Friday 19 July 2013

Read, Write and Be Patient

On my return from holiday I've read an excellently inspiring blog post on The Write Practice about not being disheartened if you don't make it on your first try. The author Gorbett points out that actually it's silly to expect to get it right without lots of practice. Using pilots as an example, he says that they have to clock up 3000 hours of airtime before even being considered for a commercial plane. So why should you expect to be perfect at writing without practicing? He also says you should read a lot and use your favourite authors and styles to help you write.
You can read the blog post here.

And now for the writing practice-
Write about someone who expects to be a master at an art, task, or profession although they have little experience. Be sure to include the frustration that ensues.


I ordered the ukulele on amazon. That's half the battle isn't it- actually buying one? I've been watching some tutorials online and I have to say it looks pretty easy. There're only four strings after all, and I saw this you tube video of an eight year old girl playing mmm bop, so seriously how hard can it be? I'm excited, I think I'm gonna be a hit around the campfire and at family bbqs. knocking out classic after classic.

It arrived! So far I've learnt some of the simple chords; C, F, G. It turns out you can play tons of things with just those three notes! I started to play and sing along but then after half an hour the tips of the fingers on my left hand were hurting. You have to press down hard and I got these intents on the ends of my fingers which I'm not sure will ever actually go away. I'll practice again tomorrow.

Now that I've learnt how to play some basic three chord songs I want to move on. There are so many videos of people plucking the tune out of their ukuleles rather than just strumming like me. It sounds amazing and I want to be able to do it. I practiced the intro to 'I'll be there for you' from Friends, but it was really hard and after ages I still hadn't got it. Every time I thought I had it, I'd slip up and play the wrong string or the right string in the wrong fret. It's so annoying. And now after a break I've gone back to play it and I can't even remember how it starts! They make it look so easy and actually it really isn't. I wonder if I've even got it in me to ever be that good or if I should just give up. Clearly I haven't got the knack.

 OK so that was more like ten minutes than fifteen. It's amazing how much you can do in such a small space of time.