Confidence comes with practice

One of the problems we often have when we try to do something different, is that we unrealistically expect to become experts overnight. It just doesn’t happen that way, does it? It certainly hasn’t with me in regard to my writing talents.

My letter writing began as a young teenager to a pen pal Aunt*. And my first attempts were only half a small page and that using big letters, just to fill up the page. (Lately I use large font, not to fill the page but so that I can see what I am writing!). And for many years it never progressed past that, as I never had the need or opportunity to do any further writing, until I went to Bible Collage at the age of 35, and found that I had to write 2 and 3 thousand word essays.

My first one was 2 thousand words and I had no idea how to do it. My lecturer kindly, gently & wisely said, “Pick out the main four points and write 500 words on each point.” Well I did that, but he only accepted one part and I had to redo the other 3 parts! But at least it was a start and I learnt from both what was accepted and what wasn’t. For that and the next 3 or 4, Two Thousand word essays I had to write, I generally struggled to get enough words for each essay, usually using the 10% under or over allowance to come in under the required 2,000 words. However, with exposure, and practice, by the time I started on my 3 Thousand word one, I struggled to keep it below 4000 words, and when finished I had to do some drastic editing to get it down to the 10% over margin allowed!

My point is, start out small and build your efforts up. Don’t expect to succeed immediately and keep practicing and keep writing. What I have written about my writing attempts holds true for most things in life too. There are very few things that we are overnight experts on but if we keep at them, keep practicing and starting off small and building up, we usually succeed. Again that is my opinion, what’s yours? Walter

(* She was actually my Dad’s cousin and my Godmother and living alone at the time and as my two or three attempts to get a pen pal overseas didn’t get a response, Mum suggested writing to her, which I did and we corresponded for quite a few years until she passed on. The moral there is to practice with whom ever is available and with whom you can!)