob­a­bly won’t be as good as your four­ty third. With rewrit­ing, how­ev­er, you are allowed to reflect back and say, ‘What was I think­ing? That makes no sense.’ It shows how much your writ­ing skill changes in a peri­od of time.
    ‑Sam

    Reply
  4. I think prac­tice for writ­ing is just free writ­ing. Some­times I like to just free about any­thing i want. It sort of gives you prac­tice for when it’s the real thing. You can write what­ev­er you want and you don’t need a spe­cif­ic prompt that every­one writes about. It feels amaz­ing to just let your riv­er of cre­ativ­i­ty, flow. Some­times it helps you become a bet­ter writer because you get to prac­tice word choice and gram­mar and those kinds of things.
    ‑Dasha

    Reply

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