10,000 HOURS

Last year I posted about the 10,000 hour rule. The basic idea, laid out in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers is that 10,000 hours is about how long it takes to achieve mastery in any area, based on a study of people at the top of their fields. While the case studies outlined pertain mostly to music and computers, Gladwell asserts that the same rule can be applied to all areas (he even briefly mentioned fiction writing.)

In my previous post, I calculated how many hours I'd spent on fiction writing. While I believe the exercise was an eye-opener, I made a serious miscalculation. I arrived at my figure in the most simple way possible--by estimating how many hours I thought I wrote every day and multiplying by the number of days I'd written (approx.)

Where'd I go wrong?

My error was estimating. This year, instead of estimating how long I've sat in front of the computer writing productively (as opposed to goofing off and cruising message boards), I decided to use a more precise method: words per hour.

During NANO I discovered I write, on average, 800 words per hour. If I'm cruising I hit 1,000, but that's the exception, not the rule. To date, I've written:

4 full-length novels (80,000 words)
1 category (60K the 1st/2nd drafts, 50K for the 3rd.)

Assuming 3 drafts per book:

80,000 x 4= 960,000
60,000+60,000+50,000=170,000

TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN: 1,130,000 words

1,130,000 (total words) / 800 (words per hour) = 1,413 hours ACTUAL writing

Adding in 10 hours per month on studying the craft for 66 months= 660 hours studying (magazines, online classes, conference classes, craft writing books)

Grand total: 2073

GULP. I went backwards from last year. HAHA! Oh well, it's only theoretical, but at least I have a more clear idea how far I am from true mastery. PLUS, it allowed me to quit comparing myself to other writers who have written for 5.5 years like me but gone further. Not everyone puts in the same amount of hours per day, and not everyone puts out the same word count per hour. Though I'm disappointed in my efforts thus far (only 8 true hours per week, on average, dedicated to writing for the past 5.5 years)--I'm also freed.

Here's the bonus: using what I know, I'm able to reasonably demand 1600 words a day from myself and know that I can write 1 full length and 1 category (or a similar combination) this year. THAT makes my 2010 goals make sense.

TRY IT:

Word count per book, multiplied by number of drafts= TOTAL WORD COUNT
Total word count, divided by average word count per hour= NUMBER OF WRITING HOURS
Add in 10 hours per month (or your best real guess) for writing "education" to get your final number

Of course, it's all approximation, but a helpful tool for those of you who are like me, and like to quantify and measure.

What'd you get? OR, how do you determine your daily word count/yearly goals?