#IWSG March 2017

Started by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by:

Optional March 1 Question: Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

Yes, my first professionally published short story (I got paid!) "Dragonfold" was a story I had written nine years earlier and submitted to a local writer's conferience for a contest. It didn't make it then, but when I pulled it out later and revised it, it gained publication. Now that story is the title story for my first story collection - and admittedly, probably the best one in the book.

Along those lines, I read a few articles about the "10,000 hours to Mastery" idea.

Have you heard of it?

I heard of this concept back when my daughters were early homeschool students.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called The Outliers - about successful people - and this concept was one that really became popular after that.

However, there is conflicting research now. Some "master-level" and world-class artists, musicians, CEOs, and athletes spend less than 10,000 hours and some spend more than 10,000 hours to get to a high level of success.

Here are the links to two articles I read about this:

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Oprah Winfrey All Use the 5-Hour Rule

What Malcolm Gladwell Got Wrong, From the Author of the '10,000 Hours' Study

Meanwhile - my fellow authors from the 2017 IWSG Anthology Hero Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life rock at marketing! Between all 12 of us, we might just get to at least 1,000 hours of marketing work in the next three to six months. Be prepared to hear more about heroes, lost heroes, heroes lost, and otherwise. :)

The Hero Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life Website already has posts up and running, as well as information about individual stories and authors.

What do you think? Is there a magic number of hours it takes to gain a mastery level?

If so, how do we apply that to our writing and marketing efforts?

Have you seen the Hero Lost website yet? Or pre-ordered an e-book?

Please support the Hero Lost Thunderclap - which will go live May 2nd, if we get 100 supporters!

Also, I am still recovering from my first surgery so I may take a bit to visit - and I will do that before I comment here.

 If you see random tweets from me from The Piano Guys youtube videos - well, music is helping me get through the painful part of recovery. Since I love to sing and singing is kind of painful because using my diaphragm pushes into the surgery area, I'm trying to listen to instrumentals only.