Practice Doesn't Make Perfect; It Trains the Body's Knowing
How repetition in the creative arts trains us to recognize great work and take steps towards achieving the level we've set for ourselves.
We're speeding into the end of a school year here with all the chaos and heightened emotions of finishing a long thing at long last. Each day, another item to shove into the backpack, or event to attend, it seems. Concerts, awards ceremonies, the last library book to return: you name it, it's happening.
I'm not typically an outwardly nostalgic person (though let's be real, I am an entirely nostalgic person on the inside), but for some reason, watching my child carry his bell set to school for the last time got me.
Maybe it’s because it’s the one thing that’s completely changing. Next year, he gets to learn the recorder. Otherwise, he's got the same backpack, hallways, teachers, and process as this year, just leveled up.
What I think I'm really feeling is the release after struggling over that bell set together all year. If you've attempted music practice or homework with a kid, you know what I'm talking about. There's the begging, the cajoling, the demanding, the foot stomping, the sheet music hurling, the minutes of playing with the metronome instead of playing the notes, the distraction tactics of mom, what was that favorite song you like to play on the piano and overall, the trying not to make it feel like a chore because music should be joyful.
We're feeling joyful after all of this, right?
As his concert date neared, and he realized his authority over his instrument, something changed. Rather than practicing because it was something he had to do daily, my son became focused on what he wanted to sound like at the concert.
I could ask him something like: "How did that time through feel? How would it feel to go out on the stage and play it just like that?”
He would cock his head, fluttering his mallets around his body like wings and he'd say:
That felt great.
Or:
I need to do that one again.
And you know what I realized? He wasn't looking to me for validation. He knew the sound he wanted to make, out there on that stage. And he had heard what he sounded like, just then on that run-through. He ran a comparison and delivered an assessment. And he took responsibility for the additional practice.
It was like he aged overnight. Though really, I can clock exactly how many minutes of sweat and tears got us to the point.
So, when he walked to school that final morning in his concert blacks and his bright red bell set in a plastic briefcase, I choked up.
Look at you and how you grew.
Writers: Put in the work and train your ear
If you asked my son, he would have gladly skipped all that practice and went straight to playing well at the concert, if that was an option.
As writers, I think we long for this, too. Do we really have to write a bunch of drafts, poorly? Can't we skip straight to the bestseller?
The answer is, sadly, no.
But here's the reframe: We get to do our writing routine. We get to do it, over and over again, and it may not feel comfortable every day, if ever, but we go to the desk and do it anyway.
And eventually, we can look at a draft and compare it to the story in our head, and take responsibility for any additional revisions we need to put in to get the on-the-page draft closer to the in-the-head draft. Minute, by hour, by word, we are building our writing ear and our self-confidence. We are moving from something we have to do towards a skill we are honing and have authority over.
And when we can trust in that writing ear, when it says not quite, and especially when it says yes! now! we have something magical.
For those of you heading out into the wilds of summer-with-child, may you find the pockets of time to continue getting to the desk. Tell them it's your version of homework. Throw your pencils and paper around. Model the practice, the frustration, the continuing despite it all. They will be better for it.
Esther Harder is an Author Accelerator certified book coach in memoir.
