I’m writing from the land beyond one million words.

	Eli Cranor

Last week, for our first lesson, we looked at the power of concision. I fictionalized the infamous (and unverified) legend of Hemingway’s six-word story.

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

There you have it. The missing word was “baby,” and that one word is what transforms this little snippet from a Facebook Marketplace ad into the tip of a looming iceberg.

When I do this exercise with students, they will often try to fill in the blank with words like “clown” or “old.” And while those two options offer up their own slight subversions (clown shoes are funny, and old shoes should’ve been worn), they don’t carry the same emotional weight as “baby.”

That word generates scenes: a mother palming a pair of tiny shoes then slowly, painfully sliding them back into the box. Why does she want to sell them? What happened to the child?

You know you’re on the right track when questions start coming, and the only way to answer them is by writing. Not thinking. Not planning or outlining. Just writing.

There is a strange kind of alchemy that happens when you sit down to write. After a while, the characters come to life. They start walking around and fleshing out the story with an authenticity that cannot be forged through any other exercise except for putting the black on the white.

So many novice writers go wrong here. They get that initial seed of an idea, those six perfect words that open their mind up and get them wondering, get them dreaming — but they forget to write. Or they wait to write. Or they think if I can just map out every chapter, or do a little more research, then, and only then, they'll finally be ready to string together some sentences.

For my money, it's better to dive in.



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I’m not alone in this assertion. Ray Bradbury once claimed that you’re not a real writer until you’ve written a million words. What Bradbury is saying here is that writing is a skill. It’s something that can be practiced. You can, and will, get better the more you do it.

It perfectly aligns with Malcom Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule,” which basically just says that to go from a novice to a professional, it takes somewhere around 10,000 hours of practice.

And that’s why, when you get your grand idea, you’re better off jumping straight in and writing. The harsh reality is that that original idea, the first novel you complete, won’t ever see the light of day (trust me on this one, I have three “practice” manuscripts in my drawer, completed novels that will never, ever, see the light of day).

Think of it as if you were learning to play the piano. Even after you’ve spent a couple months practicing, does anyone really want to listen to you play? Not really. And after a couple of months writing — heck, sometimes after a couple of years (it took seven for me) — people still won’t want to read your work.

If that sounds harsh, or even scary — it is.

But it can help to think of these early stages, these rough drafts, as nothing more than apprentice work. You’re learning the craft, or, to keep the piano metaphor running —you’re practicing your scales.

And if you stick with it long enough, one day, after you’ve surpassed a million words or 10,000 hours, whichever comes first, then you will be a writer. I believe that with all my heart.

In the words of the late, great Mississippi author Larry Brown, “If you want it bad enough, you can have it.” Now go get it.

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