What is and isn't mastery?

[melodydanielluna]

Is mastery strictly practising your very narrow domain, or could a variety of things that relate to your domain be considered mastery? 

For example, my LP is writing, specifically fantasy and sci-fi.  But when I write a blog post, am I pracisting my craft, because it's writing craft? 

When I read a book on writing craft, am I engaging in the mastery process?  Or is it only when I go and actually PRACTISE what I am learning?

When I work with my editor, and she gives me feedback about my writing, and I am learning about my weaknesses, and then improving them, is this part of the mastery process?

Does reading fantasy/sci-fi and making notes count towards mastery?

I think all of these things are important for becoming a master of my craft, but I could see how reading books and writing blog posts and the like could distract from doing the actual work, which is writing fantasy and sci-fi novels. 

I just wanted to start a conversation about this.

[Virgo]

Mastery is creating your own design and having your own insights. Reading and learning from others or imitating them will help but if your not able to have your own design or insight there no such thing as mastery

[Eternal Unity]

There's mastery of the craft as a professional and there is Mastery. As in Mastery of Life. Becoming Godlike at everything you do. Attainment of the highest realizations, full embodiment of infinite consciousness and demonstration of it every minute of every day.

Good question! Some confuse this.

Edited June 28, 2021 by Eternal Unity
Mastery

[Bob Seeker]

Mastery in George Leonard's view is deliberate practice with feedback to hone and hone, always practicing at your edge to get to the next level. That's the 10,000 hours you want. 

Reading can be a form of practice if you are putting in effort to learn from the reading, but writing your own is the best type of practice. You will need to do some of both, but you want to focus on the creating part. The 10,000 hour rule is never going to be clean cut because of this. 

Think about how messy Leo's 10,000 hours is with all the research on YT he does. Do adds count? haha All the contemplating he probably does in the shower

[Leo Gura]

On 6/25/2021 at 7:42 AM, melodydanielluna said:

Is mastery strictly practising your very narrow domain, or could a variety of things that relate to your domain be considered mastery?

Your view of mastery is far too narrow.

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For example, my LP is writing, specifically fantasy and sci-fi.  But when I write a blog post, am I pracisting my craft, because it's writing craft? 

Of course.

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When I read a book on writing craft, am I engaging in the mastery process?

Of course.

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Or is it only when I go and actually PRACTISE what I am learning?

Obviously not.

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When I work with my editor, and she gives me feedback about my writing, and I am learning about my weaknesses, and then improving them, is this part of the mastery process?

Of-fucking-course.

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Does reading fantasy/sci-fi and making notes count towards mastery?

Yes!

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but I could see how reading books and writing blog posts and the like could distract from doing the actual work, which is writing fantasy and sci-fi novels. 

Of course.

Keyword there is "could".

Traps abound. Navigate consciously. Life requires exquisite balance.

- - - - -

The real question you should be asking is along the lines of: when I am taking a shit, how can I turn that act into part of my process of mastering sci-fi writing?

For an artist, life itself is an endless source of creative inspiration and lessons.

Don't draw you lessons too narrowly.

Embody what you want to become. BE it!

[captainamerica]

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The real question you should be asking is along the lines of: when I am taking a shit, how can I turn that act into part of my process of mastering sci-fi writing?

The Three Seashells. 

[Sucuk Ekmek]

I mean just starting a new topic is a mastery in itself. Structure of text, way you place questions, way you quote or ignore etc... It requires specific  knowledge(experience) of something in my humble opinion. Hard to say something that doesn't involve in mastery, singing in bath? Haha, here is a quote from fellow writer William Blake; "Without Unceasing Practice nothing can be done. Practice is Art. If you leave off you are lost"

[tsuki]

I'd say that important component of mastery is tied with competition.

It's not much of a mastery if you are the only person in the world doing something, nor is it when you only think that you are a master.

In this sense, putting your work out there for people to consume it is crucial, but not all-encompassing of mastery.

Think of it more in terms of testing yourself, but remember of Goodhart's law (When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.)

Edited July 1, 2021 by tsuki

[Yarco]

On 6/25/2021 at 10:42 AM, melodydanielluna said:

For example, my LP is writing, specifically fantasy and sci-fi.  But when I write a blog post, am I pracisting my craft, because it's writing craft? 

As someone with a writing-related LP / career, I'm gonna disagree with everyone else so far on this point.

Writing a blog post vs. writing a sci-fi novel are completely different. It's like another language. 

To say that you're improving your skills as an author by writing forum posts is kinda laughable, although if someone's purpose isn't writing I can see why they'd think so. If you aren't a professional writer, you can't see the actual level of depth in this field and you're falling into a trap of "writing is writing." You wrote both essays and stories in school, so it must be as easy as just switching between them, right? It's not like a blogger could be 100x or 1000x better at crafting a blog compared to a fiction author?

I write blog posts and articles for a living, I've been doing it for years, but I still wouldn't be able to write fiction worth shit. Blogs are big on research and teaching with a little bit of marketing/copywriting (or more like journaling, depending on why you're writing them), stories are almost entirely plot and dialogue driven. 

It's not like a musician where you can write/play pop songs, or you can write/play blues songs, and both are increasing your overall "music talent" and musical theory.

It's more akin to saying that practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is almost entirely grappling and fighting on the floor, will 1:1 help you with your boxing mastery, which is almost exclusively standing upright and throwing punches, because both are forms of fighting.

Writing blogs vs writing stories require entirely different skillsets. Aside from the fact that you are writing in English and might pick up general improvements to your spelling/grammar, there's very little 1:1 crossover. About the only thing in common besides language is that both will require you to develop discipline and write consistently.

If you try to write both stories and blogs, you're going too broad and it's going to end up taking you 20,000 hours to master instead of 10,000, because it's actually two completely different skillsets.

Everything else you listed -- getting feedback (if you actually listen to it and internalize it, and your editor actually knows what they're talking about, not just a family member proofreading for you), reading fantasy/sci-fi (only if you're actively trying to learn and take away lesson while reading it) are also part of the fiction-writing mastery process though.

Other story-writing-adjacent things MIGHT help your mastery or they might not. The fastest way is to focus on actually doing the thing. In this case, sitting down and writing stories every day. 80% of your dedicated practice should be writing, only 20% getting feedback or reading other author's work as research. In other words, you write for at least 4 hours for every 1 hour that you read. Unless you are brand new and just getting started, then you can skew it a bit more to research in the beginning.

Edited July 1, 2021 by Yarco

[Leo Gura]

@Yarco Of course writing a novel is an extra capacity to writing a blog post. Obviously you can't become a great novelist just by writing blog posts.

The larger point is that you can draw lessons widely and translate them into new fields.

[Elisabeth]

@melodydanielluna Reading what Yarco and other users have written .... trust your own judgement, it'll know best  

[Hello from Russia]

@Yarco You'd still be much more closer of actually writing a good sci-fi novel than a person from the street who's never done any writing or practiced any other similar artform

[Yarco]

49 minutes ago, Hello from Russia said:

@Yarco You'd still be much more closer of actually writing a good sci-fi novel than a person from the street who's never done any writing or practiced any other similar artform

Maybe I'm underestimating my own abilities, but I reckon anyone who's completed a high school education worth of English classes could probably write a novel just as well as I could. I don't feel like years of blogging would give me any significant advantage. At least in terms of writing quality. I would have more endurance that I've built up... I'd write more words per day and finish my book faster than a random person off the street. But I feel like that's it.

I believe that being a good storyteller is far more important for fiction than the technical act of writing. Spell check has come a loooong way, it isn't just about spelling/grammar any more. There are multiple programs out there like Grammarly or Writer.com that have advanced AI to also fix your style, clarity, delivery, and other technical aspects of your writing for you.

As long as English is your first language and you got a C+ or higher in Grade 12 English class, you're probably close enough that a bot can fix the rest for you. It's the over-arching details... the character, being able to draw the reader into an imaginary world, that makes the novel. Not all writers are necessarily creative people. Their writing might end up technically great, but the story would be boring and missing that spark.

[Guest EmptyVase]

No phrase ever could capture mastery, but here's a perspective.

Mastery is understanding, sharpness in the details, and interconnectedness from a higher perspective.

[Nahm]

Mastery is a river ride, not a destination. 

It’s now or not at all. Never in a past or future. 

[Eternal Unity]

@Nahm ?

[melodydanielluna]

@Bob Seeker  Those are really good points.  I definitely think reading good fantasy and sci-fi is a part of the process.  It's research, really.  But at the same time, leaning from those books and integrating what I'm learning into my active writing practice is really what matters.

Thanks!

[melodydanielluna]

@Leo Gura Thanks so much, Leo!  That cleared a lot of things up for me and I screenshotted everything you wrote.