Let’s say someone has been working on losing weight, but over Thanksgiving gave up and ate way, way too much. Or they were going to write 50,000 words this November for NaNoWriMo, yet here it is a few days from the end and they’re only 28,000 words in. Or they’ve gone back on a promise, done something they had vowed to stop doing, failed to stick with a new habit that they really wanted to keep up, or in any other way completely wiped out.

Often in situations like this, we’ll start telling ourselves in one way or another that whatever plans we have are now ruined. The promise is broken, the diet has failed, the project has flopped. It’s easy to lose all enthusiasm at this point and give up, to conclude that people who are successful at achieving difficult goals don’t have these kinds of setbacks. That conclusion would be wrong.

It’s true that failures on the way to a goal can cause a more than their share of trouble. If I’m trying to build a new habit, interruptions to the thing I’m trying to make habitual will make it take longer for the habit to form. If I suffer a setback, it can often create additional obstacles, because slip-ups erode momentum in the same way that taking initiative builds momentum.

Yet it’s clearly typical–in fact, I’d hazard a guess that it’s almost inevitable–for a person to have some failures on the way to successfully building a new habit or pursuing a goal if that goal is sufficiently challenging. For example, according to the American Cancer Society, “most of those who attempt [to quit smoking] cannot do it on the first try. In fact, smokers usually need many tries — sometimes as many as 8 to 10 — before they are able to quit for good.”

Another way to put it, as strange as it may sound, is that the kind of person most likely to succeed at a goal is someone who has already been working on it but has failed one or more times.

Yet knowing this probably doesn’t make you automatically feel like a winner. What will do that is getting back to working on your goal right away. It’s easy to fall for reasoning like “I’ve blown it anyway–a little more won’t hurt” or “I’ll recharge my batteries before I take another crack at it,” but that kind of logic is usually flawed, because whenever we let a setback “give you permission” to stick with old, bad habits for a while, or to stop something we were working on, we are strengthening and refreshing the behaviors we don’t want and letting the behaviors we do want fade in our minds. The neural connections we’re building by prolonging the interruption will make it easier to make wrong choices and harder to make right choices. We’re also often doing more damage that will have to be repaired once we get back on track, making restarting even harder.

We can learn from setbacks by analyzing what went wrong and coming up with ways to act differently in future. And we can cut off failures, keeping them to the shortest span possible, so that they become just blips on the graph. In practical terms, all a setback does is take away a little progress and lower our spirits. We can gain that ground back and raise our spirits at the same time by renewing our plans to pursue our goals and not letting the problems claim any more of our lives than they have to.

Photo from Cornell University Library.

My first eBook, The Writing Engine: A Practical Guide to Writing Motivation, is now available for free download: just click here.

I pushed to finish The Writing Engine within the first week of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in hopes that it will be useful to some participants in trying to finish 50,000 words in 30 days.

The eBook is free to copy and share; you’re welcome to forward it, host it on your own site, etc. Details of the Creative Commons License for the eBook are printed inside.

I hope to have a .mobi format available in the near future.

The permanent page for The Writing Engine is here, and it gives 10 surprisingly numerous reasons for writers to read the eBook right now.

Some of the most powerful obstacles to self-motivation are broken ideas (or “cognitive distortions,” to use the formal term). A broken idea is any false thought that makes it harder to solve problems constructively. An introduction to them can be read here.

Examples of broken ideas
1. A man has been applying for jobs, but isn’t getting any interviews. He thinks “No one wants to hire me. I’m going to run out of money and be homeless.” This kind of thinking will make it harder for him to be motivated to apply for more positions, and he will tend to come across as less confident and positive to potential employers when he does have contact with them.

2. A mother is late dropping her children off to school, then has can’t get the car started when she tries to leave the school. She concludes “This day is a disaster.” This puts her in a pessimistic frame of mind, so that she tends not to do things that would make her day better and to interpret events in the worst possible light. (For more on this specific situation, see my articles Having a Bad Day? Here’s Why and How to Stop Having a Bad Day.)

The Red Flag
Detecting that a broken idea is in place is easy in the sense that, if you’re feeling bad, there’s a very good chance you’re nurturing one or more broken ideas. Being willing to pay attention to your own thinking does take some effort, which you can help bring out of yourself by committing to being mindful of your thinking in bad situations. It’s often harder to do this because of mood congruity, which gets in the way of imagining better times when we’re experiencing negative emotions. Fortunately, since we generally don’t like feeling bad, we’re often also driven to seek relief, which idea repair can provide.

Finding the broken idea
Identifying the broken idea requires reflecting on what we’ve been telling ourselves, whether mentally or (and this often easier) by writing it down. If you’re not sure what you’ve been telling yourself, start by writing down your present thoughts about the situation: broken ideas tend to persist as long as the mood they cause. This makes it possible to examine thoughts and figure out where they’re broken.

But What if The Broken Idea Is True?
Broken ideas are generally false (or at best, nothing more than a pessimistic guess), and they fall into specific categories of falsehoods. It’s easy to mistake them as truth because they often seem plausible: the job applicant might not find a job soon if he keeps searching in the way he is now. The mother’s experiences so far in her day have been unpleasant.  Yet short of having supernatural powers, neither one of them can infallibly predict what will happen going forward, and both of them are taking a small number of incidents and imagining that they describe a large, absolute pattern.

Categories of broken ideas
To identify a broken idea, compare it to these categories. Devised by Dr. David Burns, they not only make it easier to spot a broken idea: they also supply the solution in a way described in more detail in Wednesday’s post.

• All-or-nothing thinking: Seeing situations in black or white; thinking in absolutes.
• Overgeneralization: Taking separate incidents, like rejected job applications or being late, and concluding that they’re controlled by a large, unvarying pattern.
• Mental filtering: Putting all one’s attention on negative qualities.
• Disqualifying the positive: Dismissing good factors in a situation.
• Mind reading: Making sweeping assumptions about what other people are thinking.
• Fortune telling: Making assumptions about how the future will turn out.
• Magnification and minimization: Exaggerating information, often to support a negative viewpoint, for instance exaggerating someone else’s positive qualities to make yourself look worse or their negative qualities in order to make them look like a villain.
• Emotional reasoning: Assuming that because something feels like it’s true, it is true.
• Should statements: Imagining that the way we want things to be has direct influence over how things really are. Often involves anger at other people for not acting the way we would make them act if we were in control of them.
• Labeling: Using words to generalize or explain a person or situation in a way that’s misleading or incomplete.
• Personalization: Exaggerating our idea of how much a situation relates to ourselves; taking responsibility or blame for things that are not in our control.

Wednesday: Repairing Broken Ideas
Once we’ve identified a broken idea, we can work on repairing it. My follow-up article addresses this step by step.

Photo by johndan

Gordon White holds a 6th dan black belt in Taekwondo Chung Do Kwan, a rank that takes upward of 20 years of hard practice and constant study to attain. He has sparred and won medals both nationally and–as a member of the U.S. national team–internationally, teaches Taekwondo on his own time four or more days a week, and serves as President of the Blue Wave Taekwondo Association, a New England group with hundreds of members.

It’s through Blue Wave that I know Master White: I’m in training to test for my 1st dan black belt in March of 2010. Having long been struck by Master White’s passion for Taekwondo as well as by his drive to teach, I asked to interview him for The Willpower Engine. When he agreed, I received some unexpected and enlightening answers to my questions.

Following is part I of excerpts from the interview in Master White’s own words (except for the headings I’ve added), with part II available here. To read the full interview, unedited, click here.

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It started with bullies
I started  Taekwondo May 13th, 1983. I was in the eighth grade. The 6th and 7th grades were tough on me: I was picked on and beat up a lot, and now was nervous about being a freshman in high school the following year. My older sister had a boyfriend who practiced Taekwondo, and he invited me to visit his school.

So my parents brought me over on Friday night. We talked to the instructor, who had me fill out a form. There was a list of about 20 different “benefits” of Taekwondo training. Self confidence, physical fitness, self defense, competition, etc. I checked off all but 1 or 2….(I think weight control was one that I left off). I signed up that night, and was hooked. For the next 2-1/2 years, my parents drove me to Winooski 3 to 5 times a week. While I had other interests (drumming, skiing, BMX biking …) which I continued to be involved in through High School, they quickly became a second priority to Taekwondo.

Self defense is what motivated me to walk in the door of a Taekwondo school, but what kept me there were number of things. I was good at it, but I also felt like belonged there. I was surrounded by 5 men in their twenties who were black belts, and in my eyes were like having 5 Bruce Lee’s to practice with. I wanted their physical skills, strength, and confidence, and my instructor made me feel like I was capable of achieving it. I was made to feel that I had tremendous potential, and that by practicing Taekwondo and dedicating myself to it, I would be successful in anything I wanted to pursue. While my motivations and goals changed–instructing, competing, etc.–I guess once I started Taekwondo, NOT doing it was never an option.

Parents’ and instructors’ expectations
Part of my motivation was driven by my desire to to live up to someone else’s expectations. My parents, instructor, and coaches all played a very important role in me staying motivated and dedicated to continue with Taekwondo. Those that come before you have the experience to know what is possible–so they set high expectations for you, higher then perhaps you can imagine on your own. It’s fantastic, because it helps you do more than you would most likely accomplish otherwise. However, with it comes pressure. I see parents all the time who don’t think they are putting pressure on their kids, coaches who have a “low pressure” philosophy, but as long as there are caring instructors there will be pressure on the students.

From the time I started Taekwondo and got my yellow belt [an early beginning rank], I intended to be a Taekwondo instructor. I was fortunate to find the Blue Wave and Master Twing–but if I had not, I don’t think it would have stopped me. I think I would have continued to search until I found an instructor that I could connect well with.

The pressure to perform vs. enjoying a thing for its own sake
Luc, in reading Keyna’s favorite movie list, I was reminded of one of my all time favorite movies Searching for Bobby Fisher. The main character, Josh Waitzkin, (this is based on a true story) has supportive parents and coaches, [who all] see his potential (he’s considered a gifted chess player) and are driven to support and push him, thus creating tremendous pressure for him. The conflict he feels between wanting to just enjoy chess and excel to the point that he thinks his coaches/parents want is very well portrayed in the film.

By the time I was in college, my desire to do well in Taekwondo was driven almost entirely by my own motivation. I think the trick with motivation is that if it’s a chore, it’s not really motivation: real motivation has to come from within. External influences can help, but I think this can turn into a feeling of responsibilty, or a fear of disapproval. No one was telling me to get up early to run–or give up social events on Friday night because I was traveling to a training session or tournament. I did these things on my own, because I wanted to. It never felt like a sacrifice for me.

College as a goal–and as an obstacle
College got in the way of Taekwondo … My first two years of college were done out of responsibility–not motivation. All I wanted to do was Taekwondo: studying was not high on my list, but my feeling of responsibilty to my parents to “get a four year degree” had me putting in minimum effort to get by. It was a bumpy road – 6 years for a four year degree including some time off and a year abroad, but in the end, Taekwondo is what provided the real motivation for me to finish school. I FINALLY claimed a major, “small business management,” which allowed me to link what I was learning, to what I eventually saw myself doing, owning a Taekwondo School.

Another obstacle for me was the lack of training partners and travel distances. When I started Taekwondo in 1983, I was able to train 4 or 5 days a week. But in 1986, I began training with Master Twing in Randolph, Vermont, a 100-mile round trip. I was only getting down 1 or 2 times a week–when Grandmaster Lee arrived in late 1987 and came back again in 1988, I would often spend weekends at Master Twing’s house, training with Grandmaster Lee in the basement.

A montage of board breaks and sparring by Gordon White from 1987-1990

The missing ingredient
By 1990, I had failed to place at Nationals after 3 attempts, 1987, 1988, 1990. I missed 1989 due to knee surgery–another obstacle, I suppose. I felt like I should be on the podium, but something was missing–the people that were placing had something I didn’t, and it wasn’t physical skill: it was confidence. While I spent all of my training time sparring with people that were not as good as I was, the best players were from big cities, training with teams of national level competitors. This was the difference. The only time I had experienced this was in 1987: Grandmaster Lee took myself and one other black belt to Korea for 6 weeks. We traveled around the country, training at different schools and getting our butts kicked on a regular basis. The dramatic increase in skill and confidence I gained just in these 6 weeks was something I needed much more of.

I headed to the International Education office at UVM and asked what my options were for a year abroad in Korea. I was given information for attending Yonsei University, and started making plans for it. In order to go, I needed to get my grades up at UVM (I did); I needed to close my Taekwondo School (one of my students, Tim Warren, wanted to open a school in Milton, which gave me a place to send my students); I needed to continue to train as hard as I could–I still had nationals to attend and if I hoped to keep up in Korea, I wanted a good foundation–and lastly, I needed to earn as much money as I could, because I would not be working for the year there. I waited tables at the Peking Duck, picking up extra shifts.

Click here to read part II of the interview, following Master White to Korea, back to the U.S., and to the heights of competition.

Photos and video courtesy of Gordon White.

Not everyone has an elephant lurking in the downstairs closet, a brachiosaurus in the garage … but a lot of us do. And by this I of course don’t actually mean elephants or dinosaurs, but projects. Big projects. Big, ugly, scary projects that are disturbing to even think about because they’re so big and we haven’t even started on them (or have left them sitting around for much too long). It might be a major house repair that needs to be done so that the roof won’t start leaking, or a long overdue class assignment, or a book project that got tricky and has been sitting there on the hard drive, mocking you, for months now. Regardless of exactly what your beast is, there’s a simple, immediate way to take the first step toward vanquishing it. Unimpressively enough, it’s called “Do any little part of it … right now.”

Don’t take “right now” too literally: “right now” could be this weekend, or later today, or for two hours on Thursday. But don’t mess around with “right now” too much, either. As big as some projects are, there are very few that couldn’t benefit from a little attention very soon, even if it’s late at night and you’re tired and the project is unmentionably huge.

“Do any little part of it right now” may sound simple, and it is very easy to act on, but it has impact far beyond the effort required for it. Consider this joke:

Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.

It’s true. Humans are designed to eat things in bites, so the size of the what you’re eating doesn’t matter. To put it another way, you never, ever have to do a huge task: you only have to do small steps that over time add up to a huge task. That may sound like just playing with words, but it’s much more substantial than that: all large projects are accomplished through small steps, so the only way to do a large project is to do one small step. Then do another. Then another.

And honestly, the first small step breaks the whole thing wide open. Instead of having to say “I haven’t worked on my book in four months,” you can say “I worked on my book last night, even though it was only for 20 minutes.” Instead of saying “Someday I have to clean out that junk room,” you can say “I spent 45 minutes this morning gathering up all the spare linens I had in the junk room, and now the ones we need are in the linen closet and the rest are in the car, ready to go to the Salvation Army.” Zero small steps is a dead stop. One small step is being right in the midst of getting the job done.

Sometimes it may be hard to see what the small steps are, either because there’s so much to do that it’s all a huge tangle or because the big project consists of just doing one thing for a long, long time. In either case, there are ways to proceed. If you have no idea where to start, then the first step is figuring out what your next few steps are going to be. It’s organization, cataloging the problem. For instance, if your project is making a garden, make a list of things you need to do to be able to break ground: plan the size of the garden, choose what you’ll plant, look up the planting schedules, buy the seeds, etc. Making that list is itself the first step, and by the time you’re done, you’ll know what the second and third steps are already. If at any point you don’t know what to do next, that means that what you need to do next is figure out where you are in the project and what action needs to come next in the sequence.

And if the project is just a whole lot of one thing, then your steps are just pieces of that thing, of any size. Writers face this issue all the time, when the goal is to write a novel of, say, 100,000 words. While there might be (depending on the writer) a lot of preparatory work to do (or none at all), at a certain point the job is to sit down and churn out a lot of words. While you do that, you can count chapters, pages, words, hours at the keyboard, plot points completed, or anything else that gets you through the night, but if the project is daunting, figure out how much of some measure you need to do, then start doing that thing–and counting it.

Of course, after that first step there is always a second, and so on, and this discussion doesn’t delve much into the question of how to keep on track. On the other hand, keeping on track is much easier than getting on track in the first place, so if you have a big project you know you need to tackle, try starting in on any constructive piece of it, and if you don’t find yourself plowing ahead naturally, come back here for more ideas on how to keep the engine moving. After all, I’ve got a lot more I’ll need to post on this site over the course of years, and the only way for me to do it is one post at a time.

Elephant picture by Omar Junior.
Blank screen picture by Simon Scott.

As a rule, our culture tends to think of emotions as things that well up inside us in a way that’s more or less completely outside our control. We can avoid emotional situations, this point of view goes, or we can suppress them, but they are what we are, and thinking doesn’t enter into it.

I’d like to demonstrate some very useful ways this is completely wrong. I’ll do it using, of course, a mime.

Let’s say our mime–for convenience, we can call him Raoul–is on his way to the park to do a little street performance on a sunny May afternoon. For his performance today, Raoul has purchased three dozen imaginary eggs, which he plans to juggle, balance on his nose, perform magic tricks with, etc. He is carrying the imaginary eggs in mime fashion when he slips on an imaginary banana peel on the sidewalk and crashes to the concrete, right on top of his eggs. Now Raoul is a mess, covered with imaginary egg. All of his eggs are ruined, so there go his performance plans for the day, and to top it off, the people in his otherwise fair city are so rude and thoughtless that they leave imaginary banana peels lying all over the place. Oh, and to make it worse, since it was an imaginary banana peel, clearly it was another mime who did it!

We would expect Raoul to get upset in one way or another. He could sit there, covered with smashed eggs, weeping, or he could fling the gooey, imaginary cartons around in fury, shouting silent curse words. And we probably wouldn’t blame him for this, because through someone else’s carelessness, he’s a mess and his day is ruined.

Now, it’s true that immediately when this happens, Raoul’s brain will start making associations, and brain chemicals will start influencing his behavior–notably adrenaline in response to the unexpected fall and the problems that it has suddenly caused. That helps set the stage, but at the same time Raoul’s brain is likely to be generating what are called “automatic thoughts”: emotionally laden and potentially misleading judgments about what has happened. They might include things like:

“I’m screwed! I needed those eggs for this performance, and if I don’t perform I won’t have enough money to pay the rent tomorrow, and then I’ll probably get kicked out of my apartment!”

“What kind of sick #$!(@ leaves imaginary banana peels lying around all over the sidewalk?”

“This is a disaster!”

These kinds of automatic thoughts are also called “cognitive distortions,” because they are a kind of thinking that encourages belief in things that aren’t true. I’ll use a different term for them, though: “broken ideas.” A broken idea is anything you think up that misleads you. But what’s misleading about the above? Isn’t Raoul just silently telling it like it is?

In all honesty, he isn’t. Raoul’s broken ideas are broken only subtly, but they’ll lead him down a path he doesn’t want to take. For instance, his predictions about being evicted are very likely wrong, even if he isn’t able to come up with every penny of the rent money on time, and the fact that he’s trying to predict the future rather than just evaluate his options is a major red flag. We can’t predict the future in most cases, so basing our actions on assumptions about what will happen tends to lead to badly-chosen actions. Anyway, even in the worst case scenario he can always show how he’s trapped in a box and unable to leave the apartment. This is one of the powers mimes have.

He’s also telling himself he needs the eggs for the performance, when in fact he probably just wants the eggs for the performance, and can either buy more eggs or do a different routine.

And he’s also labeling the banana peel leaver as a (please pardon me for repeating this bad language) “sick #$!(@,” which dehumanizes the person and could lead some real interpersonal problems (like being hit over the head repeatedly with an imaginary stick) if Raoul decides the perpetrator must have been a particular someone he knows and acts toward that person as though they were purposely going around and leaving imaginary banana peels for people to slip on.

So what’s wrong with these ideas is that they’re inaccurate, and more to the point, they tend to lead Raoul in the direction of making bad choices, like going to drown his sorrows in imaginary beer, or marching off to throttle a colleague who is a known banana afficianado. What would make Raoul happiest at the moment would be to somehow find a way to free himself of his anxiety and frustration at the incident, get him to think through what he’ll need to do to go ahead with his performance, and as soon as possible to get him to the park to charm half the passersby and infuriate the other half with his mimetic ways. This way his day could very rapidly get back on track, and no other trouble would need to come of the banana peel fiasco.

How does Raoul do this? We’ll tackle this in much better detail in other posts, but the basic steps are:

1. Relax, step back from the situation, and breathe
2. Use idea repair
3. Get on with your life

Idea repair, which takes some practice to learn but can be wonderfully effective once you have the basics down, is the process of reworking broken ideas to reflect the truth of the situation. For instance, “What kind of sick #$!(@ leaves imaginary banana peels lying around all over the sidewalk?” could be repaired to something like “As much as I wish they didn’t, sometimes people will leave imaginary banana peels on the sidewalk, so I’ll be better off if I’m on the lookout for them.”

Similarly, “This is a disaster!” could be repaired to “This is inconvenient and embarrassing, but if I take the right steps, I can get my day back on track.”

You might be amazed how much stress and distraction idea repair can sometimes clear away. I certainly have been ever since I first learned about the technique a decade or so ago.

Of course there’s much more that could be said on the subject, but that brief summation will have to do for now. I’ll leave you with this final comment from Raoul:

“”

Huh. Well, that’s what I get for trying to quote a mime.

Mime photo by thecnote; banana peel photo by Black Glenn.

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Postscript: As you may have noticed, I’m experimenting with a lighter writing style for posts. Up until now I’ve been making efforts to write seriously because I’m dealing with serious subjects, but I’ve come to think that a little humor might do more good than harm. I’d appreciate any comments you might have on this style of post.

LATER NOTE: I followed this article up in October with How to Detect Broken Ideas and How to Repair a Broken Idea, Step by Step.

For the past two and a half years, my son and I have been studying Taekwondo. At a class a few days ago, some of us were practicing a difficult kick, and a newer student was finding she had to go through the kick very slowly.

“It took me about two years to learn that kick,” said a third student we were working with, by way of encouragement.

That surprised me at first. It’s just one kick! Admittedly, it wasn’t nearly the only thing we had been practicing, and it was a kick that involved spinning in mid-air, but two years seemed like a very long time. Yet when I thought about it, I realized it had taken me a year and a half or two years too, and that was with taking extra time after class some days specifically to practice it.

Becoming excellent at something really does take a long time. What’s more interesting is that, in a manner of speaking, that’s all it takes. In other words, that old saw “You can do anything you set your mind to” appears to have a lot of truth to it, truth backed by fistfuls of scientific studies.

“What about talent?” you might ask. My response to that would have to be: “It doesn’t seem to exist.”

“But Mozart … Tiger Woods!” you say.

“Both were taught intensively in their fields by their fathers practically from infancy,” I’d tell you, “and both their fathers were teachers with exceptional credentials. By the time each was five years old, they were so far ahead of their peers, the world was their oyster.” Practice may not make perfect, but it does make darn good.

Skeptical? László Polgár knew a lot of people who were skeptical when he claimed that you could raise children who were prodigies at almost anything, if you cared to go about it the right way. To prove it, he married a woman willing to do the experiment with him, fathered three daughters, and brought them all up to be world-class chess masters. Two of the girls stuck with chess long enough to become grandmasters and (at different times) world champions. László himself is an unexceptional chess player, but he has studied chess thoroughly enough to have been a very effective teacher for his daughters.

All of this about talent that I’m casually summing up in a pretend conversation comes from the arguments found (among other places) in two recent, very well-written books. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers does a lot to explain how the very best people in every field–music, chess, sports, business, and so on–all seem to have gotten their skills by working very hard for a long time. In fact, Gladwell will tell you how long that period of time is: 10,000 hours. It takes about 10,000 hours of practice in practically anything to become world-class at it.

In his book Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin dives into the subject further, and points out that the quality of practice makes a huge difference as well. The very best violinists in the world now are much better than the very best violinists in the world 200 years ago, and it’s not just because there are more people playing the violin: it’s also that today’s violinists have better learning methods, recordings, and other resources contemporaries of Mozart or Beethoven never had.

But again, what about talent? There are just people who are really good at things from a young age, naturally, so what about them?

Actually, such people don’t seem to exist. Find anyone who’s exceptional at practically anything, dig into their past, and you’ll find a whole lot of practice–much more practice than people who aren’t as good as they are.

Not to say that genetics count for nothing. Genetics determine a lot about a person’s body, which can influence which athletic activities, for instance, they might be good at. Genetics also seems to determine a range of potential intelligence, and in turn intelligence has some influence over what a person can get good at–but only in that a person seems to need a certain minimal level of intelligence to be able to do well at certain activities, with more intelligence not corresponding to more success. For instance, a decades-long study that began by identifying a number of child geniuses found that these children didn’t fare any better than the average graduate student in life. Intelligence certainly counts for something, but it doesn’t make for automatic success.

I can understand if you don’t believe this, or if you have big reservations. If so, it might be worthwhile reading Colvin’s or Gladwell’s book and seeing if the evidence they present there doesn’t make a better case than I can in this short blog entry. The idea that people are born with special talents is a very strong one in our culture, and when we see someone who does well at something, we tend to assume automatically that it’s because of inborn talent, then take that success as proof that inborn talent exists.

And what does all this have to do with self-motivation? Well, it is a bit of a tangent, but it does relate to two key elements of self-motivation: goals and belief that you can accomplish them.

In terms of goals, it may help to realize that if you have a goal of being very, very good at something, it’s almost certainly possible to reach that goal–but it will take a lot of time and effort, so you had better enjoy whatever it is you plan to be doing. In some cases, others may have an enormous head start on you. For instance, if you start playing violin at age 30, it’s not likely that you’ll ever catch up with 30-year-olds who have been playing violin day in and day out since age 5–so you can become an excellent violinist even starting at age 30, but there’s little possibility you’ll become one of the best in the world.

In terms of belief, it can be discouraging sometimes to slowly move through a kick that feels awkward and clumsy to you when other people are spinning through the air and delivering it seemingly without effort. What Gladwell and Colvin and the researchers on whose work they’ve based their books have to tell us is that in time, that kick will come. Practically anyone can fly through the air, spinning, if they’re willing to put in the time.

Takeaways:

• Only a few inborn traits, like intelligence and body size, affect what we can or can’t become great at
• Almost all exceptional skill comes from many, many hours of practice
• No, seriously: it’s true

Pictures above: Wolfgang Mozart, Judit Polgár

This post was brought in from the old version of my writing site, and refers to a trip to the Writers of the Future workshop in 2003.

(By the way, much more conscientious people than myself have posted journals on the Web of their Writers of the Future experience. By contrast, I’m just slapping this account together on the plane home, when I really should be catching up on my sleep after a late night and an early morning.)

(Later addition: Having slapped together what I could on the plane home, I then took a well-deserved, five-month break from this very arduous memoir before finally finishing it at a time when I really should be catching up on my sleep. Or editing my novel, take your pick.)

In August of 2003, I attended the Writers of the Future workshop in Los Angeles. If you’re not already familiar with it, Writers of the Future is a quarterly contest for unpublished and slightly-published writers of science fiction, fantasy, and other kinds of fiction where things that just don’t happen in everyday life go ahead and happen. Three winners each quarter receive a significant cash prize, publication in the annual anthology, a generous payment for use of the story in the anthology, and a week-long writers workshop with well-known fantasy and science fiction writers. The same folks who run the Writers of the Future contest also run the Illustrators of the Future contest, which is a very similar event for illustrators. Fortunately for all of us, they run the writers’ and illustrators’ events at the same time, so the writers and illustrators get to spend time with one another. Prior to the event, the illustrators create one illustration per story to include in the anthology.

Writers of the Future was started in 1983 by L. Ron Hubbard, a celebrated and extremely prolific writer of (among other things) science fiction and fantasy. In his spare time, Ron flew, captained ships, explored the remote corners of the world, became a Blackfoot blood brother, founded a worldwide system of drug rehabilitation centers, invented Dianetics, and founded the religion of Scientology.

Before I go further with this, let me address what seems to be one of the most popular questions about Writers of the Future:

Q:

When you go to the workshop, do the people who run it try to convert you to Scientology?

A:

Uh, no, actually. They’re happy to answer questions and are generous with materials and answers if you happen to be interested in learning about it, but I couldn’t discern any agenda at all of converting people or even any suggestion that they wanted you to learn about it. I’m a polytheistic Quaker and never expressed more than a basic curiosity about Scientology, and it would not be a great exaggeration to say I was treated like royalty.

Q:

So is this going to be a happy-faces-and-flowers essay about how wonderful those L. Ron Hubbard people are?

A:

Well, yes. I don’t have any particular opinion about Scientology or Dianetics, and I think it’s important to remember that ultimately Scientology is (to my limited understanding) the most important element of Ron Hubbard’s work for those administrate his legacy, but as to this organization’s habit of bringing unknown writers to a nose-bleed altitude of exposure and good treatment, I have nothing but good things to say.

So, no Scientology, but we did learn a lot about Ron Hubbard. We saw several exhibits, read some of his writing about writing, and otherwise got to know a lot about the guy. This was along the lines of someone asking, “Say, would you like to know a few things about the really unusual and successful guy who just flew you out to Hollywood for a great writer’s workshop, put you up in the nicest hotel you’ve ever stayed in, treated you to a gala awards ceremony, and just incidentally is giving your writing an enormous boost to help start your career?”

My answer to that was “yes.” Coincidentally, so was everyone else’s. And although I was wildly fortunate to have had the opportunity to go to the workshop as a published finalist in 2003, to my amazement I get to go a second time as a 2nd-place winner for this year’s contest. Which means that I will be going back to the exhibits about Ron Hubbard and filling in any gaps in my knowledge of him that may remain after my first trip. To which I say, thanks for the boost and by all means, tell me more!

Remember patrons who made the careers of starving artists like, say, Mozart? Ron Hubbard is one of those guys.

But back to the contest: Each quarter there’s a first, second, and third place winner, and zero to maybe a maximum of seven published finalists. About which I should explain: now, the twelve winning stories each year would make a perfectly respectable-sized mass market paperback, especially considering that they insert a few articles on writing and related topics by big-name science fiction and fantasy people, and keeping in mind that there’s a one-page illustration for each story. However, it seems that Galaxy Press (which publishes Ron Hubbard’s fiction as well as the Writers of the Future anthology) likes to put a few more stories in for the reader’ money, and also likes to give a few more writers a chance to participate in the workshop, so from among the finalists (of which I’m told there are perhaps 5-8 each quarter, though I don’t have that number from any official authority) they sometimes choose one or more in a given year to publish in the anthology. Except for not getting prize money, being a published finalist is virtually identical to being a winner: your story gets published, you get a generous payment for the piece, you get to attend the workshop, and you’re called up to the stage at the awards ceremony to be recognized for your work.

That was how I came to the Writers of the Future workshop in 2003, as a published finalist. I submitted a short story called “A Ship That Bends” to the contest for the April-June quarter of the 2002 contest; in the Fall, I found out that I was a finalist and they asked if they could hang onto my story for possible inclusion in the anthology, to which I said, “Hell, yes!” In the Spring of 2003, they notified me that in fact they would publish the story in the anthology, which meant I was going to Hollywood for the workshop. This was not disappointing news.

Q:

How many finalists do they publish in the anthology every year?

A:

It varies. Some years there aren’t any published finalists. In one year I think there were something like five or seven. I suspect the main consideration in terms of whether or not a particular finalist is published in the anthology is how much the judges and/or the editor like the particular story. Another important factor is how big the other stories in the anthology are, but this year there were two stories that ran about the maximum length, 17,000 words, and they still included two published finalists.

Q:	Can a contest winner keep submitting stories to Writers of the Future?
A:	No. The contest is only for writers who are fairly new to professional publication and who have not won the contest before.

Q:	Can a published finalist submit more stories? And if so, do they ever end up winning in another year?
A:	Yes and yes. In fact, I found out shortly before coming to the workshop that my novelette “Bottomless” won second place in the Jan-Mar quarter for the 2003 contest, which means that I’ll be back at the workshop next year!

I should mention, by the way, that the contest runs October through September: the first quarter of the contest for the anthology that was just published was Oct-Dec 2001, and the last quarter was Jul-Sep 2002-so keep in mind that the workshop happens the year after the story is judged.

Q:

Did you meet anyone famous?

A:

I did, and almost without exception the well-known writers, artists, musicians, and actors I met were wonderful, considerate people. All of them devoted time and attention to the contest to give their support to us new, unknown writers and artists. It was damn humbling. I had the great privilege to meet: Tim Powers, World Fantasy Award winner and author of any number of really enjoyable fantasy/SF novels K. D. Wentworth, multiple Nebula nominee, former Writers of the Future winner, and accomplished SF/fantasy writer Sean Williams, former Writers of the Future winner and author/co-author of a number of recent science fiction and fantasy novels, which I’ll be reading as soon as I can get my grubby little hands on them Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, authors and co-authors of multiple bestselling science fiction novels, many of them in shared universes (Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek) Other legendary figures of science fiction like Hal Clement, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, James Gunn, SF photographer J. K. Klein, Yoji Kondo (aka Eric Kotani), and others Music greats Chick Corea and Gayle Moran The accomplished SF illustrator Frank Wu And so on. All turning out in our support with other luminaries I didn’t meet directly (although some of the other writers and illustrators did), like Denise Duff, Jason Lee, David Carradine, Mark Isham, and Robert Silverberg.

All of us writers and illustrators in the anthology made (brief!) speeches as we were recognized during the awards ceremony. My best advice for the speech is this: Be brief Heartfelt sentiment is good; pretension is bad It’s nice to remember that Ron Hubbard is the founder of the feast, and Don’t say anything that sounds stupid or Jerry Pournelle will make fun of you. (I am not kidding. In my brief speech I thanked a series of people, including “… my wife, Orson Scott Card, my Literary Boot Camp readers …” Some people, including Jerry, chose to think I was saying my wife’s name was Orson Scott Card. Some overly cheerful fellow writers chose to rib me about it in ink when I asked them to sign my anthology. Moral: don’t say anything stupid.)

Top things that did not go wrong at the awards ceremony:

• No raspberry crumb dessert got on my or anyone’s rented tuxes. Quite seriously: if I had spilled any of that stuff, I would have looked like a pig for the rest of the evening.
• No one tripped on the stairs to the stage, and we were all concerned about that
• No one made any horribly inappropriate jokes, although one about not being able to take one of the lucite Writers of the Future trophies on the plane because it could be used as a deadly weapon was getting close.

Q:

What does a writer need to do to be a winner in the Writers of the Future contest?

A:

1. Follow all the rules posted at writersofthefuture.com 2. Make sure your story is not only speculative (science fiction, fantasy, etc.) but gets to the speculative stuff early enough that the judges can tell it’s speculative. 3. Use good grammar, spelling, and manuscript format 4. Have interesting characters in a compelling situation 5. Introduce tension or suspense early in the story-and keep it up 6. Write a satisfying ending (if you’ve read my story, my apologies on this point; I’ve learned my lesson) 7. Let your imagination roam: Writers of the Future really rewards imagination, and they’re open to a wide, wide range of story types 8. Read the current and previous anthologies to help you get an idea of what winning stories are like. And yes, I’m in the current anthology, but no, I don’t get royalties (they pay the writers a flat fee for their contributions). 9. Even if you don’t place, keep submitting! My WotF finalist was my fifth submission to the contest, and my second-place winner was my eighth. I used the contest as a goad to remind me to get to work and write new stories. 10. Avoid teenage angst pieces and elf-related fiction if you can. Really.

Even if you do everything on my comprehensive 10-point list, you may not win. Maybe your story was interesting, but not so interesting that the judges couldn’t put it down and say “No” to it. Maybe the story happened to be a kind of story or have a subject that a particular judge really dislikes. It doesn’t matter: if WotF tells you you didn’t win, send your story to another appropriate market. And don’t wait to hear on one story before submitting one for the following quarter: sometimes it takes them more than three months to get back on the judging.

Q:

What was the workshop like?

A:

Small muffins, big ideas. The workshop was taught by Tim Powers, assisted by K.D. Wentworth. These are both enormously talented writers, who moreover are really dogged in their work. They are Professional Writers Who Write Good Stuff and Make a Living From Writing and Related Work. There are a series of tasks, with related reading to do in the evening from Ron Hubbard’s essays. There’s a day spent in library research and an exercise where you go out onto the street and try to engage someone in conversation to learn about their life-without giving away that you’re doing this for a writer’s workshop. A horribly, horribly difficult exercise for those of us who have difficulty starting conversations without having some excuse to do so. And then there’s the short story that needs to be written in one day. For some people this is a first time experience and a serious eye-opener. For me it wasn’t much of a stretch, as I write a lot of my stories (first drafts, anyway) in one day. For some other attendees it was also not an unusual exercise. In my case, I tried to make it as educational as possible by building the story in a much more prepared and constructed manner than usual. It didn’t work for me to do it that way (I wrote a lot of my story, then scrapped it and wrote the way I usually write, although informing that with many things I learned at the workshop), but it was an eye-opening experiment. And then there are the speakers: Among them this past year were Bill Widder (eye-opening information on giving interviews and other promotional work), Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, Hal Clement (who has since passed away; a sweet man from what little I knew of him, and a great loss), David Carradine (on doggedly building a career despite difficulties and setbacks), and Eric Kotani.

I’m still in touch with a number of the writers from the workshop, and but for bad organization on my part would also be in touch with some of the illustrators. These colleagues I met were a remarkable, eye-opening group of people who continue to drive my career, and I hope to continue to be in touch with them for years.

Q:

Do winners ever go on to big success?

A:

I don’t know; ask Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Reed, Dave Wolverton, Sean Williams, Eric Flint, Syne Mitchell, K.D. Wentworth, or any of the other writers who have launched a career on it. Already since winning the contest (I’m not saying necessarily because of the contest or the workshop, although surely they didn’t hurt) several of the writers I met in August have made a big splash. Jay Lake has been getting published in virtually every major and close-to-major speculative fiction there is for the last year; Carl Frederick has had stories in Analog and Artemis, among others, while winning the Phobos science fiction contest not once, but twice; Steve Savile is about to see a novel of his turned into a TV movie-and some of the rest of us are working pretty hard at this stuff, too.

Is that all? Surely not. I should probably describe the sense of fiendish glee I had at spiriting James Gunn off to dinner at an Uzbekistani restaurant and together with my roommate having the full benefit of his knowledge and insight on science fiction for maybe an hour and a half.

And I should convey how really, really wonderful the pool is at the Hollywood Roosevelt. Or try to get across the gasp-for-air-wonderful feeling of watching Chick Corea work a piano ten feet away from my chair, and later being surprised by Gayle Moran and Chick waving me over to introduce themselves. Or the feeling of seeing fourteen artists unveil fourteen phenomenal illustrations to us wondering writers.

Well, but I’ve gone on too long already. If there’s anything you really need to know, by all means e-mail me at luc at lucreid dot com.

Do it now, before I’m too famous to notice you.*

*Just kidding.