What do you want to be when you grow up? That's what grown-ups ask kids all the time. It's the wrong question. Being is easy, especially for kids. A kid can be a cowboy, a firefighter, a soldier, all in the space of a few minutes.
Being is not only easy for kids. It's dead easy for adults too. Watch this: I'm a writer. Now I'm an actor. Now I'm a fireman. Now I'm back to being a writer. I can be anything that I want to be. But once I'm being something can I do anything effective? That's a greater challenge.
When I'm being a writer I can write--or not write. If I write, I'm being what you might call a productive writer, or a practicing writer. If I don't write, then I'm being a blocked writer, or a lazy writer, or an aspiring writer. Whether I write or don't write, once I decide I'm a writer, I'm still a writer.
Want to be a writer who writes? Easy: sit down, pick up a piece of paper and a pen and write anything at all--say the word 'dog.' Wow! You're not only a writer but you are writing. Not very much, and not very good, but it's a start. So doing is almost as easy as being.
Doing something well is where it starts to get hard: it takes practice, practice, practice. And not just practice: it takes constant review, criticism, self improvement, maybe coaching and education--what Malcom Gladwell in his book "Outliers" calls "deliberate practice." If your objective is ambitious it may take Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice. And even that may not be enough if you don't start with a certain level of talent or capability. 10,000 hours of practice would never have gotten me to the NBA. I just don't have the physical skills. But I do believe the skills to write.
I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. It took a long time to realize that 'being a writer' was an easy and unsatisfying goal; writing effectively and fluidly was more like it. I've done that more than a few times and I discovered that wasn't what I wanted either. What I now want (and I believe I always really wanted but could not articulate) was to have a body of writing that I wrote and that satisfied me.
And that's what I'm working on (among other things): being what I need to be and doing what I need to do in order to have what I want to have: that body of work.
Right now I want something less than a body of work. I want to have one more finished post. To do that I'm being a writer (easy); I'm writing this blog post (a little harder); I'm rewriting and editing it so that I'm satisfied (much harder); and by the time you see it, it will have reached the state of "good enough for now" and I will have posted it.
Then on to the next post, and the next, and the next. And if I do this (and other practices of writing) enough, I I'll get to my long term goal--maybe.
Then on to the next post, and the next, and the next. And if I do this (and other practices of writing) enough, I I'll get to my long term goal--maybe.
So I'm writing a lot. I've got five blogs going; I've just finished my first play; I've got some other writing projects in mind. My plan is to produce a few posts a week on each of the blogs. If I keep that up--or even amp it up beyond that--I might reach my long-term goal. Or I might die trying, which is not so bad, either.
The right question is to ask kids--and yourself is not "what do you want to be?" It's what do you want to accomplish--to have? Then figure out what you need to do to get that. Then figure out what you need to be to do that. Then be that; do that; and maybe you'll have that.
At least you'll have fun.
At least you'll have fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment