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  • Good morning, Hank.

  • It's Tuesday.

  • You know, it's been years, several of them, actually, Since I turned on this camera without knowing what I was gonna talk about, maybe we'll talk about that.

  • So when I was starting out as a writer, someone told me that when Ray Bradbury was asked how to write a good short story, he said, Right one short story every week for a year because nobody can write 52 bad short stories.

  • And I really took that advice to heart.

  • But two things.

  • One having now been asked that question a lot, I suspect that what Ray Bradbury was trying to do was not so much offer good advice as make the question go away in a clever and gentle manner and also to lots of people can write 52 bad short stories in a row.

  • I mean, I could as anybody who's read my Zombie Corn apocalypse stories can attest.

  • But the thing that's true about Bradbury's advice is that you have to practice now.

  • Practice is one of those English words with like 52 different meanings, some of which contradict each other, like in a sports context practices what you do to prepare for the real thing.

  • But in other contexts, practice is the real thing, as when you practice medicine or practice the dark arts.

  • Or, I guess, in the case of Madam Pomfrey, potentially sometimes both.

  • So I was very fortunate to begin my writing career as a book reviewer, writing 175 word book reviews for Booklist magazine.

  • This forced me to read a lot, but also to read really broadly picture books in young adult novels and romance novels set in Scottish castles and Islamic history and books about boxing and poetry.

  • And, yes, also many books about conjoined twins.

  • And that meant lots of practice in both.

  • The after mention context not just practice reading but also reading with an eye toward what kind of experience the book offered and to whom I might recommend it and revealing also forced me to practise writing in 175 word units.

  • And by practicing that form over and over again, I learned how to insert a bit of nuance into plot summary or which detail or quotation to choose.

  • I also developed a weird internal clock for knowing what 175 words feels like.

  • Like I know it's been about 100 75 words since I said Madam Pomfrey, which is in no way useful.

  • But the other stuff has been very useful because while writing a book review is very different from writing a novel, I already had a lot of practice that thinking about what stories conduce Oh, and how they do it and reviewing also brought a lot of structure and discipline to my life.

  • It taught me that I had to make writing a practice if I wanted to be good at it.

  • I should say I'm not like a naturally disciplined organized person as best expressed by my car, which is extremely messy, like my dear friend.

  • Hassan once commented that every time he walks up to the passenger side of my car, he expects to see a rat sitting in the passenger seat holding a little handbag, saying, Where we going today?

  • I am very messy and undisturbed.

  • Lind and I love to procrastinate, but I have also learned to love practice because it works.

  • It doesn't work immediately.

  • Like in the early days of reviewing books, I often finished a book with no idea of what I wanted to say about it.

  • In the early days of making Blood Brothers videos, I often ran up against deadlines because I didn't have ideas for videos.

  • But over years of practice, that starts to change.

  • Like people often ask me if I ever run out of ideas for blood.

  • But there's videos, and I suppose that I do.

  • But by making this a consistent practice for over 13 years now, in the same way my brain just kind of knows what 175 words looks like.

  • My brain just kind of knows that starting Saturday, if it doesn't have an idea, it needs to find one.

  • And so my brain starts working on it, thinking about what I'm wearing this week, what's been bothering me, where I'm finding hope.

  • If I'm finding it, maybe it's time for a silly video.

  • Maybe I shouldn't script one, and it keeps working until I've had an idea and after so many years, I almost always have one by Monday night.

  • So for me, making things doesn't lead to me using up all my ideas.

  • The practice of finding and expressing thought leads to more thoughts, so whether I'm editing a video, we're recording a podcast for writing a novel.

  • What I'm really doing and what I really love is practicing.

  • Hank, Thanks for practicing with me.

  • I'll see you on Friday.

Good morning, Hank.

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A2 初級

練習 (practice)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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