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practice

2020-02-04 · letter vlog · John · 3:50 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing · mode: Personal essay

Starting without a script, John says the true part of Ray Bradbury's '52 short stories' advice is that you have to practice: writing 175-word Booklist reviews and 13 years of vlogbrothers videos taught him that practice works, and that the practice of finding and expressing thought leads to more thoughts.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Going off script; Ray Bradbury's 52-short-stories advice; the many meanings of 'practice'

  • ★★ John says it has been years since he turned on the camera without knowing what he was going to talk about, and maybe he'll talk about that. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John recalls being told, when starting out as a writer, that Ray Bradbury advised writing one short story a week for a year, because nobody can write 52 bad short stories. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Having been asked the question often himself, John suspects Bradbury was less offering good advice than making the question go away in a clever, gentle way. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • ★ John says lots of people can write 52 bad short stories in a row; he could, as readers of his zombie 'cornpocalypse' stories can attest. (playful) — 00:00:30
  • ★★★ John says what is true in Bradbury's advice is that you have to practice. — 00:00:30
  • ★★ John notes 'practice' has many, partly contradictory meanings: in sports it prepares for the real thing, but elsewhere, as in practicing medicine or the dark arts, it is the real thing. — 00:00:30

00:00:59 — Writing 175-word Booklist reviews as practice in reading, writing and discipline

  • ★★ John began his writing career writing 175-word book reviews for Booklist, which made him read a lot and broadly: picture books, YA, romance, Islamic history, boxing, poetry and many books about conjoined twins. — 00:00:59
  • ★★ John says reviewing gave him practice in reading with an eye to what experience a book offered and to whom he might recommend it. — 00:01:29
  • ★★ Practicing the 175-word form taught John to put nuance into plot summary and choose details or quotations, and gave him an internal clock for how 175 words feels. — 00:01:29
  • ★★ John says though reviewing differs greatly from writing a novel, it gave him much practice thinking about what stories can do and how they do it. — 00:01:58
  • ★★★ Reviewing brought structure and discipline to John's life and taught him he had to make writing a practice if he wanted to be good at it. — 00:01:58
  • ★ John says he is not naturally disciplined or organized, as his very messy car shows: his friend Hasan expects to find a rat with a handbag in the passenger seat. (playful) — 00:01:58

00:02:27 — Messy but practiced: how years of vlogbrothers videos taught John's brain to find ideas; sign-off

  • ★★★ John says he is messy, undisciplined and loves to procrastinate, but has learned to love practice because it works, though not immediately. — 00:02:27
  • ★★ Early on, John often finished books with no idea what to say about them, and often hit vlogbrothers deadlines without ideas for videos. — 00:02:27 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ After over 13 years of making videos consistently, John's brain knows that from Saturday it must find an idea, works on it, and almost always has one by Monday (10 February 2020) night. — 00:02:56 · Vlogbrothers

  • ★★★ John says making things does not use up his ideas: the practice of finding and expressing thought leads to more thoughts. — 00:03:25

    “The practice of finding and expressing thought leads to more thoughts.”

  • ★★ Whether editing a video, recording a podcast or writing a novel, John says what he is really doing and loves is practicing, and thanks Hank for practicing with him. — 00:03:25 · Hank Green

In the description and comments

  • ★★ In a comment, John reports viewers' consensus that there were 171 to 173 words between his two 'Madame Pomfrey's, so his 175-word clock was pretty close. — creator comment
  • ★ In a comment, John says the video was partly scripted: he started unscripted, wrote notes, recorded the rest and redid some parts, using about 40 minutes of tape. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Practice (learning method)

Also: Booklist · conjoined twins · Hassan · Poppy Pomfrey · Ray Bradbury · Zombicorns

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