Reflection 1: Practice! Practice! Practice!

Whatever the author could imagine in the metauniverse could exist in the metauniverse. But imagining something vaguely made it exist only vaguely. Bringing something substantial into substantial existence took a substantial amount of imagining. It took work. It took practice.

“I don’t know why I keep forgetting how important practice is,” I said.

“I don’t know why either,” said the metanovel. “You keep writing about it and not doing it.”

Simon Singh’s book, Fermat’s Enigma tells the story of Andrew Wiles, the British mathematician who proved what’s called Fermat’s Last Theorem, a famous mathematical proposition that had gone unsolved for 358 years. The Pythagorean equation: a² + b² = c² has many integer solutions. Fermat’s Theorem: no three positive integers can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for n greater than two.

The world’s mathematical minds had individually spent years and collectively spent centuries of effort trying to prove the Theorem was true or finding a counterexample. Wiles produced a 400 page proof after six years of intense practice. He would master a branch of mathematics by reading the literature, working through the theorems, and then by practice. Practice! Practice! Practice! He’d find problems posed by others; he’d invent problems of his own. He’d practice, and practice, and practice, until solving problems in that branch of mathematics was as effortless as adding single digits is to most of us. Then he’d go on to the next branch, practicing, and practicing, and practicing it until he mastered it.

I was in my fifties when I first read the book and realized what I had failed to realize earlier and kept forgetting later. Practice was vital. I needed to practice. I had been smart enough to master most of my schoolwork with almost no effort. Out of school I learned things easily. Not practicing had became my practice.

Research in neurobiology and cognitive science confirms the need for practice. When people —or animals—learn, their brains rewire. The more practice the more rewiring. Skills come from deliberate, intentional repeated practice. The more intention applied, the less practice is needed, but some practice always is needed. Once skills are acquired, practice sustains skills. Once practice stops, skills deteriorate. Every new bit of neurological and psychological research says the same thing: Practice! Practice! Practice!

NaNoWriMo forced me to practice writing. I had only thirty days. I had to practice every day—1,666 words a day on average. What I wrote wasn’t important. That I practiced was important.

Then it came time to edit. And I got in trouble.

It might have been easier if I realized that I needed to practice editing.

But I didn’t. Instead I practiced giving up, starting over, and taking long absences from even trying.

And because I practiced it, I got good at it.

Because of my childhood successes I’d not only learned to not practice, I’d also not learned to not metapractice: to practice practicing.

I needed to change that.

Practice Chapters

“I wish you’d get rid of those pointless chapters,” said my inner critic. “They’re stupid and distracting.”

“Which ones?” I asked.

“The ten between Practice! Practice! Practice! and this one, to start with,” said my inner critic. “What Is The Name Of This Chapter? for example. It is a particularly stupid chapter in a book that excels at stupidity. Is there any point to keeping a chapter like that even in something as dumb as this?”

“The day I wrote it, I couldn’t think of anything to write,” I said. “But what I wrote wasn’t important. Writing it gave me practice. But you’re right. It’s a stupid chapter. I don’t need it anymore. I’m going to delete it.”

“And these chapters, too,” my inner critic, giving me a list. It was a long list.

I agreed, and I did.

“And the rest of them, too,” aid my inner critic. “While you’re practicing getting rid of chapters, get rid of all the rest.”

I didn’t agree. And I didn’t.