In order to write, you have to write. It may be tempting to spend time learning the theory, but the practice is what will make you a better writer. A good story consists of a million bad words.

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Transcription for A Million Bad Words

Hello, this is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. I'm here today to talk to you about a million bad words.

So I've written about this before, and it's this idea of needing to do your time and flush a million bad words out of your system, which sounds like a lot before you truly, really get a handle on what you're doing as a writer. And it doesn't have to be exactly a million. There's no trumpet that goes off when you hit that number, but I think the idea behind it is that in order to write, you have to write. You can't hypotheticalize it you can't just say, okay, I understand what I'm doing cerebrally. I'm just going to wake up and be an incredible writer right off the bat.

I think the idea of doing one's time, putting in the practice, of putting in a million bad words or whatever metaphor you want to use, we have this idea of spending 10,000 hours doing something before we can truly master it. It's all the same. It's a way of saying that you actually have to do the thing and do the practice and put the rubber on the road and the butt in the seat and the hands on the keyboard in order to truly get a handle on whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's learning a language, whether it's learning a trade, whether it's woodworking, watercolor, anything like that.

And the same applies to writing. And so one of the things that I see all the time is writers who want to put a shortcut to that process and figure out a way around actually doing the work. And so they watch YouTube videos, they read blogs, they read books, they take classes. All of these are amazing things to do. But sometimes we can get so caught up in the learning and in the theory that we forget the practice. And personally, I, I started doing yoga and I hated that they called it a practice because I didn't want to practice. I wanted to win. I wanted to be good. I wanted to just master yoga and I figured out that you can't actually do that.

You have to practice. And at the end of the day, practice is really all you have with writing, with any other pursuit. There is no finish line. There are huge benchmarks along the way. For example, completing your first manuscript or revising your first manuscript, getting an agent and getting a publishing deal, self-publishing and bringing a whole project to fruition. All of this is amazing to achieve. And yet there is no finish line because once you have that first project, you will want to do a second project. Once you have a first book published, you will want to publish a second book. It's a lifelong thing. And so the idea that you actually have to practice rather than just learning, you actually have to do rather than hypotheticalize I think is lost a little bit in this sort of achievement oriented way of thinking about writing.

And so I want to remind you, and if you haven't heard it before, inspire you, with this idea of the million bad words because it's not a punishment, it's actually the ability to sort of open yourself to the idea that you're practicing, you're not achieving yet, but that's okay. You are in a place where you just need to sit down and start writing. And only by writing and by doing will you actually reach your goal eventually. So this phase is not to be discounted. This phase is not something to be rushed through. It is something to embrace as you're doing your time and doing your million bad words and learning all the while.

So I wanted to sort of reframe that idea of the million bad words as something necessary and something you can actually enjoy because it is getting you to your goals. It's not a query letter, it's not an agent, it's not a publishing deal just yet. But it is more important than all of those things because without doing your million bad words, you are not going to get any of the other stuff. So just something to think about.

This has been Mary Kole with Good Story Company. And here's to a good story consisting of a million bad words.

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