There’s the recent theory that one needs 10,000 hours of study to become expert at something. According to this research, the people who go on to excel in a sport or art aren’t necessarily more talented than that ones who didn’t. What they did was work harder at it. More hours spent at the sport, or practice. To me, this seems rather obvious, particularly once it’s be pointed out.

@Robin: Teaching a subject can definitely make you learn even more thoroughly! And like you, I enjoy reading favorite authors and seeing their voices mature and improve.

@Karin Tabke: Hey there! Thanks for stopping by!

Although I am not a fiction writer, I did not really start learning to write until graduate school, until I was teaching writing, actually. At that point my own work demanded that I get better, that I take what had always gotten me by — a strong, distinctive voice and a few good insights here and there — and work it, shape it, and tame it so that I could express myself more effectively.

I had always considered myself a good writer, but I really didn’t know what that meant until I *finally learned* how to write well, or at least better.

I would have been so tempted to start that essay with, “I am Ishmael.”

And thanks for all the thoughtful responses, too.

I get so bothered by suggestions that Writing can’t be taught when the situation is actually far more complex than that. I believe it can be but that really fine writing/storytelling, of the kind that gets you published requires a writer to work at it.

When I was in college, I’d tested out of all but one English requirement, so I enrolled in an upper division writing class in which the TA said we were to write our papers without using the verb To Be. I was completely baffled by this and when I asked the TA how we were to do that, he just smirked at me. Seriously. That was the extent of his explanation. A smirk. It was years, literally, before I understood what he wanted. And trust me over those years I thought about it a lot. For me, a single example would have sufficed.

Eventually, I did figure it out and was (as you can tell) hopping mad at that TA for his teaching failure. And I do consider that a teaching failure. I did eventually learn it myself.

I have since had some truly stellar teachers, either actual teachers or other writers.

But my writing wasn’t where it needed to be until I committed a significant portion of time to my own learning.