Chapter 36: More Practice, practice, practice.

I woke up a 8:00 AM. “Practice, practice, practice,” I said to myself. It was 9:48. I’d had breakfast, made my list of things to do, talked to Bobbi and one of my kids. “Practice, practice, practice,” I said to myself. And I started this chapter It’s not just a matter of writing the word practice, I thought, although that’s a kind of prac­ tice. It’s deliberate practice in any form. It’s practicing imagining, and practicing doing, and meta practicing. “Are you going to write the stupid chapters about practicing until you die?” Asked my inner critic. “No,” I said. “I’m going to write until I practice consistently.” “It’s going to get awfully b-o-o-o-o-o-ring,” said my inner critic. “I’m not bored writing,” I said. “I can always edit it later.” And I did. I wrote a lot of things that didn’t work. And I deleted them. “And what’s left is what did work?” Asked my inner critic. “This works?” “It’s not great,” I said. “Not every page has to be great. But there’s a point to it,” There was a point to it, the Not Quite Omniscient Narrator narrated, and it was an important point. By leaving a record of his many failures the author was beginning the final phase of the metanovel. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for D*mmies