Once I took about a year’s worth of guitar lessons. I am bad at guitar, or any instrument, for that matter. I have no sense of rhythm, am too slow to change chords in time, and I never really understood the fretboard in some theoretical sense rather than just memorizing particular chords. I also had to have a left-handed teacher, because I’m right-handed and have never been particularly good at rotating or reflecting images in my head. I got to the point where I could play a few songs but could not play a barre chord (this is where you use a finger to cover several strings at once), so I tapped out.
Instead, I decided to take up writing again (which I had been on hiatus from during grad school) which I specifically did because I thought of myself as good at writing. And it’s only worth doing things you’re good at, right? Post-quitting guitar, I got some stories published, then got an agent, then got a couple book deals. (I made that sound way simpler than it was, but back to the story...)
A few months ago, I started watching lots of videos of other people playing guitar in the process of doing research for my next book and started to feel really envious. Why couldn’t I have been born with natural music talent, or why couldn’t I have picked up an instrument when really young and stuck with it because I’d be good by now.
I mentioned this to someone, and he said, why do you have to be good at something in order to do it? Well... I said, which is what I say when I realize I’m wrong. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about writing, specifically about whether or not one is born with natural talent, or if most or all of it comes from hours and hours of practice. I feel like this break down is 10/90. I might be a good writer because I spent a lot of time writing and started very young, which means that I put in well over the 10,000 hours some say you need to get “good” at something. But it also feels like, shit, if I want to be good at anything else, if I start today I won’t be good for 10 years or something. By that logic, why try anything new at all?
I made a decision: I would learn guitar by brute force, even if it’s embarrassing and I never really get any good at it. I would do this by breaking down everything I was having trouble with piece by piece. Remember what I said about preferring a left-handed guitar teacher because I’m not good at reflecting a reverse image? Yeah—who the fuck is, unless they are frequently reversing images in their head. One of my friend’s fathers who could read mirror writing because back in the day he worked in a newsroom and had to manually set the type that the ink would roll over. He learned to read it because he had to.
I’m about to say something very stupid. I went to YouTube and discovered that there were hundreds (thousands?) of videos about how hard barre chords are to play, how you can get to the point where you can play them, exercises to build up to barre chords, how lots of people quit guitar because the first barre chord they try is an F (this is exactly what happened to me). Wait, it’s not just me who can’t play a barre chord?? I’m not good at rhythm, but how often have I actually practiced rhythm or even thought about it, or listened to music specifically with an ear for rhythm? How can I ever play a song and have it not sound like crap if it takes me so long to switch chords? One internet guy said: play a chord, then switch to a different chord, then do that over and over and over and over—C G C G C G C G C. Literally breaking down the skill to its smallest chunk: switching between Cs and Gs. This is something I do mindlessly when I’m watching Ancient Aliens, working my way through different chords. ABABABACACACADADADAEAEAEAFAFAF and so forth. (I still can’t do the F chord, but I’m 85% there).
What does this have to do with writing? What if I told you “Play a song” or “write a novel.” As someone who’s new to guitar, I can’t just “play a song.” Playing a song is actually composed of a lot of components: understanding what key it’s in, why particular chords are in it as opposed to other ones, learning the rhythm and strumming pattern, learning how to transition between the particular chords in the song, how to do this while still maintaining the rhythm and strumming pattern, and (if you’re braver than me) how to sing while doing all this.
There are a lot of skills I have related to novel (or story) writing that I never consciously thought of, but was working on over the years. I never had to work on dialogue because I had an ear for it (I honestly think this is because I listen to people more than I talk). But it would be really unhelpful if I said that to one of the new writers asking questions at a conference during the QandA session. But sometimes I have to think about it: how do I do that? Lately I’ve forced myself into thinking about these things more practically (honestly, because now I have to write on deadline).
I want this Substack to focus on really fundamental elements of writing and practical applications. For example: How do you create three-dimensional characters? How do you write while working full time? How do you come up with plots? What if you’ve written yourself into a corner, plotwise? How do I speed up or slow down pacing? Can I turn a pantser into a plotter? (100% I think I can). I also tend to collect and think about data more so than the average fiction writer (I was a stats minor in grad school).
Anyhow, I will close this post by saying, I considered including a brief recording of exactly how bad I am at guitar, so we can check back six months from now, but I am not going to do that. I can’t be that cruel to either of us.
[thumbnail credit Annie Spratt on Unsplash]