I recently finished Andre Agassi’s autobiography entitled Open. I’ve read many biographies and many books about tennis. This one ranks with the best of them. And it’s because of what the title implies. In his book, Agassi is remarkably open. He talks about his struggles, his failures, and most pointedly how he hates tennis.

That’s right. Agassi, one of the greatest tennis players ever, hated the game passionately. In some ways it almost makes sense. He was forced to play tennis from a very young age by his overbearing father (a former champion Iranian boxer). He never had a choice in the matter and he explains that if he did, he would not have chosen tennis. He preferred team sports where all the pressure was not on one person.

His dad, more focused on tennis than Andre, picked a house where he could build a tennis court in back and force the young boy to hit 2500 balls per day. As his dad said, anyone who hits 2500 balls per day will hit a million per year and anyone who hits a million balls per year can’t help but be number 1. It makes sense from a cruel mathematical perspective. The more you play the better you will get.  But what if you’re that kid forced to do what you hate for 2 hours a day? It’s no wonder that he started to loathe tennis.

All that said, it did give him a wild ride of a career which is expertly chronicled in his new book. After reading it in its entirety, the following lessons stand out to me:

• Surround Yourself with the Best: A common thread throughout the book are the people around Agassi and how they helped him to achieve greatness. Until he started working with Brad Gilbert he had not won any slams. Gilbert analyzed his game and helped teach him that he didn’t need to hit every shot perfectly. Even more important than Gilbert was Agassi’s relationship with Gil Reyes. Reyes was his personal trainer and is largely credited with extending Agassi’s career until the ripe age of 36. Reyes acted as a much-needed father figure to Agassi whose real father never knew how to show affection. These people along with a cast of others supported Agassi through the whirlwind of life as a tennis pro and helped him to really grow into himself.
• Everyone Thinks About Quitting: I was shocked to hear how many times Agassi thought about quitting throughout his long career. The first was when he had just turned pro and had not accomplished much. He had a tough loss, but if he would’ve quit at that time we wouldn’t be talking about him today. It makes me wonder how many quit when they are right on the cusp of accomplishing something great.
• Practice as Much as Possible: Agassi’s dad had him practicing as soon as he could walk. Sometimes he would have him skip school so that he could practice tennis. After doing this for many years, his dad sent him to the Bollettieri Academy where he spent a large part of every day practicing tennis. I’m reminded of books like Outliers and Talent is Overrated which state that the key to success is how much you can practice. Both mention the need for 10,000 hours of practice to become an true expert. Agassi certainly hit that mark at a young age.
• Success Does not Equal Happiness: There was a point in Agassi’s career where he was the #1 tennis player in the world and married to Brooke Shields. Sounds like a pretty good life, but Agassi was miserable. Being #1 was never a goal for him, but a goal his father had set for him. And being married to Brooke Shields was something he more and less stumbled into only to discover that they had very different interests and groups of friends. The lesson is that you can’t be happy following other people’s dreams and happiness does not equal outward success.
• Ignore the Critics: Throughout his life critics were perpetually putting Agassi into boxes. First it was that he was all show and no substance. As one of his commercials stated – Image is Everything! He hated that phrase and felt that it didn’t really describe him, but the shoe fit so that’s what the critics wrote. It didn’t help that he had not won a grand slam. Finally, after winning many grand slams and silencing the Image is Everything moniker they started to suggest that he should retire. While the critics wrote that he should be quitting, he was out winning tournaments.
• Commit to Something Greater: Agassi didn’t seem to find himself until he found something greater to commit to than himself and tennis. He states in the book that he always felt tennis was kind of meaningless. What’s the point of being the best at hitting a fuzzy little ball around? But when he helped a friend send his kid to college that just felt right and created a spark in Agassi. He realized that his tennis skills, money and famous name could be used to benefit a greater cause – specifically underprivileged kids living in Las Vegas. In order to help give them the best education possible, he set up the Agassi Academy College Prep Academy. Only once he realized this goal did he seem to be truly happy.

Tennis was always sort of a – a learning. It was a vehicle for me to discover a lot about myself. And the things that I sort of discovered at times I not only didn’t want to see it for myself but I certainly didn’t want millions of people to see it.

-Andre Agassi

Recently, I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of Schultz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. It helps to give some insight into how Charles Schultz became the greatest comic strip cartoonist of the 20th century.

Personally, I’ve only been a moderate fan of Peanuts (ironically a name that Schultz hated but was forced on him by the syndicate), but you can’t doubt its popularity. The strip ran for fifty years and its characters are instantly recognizable. Not many other comic strips can claim that length of a run or breadth of appeal.

The strip also spun off classic holiday TV shows that are now seen every Halloween and Christmas. Along with the holiday shows, Peanuts continues in many newspapers as reruns and the characters have been licensed to appear on clothing, insurance and blimps. All of this helps Peanuts to live on even after their creator passed away in 2000.

Characteristically, Charles Schultz bemoaned the fact that he was just a newspaper artist rather than a classic artist like Andrew Wyeth. Surely, he thought, a newspaper comic would not last. In this regard he was wrong and he is, in fact, much better known than Andrew Wyeth.

So what led to Schultz’s astounding success? A couple of key points stand out from reading the Michaelis book – his focus and psychology.

Comics Was His Life

Even at an early age, Schultz dreamed of having his own comic strip. He was regularly drawing from a young age and showing tremendous talent. The first jobs he applied for were cartooning jobs – even being turned by Walt Disney and early newspaper editors. These rejections stuck with him and made him only try harder.

He immersed himself in the art by taking a job correcting other artists mail-in work at an art school and then writing strips in the evening. Comics was his single-minded focus. He didn’t drink, socialize or really go out with friends. Except for occasionally going to church, his days and nights were spent mostly behind the drawing board.

When asked why he was successful while many of the other art instructors in the art school were not, he replied that he worked harder and wanted it more. There was a dark side to this focus in that he was considered by some to be an inattentive husband and father. One of his children even cited an example where Schultz got confused in an interview about which children he was being asked about — his real children or peanuts. He assumed the later.

The Psychology of Peanuts

Even from the first peanuts strip it was clear that Schultz was going to pursue a different and deeper psychological angle to his strip.

His was not slapstick humor, but sharp social commentary about how we treat one another. For example, the very first comic ends with “Good OL’ Charlie Brown….How I hate him!” Many of the strips would just end with a “sigh….”.

In many ways these stories were autobiographical, Schultz struggled his entire life with being the odd man out. He was rejected by girls in youth and publishers in his early years. Many of the girls in his strips that reject Charlie Brown had parallels in Schultz’s real life. All of this only served as fuel for his strips and made him work harder.

Even though Schultz was an extreme case, he channeled that angst into his strips and it was something that everyone could relate to. We’ve all been rejected at one time or another so we can relate to Charlie Brown and sympathize with him. You *so* want him to kick that football even though you know it will probably never happen…

While his strip became successful, it really never made him happy. He was lonely and depressed even while he became one of the wealthiest men alive and the best known strip cartoonist.

It seemed that he could never shake the image of himself as Charlie Brown – the lovable loser…Sigh…

Back in July I wrote a post about working in sprints in order to complete a difficult task. It described how the best way to accomplish something is to make it your sole focus for a limited period of time. In fact, that’s the technique I used for completing a marathon and an iPhone app.

But what would it mean to apply that concept to novel writing? Sounds crazy right? Who in the world would try to write an entire novel in a month!!!? Well, believe it or not, there is a whole group of *crazy people* out there who do just that. They are all apart of an event called National Novel Writing Month….And you can be too!

What is it?

The best description of the event comes from the site itself:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

What I like about this approach is it forces you to focus and gets you started. There’s no way that you can write 50,000 words in 30 days without a large amount of focus. And because there are specific dates to start and end, it prevents the endless “someday I’ll write my novel mentality”.

So, who would be crazy enough to try something like this? According to their site, 119,000 people participated in the 2008 and 21,000 actually wrote the required 50,000 words.

What about Quality?

So maybe somebody could string together 50,000 words in 30 days, but what about kind of novel would that be? The NaNoWriMo site addresses these concerns as well:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

At least they’re realistic – “you’ll be writing a lot of crap”. But often the hardest part is getting the words on the page in the first place. You can always edit your novel to perfection after the event is over. In fact, many authors like Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson write first drafts long-hand to prevent the endless editing in the beginning that often happens with word processors.

What about the Long-Suffering Artist?

Personally, I think NaNoWriMo is a fabulous idea, but it’s not without its detractors. Eric Rosenfeld wrote in Why I Hate National Novel Writing Month, and Why You Should Too:

I’m not sure why someone "scared away by the time and effort involved" in novel writing would instead want to put themselves through the wringer of doing a whole novel in a month, but the "finish line" metaphor is telling; to the NaNoWriMo people, writing a novel is like running a marathon, something difficult and strenuous that you do only so you can say you did it before you died. (Or rather, like running a marathon has become in the popular imagination; there are those who still lament the passing of the age when marathons were for serious runners only.) I shouldn’t have to say that this attitude is repugnant, and pollutes the world with volumes upon volumes of one-off novels by people who don’t really care about novel writing. I can’t help but wonder out of all those 59,000 people, how many of them will ever write another word.

His basic point is that a novel should not just be a bucket list item to be checked off and moved on from. You should want to write a novel because you’re a true artist and writer in your soul. But I would say that anyone committing to write 50,000 words in 30 days must at least be somewhat serious because that’s not an easy thing to do and takes a very real (albeit short-term) commitment.

Is there a rule that says a great novel has to take a long time to write?

What about You?

I’ve already signed up and plan to try my hand at writing a novel for the month of Nov. Will I succeed? I don’t know but to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, I’d much rather try and fail than not try at all. I also don’t want to just wait for the “perfect” time or idea that may never come.

As I plunge into this adventure, Rebecca Lake gives some great tips for succeeding at NaNoWriMo which I plan to follow:

• Plan Ahead: While not a necessity it probably helps to have at least an outline or some character sketches in place to get you going.
• Visit the Forums: The NaNoWriMo website is a welcoming community of writers struggling with same issues as you. They have active conversations on tools, inspiration and ideas. Or if you just need a place to vent, they’re there for you.
• Set the Pace: To write 50,000 words in 30 days, you will need to maintain a pace of about 6-7 pages per day. Some people work best in a slow and steady fashion. I plan to try and write a bit every day. But others are more apt to bursts of creative energy. Figure out the pace that works for you.
• Be Realistic: While many of the entrants will fall short of the final goal. Remember that all of this writing is still making you a better writer. And the larger focus is to simply get people writing in the first place.

Even if you don’t “win” after the 30 days are over, keep writing. The true success of a good writer is often persistence rather than one burst of creative output. The more you write, the better you get!

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

-Robert Benchley, 1889-1945

What is the secret to greatness? How do you play golf like Tiger? How do you invest like Warren Buffet or play the piano like Mozart?  Were these people just born great or was something else involved…

According to the book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin the secret to greatness is something called “deliberate practice”. The main point of the book is that greatness is accomplished not by inborn talent or genes, but by repetitive, specific hard work. In essence, it’s all about who practices the most and who practices correctly.

The author walks us through a study of groups of musicians at one music school to prove his point:

The results were clear. The telltale signs of precocious musical ability in the top-performing groups—the evidence of talent that we all know exists—simply weren’t there. On the contrary, judged by early signs of special talent, all the groups were highly similar…One factor, and only one factor, predicted how musically accomplished the students were, and that was how much they practiced.

If this all sounds a lot like Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, that’s because it is very similar. Many of the concepts overlap with the most notable being that it takes 10 years of consistent practice to master a skill.  The biggest difference is that while Gladwell’s book mainly focused on the need of practicing, he did not drill into the idea of deliberate practice which is an important distinction.  Many people do the same jobs for 30 years and still do not achieve the level of a true expert. That’s because they’re not deliberating trying to become an expert – they’re just doing their jobs and going home.

What is Deliberate Practice?

If you want to be as great as Tiger it’s not enough to just hit a bucket of balls for 2 hours everyday (though that might be a good start). Instead you should be hitting the balls into specific target areas, or trying to increase your drive by 10%, or slightly changing your form and tracking the impact. In order for the practice to be “deliberate” it should have the following characteristics:

• Beyond Your Comfort Zone: The practice should not be easy or fun. You should be pushing yourself just beyond where you’re comfortable. That’s where the real improvement occurs.
• Specific: The practice should focus on an individual skill like hitting a deep forehand crosscourt for a tennis player rather than just rallying or doing match play.
• Immediate Feedback: During the practice you should strive to get immediate feedback as to whether what you’re doing is correct or not. This is why so many people that achieve greatness have a coach or mentor that helped them get there.

What about the Prodigies?

If all that matters is practice, then many people wonder how you explain a child prodigy like Mozart or Tiger Woods? What about people that are just great from an early age? Colvin explains with the following:

Tiger is born into the home of an expert golfer and confessed “golf addict” who loves to teach and is eager to begin teaching his new son as soon as possible. Earl’s wife does not work outside the home, and they have no other children; they have decided that “Tiger would be the first priority in our relationship,” Earl wrote. Earl gives Tiger his first metal club, a putter, at the age of seven months. He sets up Tiger’s high chair in the garage, where Earl is hitting balls into a new and Tiger watches for hours on end….Earl develops new techniques for teaching the grip and the putting stroke to a student who cannot yet talk. Before Tiger is two, they are at a golf course playing and practicing regularly.

After reading that it’s pretty clear that it was a lot more than inborn talent that drove Tiger, it was a Dad that was willing to put his son through a rigorous golf education starting at seven months. Tiger is better not because he was born that way, but because he was already practicing while others were still learning to walk.

Conclusion

I’ve read a lot of biographies of “great” people and the most common thread that I see is persistence toward a goal and the ability to focus everything on their task at hand. In many ways, that’s what deliberate practice is. People love the idea of the born-genius or to say that they could do this or that if they just had the talent. But in the end we all have the ability within us, it’s just a matter of whether we want to make the commitment to deliberately practicing day in and day out.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich

-Chinese Proverb

A Room Of One’s Own

Recently, I’ve been building out an old garden shed behind my house to be a little getaway – a place where I can go when I need to focus on writing or work. With three kids in the house, sometimes it can be hard to find a quiet place inside.

This exercise got me thinking about what it takes to make the perfect working space. I know this varies by person, but for me I like to have the following:

• No Distractions: I work better when I can be heads down and get into the flow. Once I’m interrupted it takes a while to get back into it again so I try to find places where I can work without interruptions — this includes physical and electronic distractions. So I try to keep my email closed and only check it every few hours.
• To Do List: I like to have a physical list in front of me with a few key tasks to get done. Then I love to slash through each one as I finish it. That tends to motivate me and give a feeling of accomplishment.
• Music: I prefer to have light music playing (usually with no words) to really block out the world and focus. For me, classical music is perfect.
• Materials at Hand: I hate digging around trying to find my work stuff so having everything out in the proper place just makes it easier to shift into “work mode”. I do the same thing with running and try to lay out all my running clothes the night before an early morning run.

This is what works for me, but I’m always interested in the creative spaces that other people do their best work in. Let’s take a look some of the interesting places where writers perform their mysterious craft…

To Each His Own

Poets and writers magazine describes some wonderfully unique examples of where writers write:

Ernest Hemingway wrote standing up;  […]

Ben Franklin wrote in the bathtub,

Jane Austen amid family life,

Marcel Proust in the confines of his bed.

Balzac ate an enormous meal at five in the evening, slept till midnight, then got up and wrote at a small desk in his room for sixteen hours straight, fueled by endless cups of coffee.

Toni Morrison found refuge in a motel room when her children were small;

E. B. White sought it in a cabin on the shore.

One more that I love is JK Rowling writing the first Harry Potter book longhand at her local coffee shop. Could you imagine being the owner of that shop and finding out that the single mother who was always hogging a table in your shop became one of the best selling writers of all time?

Where I Write

Another more visual example is the Where I Write project by Kyle Cassidy. He photographed a variety of Sci-Fi authors in their offices. Here is a small sampling (many more at his site):

I have to say I like the decidedly low tech approach of Joe Haldeman (above). All he needs are some candles, a notebook and a fountain pen.

In my opinion, the hardest thing to do in our modern world is to disconnect. To not take the cell phone with you and not get sucked into researching some obscure topic on Wikipedia. So when you build your perfect working space, make sure you don’t ruin it by bringing your cell (or at least put it on silent).

…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction…
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own