I’m a huge supporter of continuous learning. Obviously, right? This is, after all, one of hundreds of articles I’ve written on the author business and writing craft. But what I’ve realized recently is that learning can also be a crutch. Just like how writers get stuck worldbuilding, researching, or organizing and never actually write a story, we can also get stuck in education. It’s important to always be learning and improving, but when is it too much? When is your learning hurting your author career instead of helping it? As we start a new year, let’s talk about how to avoid overloading your brain while still improving your skills.
The Learner’s Disease
You may have heard of the Worldbuilder’s Disease. It’s something science fiction or fantasy authors may suffer when they get so lost in building their own fictional words that they never get to writing the story. The Learner’s Disease is similar though it can affect all writers. This is when writers get so stuck in learning about the writing craft that they never get a project completed. Generally, there are two times when writers can contract this disease.
Pre-Manuscript
Learner’s Disease can freeze up writers before they write anything because they are too scared they need to know more before they write the story. These people need to realize you’ll never know everything before you start draft one. In truth, even if you knew all there was about writing a story, you wouldn’t be able to write a perfect first draft. Bestselling author’s first drafts are awful, just ask them. To these worried writers suffering from Learner’s Disease, I encourage you to pause on learning and just write that first draft. After it’s completed, you can worry about fixing it up to a level that is publishable.
Post-Manuscript
The other time Learner’s Disease seems to paralyze writers is in the editing stage. As they learn new ways to improve their writing, writers tend to go back and fix the entire manuscript. While this is great, it can lead to an endless cycle of edits, especially if you are constantly learning new skills. Obviously, writers have to edit until the book is on a publishable level, but sometimes writers never feel they are done. As the saying goes: good books are abandoned, not finished. There will always be things to improve. If your book is edited well enough to pass publishing standards and you feel the story is strong, then move on. You can always write your next story better. As long as the next book isn’t worse than the previous one, readers will happily follow you along your learning curve as you produce increasingly better stories.
Theory Overload
Beyond freezing your writing progress, learning too much can also overload your mind. In psychology, Cognitive Load Theory is the concept that our brains can only process so much at once. Our working memory (short term memory) can process 5-9 new pieces of information at a time.
Now think of the last time you sat in an hour long writing class or read a chapter in a book on writing. Were there more than nine new things to process? Probably. But your brain couldn’t grasp it all. It latched onto a handful of things (and not even useful things! It could have just been that the room was too cold or that the speaker had a cool Arabic name.). Of those things your brain processed, some were discarded and some went to long term memory. All in all, you’d be lucky to walk out of the learning experience with one new useful tidbit that sticks with you.
How To Maximize Productive Learning
Cognitive Load Theory offers ways to maximize learning so people leave with as much information as possible. One way is to learn at your level. If you’re a beginner, find sources that present the information as simply as possible. Once you know more, it’ll be easier since not everything you learn will be new and must be remembered. Second, try to learn through both visuals and audio on the same topic. For instance, if you watch a video presentation with a PowerPoint, you’re more likely to remember it than just reading a book or just listening to a podcast. Third, focus on one thing at a time with as little distractions as possible. Don’t try to learn about plot arcs and character arcs at once. Pick one, and maybe even just one aspect of it.
Lastly, you must practice recalling the information and using it. Even if you succeed in moving the useful information from your working memory to your long term memory, the information will fade away if it isn’t brought back up in your mind. The more often you have to recall something, the stronger the pathway in your mind to that information so it doesn’t fade away.
Intentional Learning
In this day and age, it’s easy to find books on writing or classes and conferences to attend. With the internet, you can constantly find things to learn. On my computer, I have folders of notes and handouts from many online learning opportunities. Do I remember everything I learned? No. Have I reopened any of the documents to review? Only a couple. Do I use any of that information in my own writing? As a writing teacher, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I don’t think I really use any of them.
Most writing classes come and go so fast, there isn’t time to practice the skills in that moment, and we often don’t take the time to practice them later. Same is true for books on writing. I read them and think there’s cool information in the moment, but I don’t practice it. I took an online college course on writing, and I probably use what I learned there the most because each week I had to practice it.
Now, does that mean all those books or one-day workshops or weekend conferences don’t offer good information? No. Of course they have great things to offer. I get many of my post topics from them. However, if you don’t practice, it won’t benefit you. Even when I have to spend time studying writing topics so I can create a post on them, I don’t really internalize the skills like I should. It takes intentional and focused practice to learn a skill and become proficient at it. Let’s look at two useful ways to increase your learning effectively and actually improve your skills.
1. Put In The Time
There is nothing that can replace practice. If you learn how best to write description for a scene, you may be able to do it once well, but practicing it will make the skill second nature to you. Instead of going back and having to edit all your descriptions, you may be able to just touch them up if you practice enough it becomes natural to you. Most people say you have to practice something for 10,000 hours to master it. While mastery is what everyone wants to strive for, it isn’t always possible. What writers need is to be proficient so we can write a good story. After a career of writing, we can be masters, but at first we just need proficiency.
Josh Kaufman, an author of business and skill acquisition books, writes that a person really only needs twenty hours of focused practice to learn basic skills. If you practice a skill for one hour every weekday in a month, you acquire a new writing skill. Do that each month, and that’s twelve skills to better yourself as a writer that year. Even if you can only practice a skill fifteen minutes a day, you can become proficient in three months. That’s four new skills you acquire every year. But without the practice, the information you spend your money and time learning will fade. Our time and money are precious when we have an author career so you don’t want to waste it. Practice the skills you learn.
A Warning
Now this isn’t just time spent writing. This practice must be intentional and focused. If you are working on writing descriptions, then write various descriptions for an hour using whatever method you want to emulate. If you are working on writing satisfying characters arcs in scenes, then spend an hour editing a scene you wrote for just the character arc. Don’t rewrite descriptions or go back and fix grammar in another chapter. Intentionally focus on the internal journey of the character in that scene and how you can sharpen it.
I used this method of focused learning while editing one of my manuscripts (and I highly advocate that editing is the best time to practice new skills). I’d do rounds of edits that focused on different aspects of the story. For instance, I’d go through a chapter and take out all the wording that made the narration feel like a distant POV, creating a deep POV for the scene. Then I’d move to the next chapter and do the same thing. For 130 chapters. Then I’d move on to the next thing to edit. Let’s just say I had a lot of practice, but now I’m better at each skill. Was it a slow process? Yes. It took me almost two years to edit that manuscript because I used it as a learning curve, but it was so worth it. I now write cleaner and edit less on my manuscripts. Be intentional and focused in your practice, and it’ll pay off.
2. Spaced Repetition
Committing something to memory is about repetition. A proven learning technique is spaced repetition, which encourages reviewing information in increased intervals of time rather than studying for hours all at once. The idea is to learn something, review it the next day, then the next week, etc. There are many recommended intervals so you can pick what seems to work best for you. It can be day 2, 7, and 30. Day 1, 3, 7, and 14. Or day 2, 3, 5, and 7.
This works to memorize facts, but it’s also useful in practicing a skill. Once you have your twenty hours of practice in, you can take some time off and then revisit it at intervals of time. Keep it fresh in your mind so when you write that next draft or edit the next book, it’s there to be used to improve your writing.
Final Thoughts
I hope this information helps you form good habits of learning for the new year so you can see your writing progress (both in skill and completion). Don’t overload your mind with so much information that it doesn’t stick. Pick one thing to focus on improving, then practice it for at least twenty hours. Then find a new aspect of writing to practice, taking a break at times to practice the other skill you already learned. If you stick to it, your writing will improve. Plus, you’ll feel better because you won’t be overextended mentally and you’ll do more writing (which always makes us writers feel better). So, what one skill will you focus on learning first?
Thanks for reading!
Write a tale
Leave a trail