For some strange reason, whenever I conduct a beginners’ writing workshop, one of my students invariably raises her hand and gushes on about her desire to write novels just like Jane Austen’s. Jane Austen, I insist on mentioning, did not roll out of bed one morning at the tender age of twenty-five and write Pride and Prejudice in one go.

Prodigy or not, here are a few things you too should probably know about Jane Austen, and what she did in order to produce some decent books:

1.    She wrote stories from the time she was a young child.

2.    She lived in her parents’ home until she died at forty-one, never having married.

3.    Her family had money, so Jane could spend her days writing in her bedroom, not darning socks.

4.    She wrote multiple drafts of her novels and threw away hundreds, if not thousands of pages, before she produced her masterpieces.

5.    Her masterpieces weren’t considered masterpieces until long after her death.

6.    Jane Austen put in over 10,000 hours at her desk to become a master.

(For those of you who do not want to put in 10,000 hours in order to create a decent book, we should talk about editing services.)

NOTE:

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell theorizes that true mastery—mastery of any skill—requires 10,000 hours of practice. In other words, no one comes out of the box writing like John Updike. Now, I’m not convinced that 10,000 hours is a prerequisite for a great book; but I do know that you need to give yourself permission to wrestle with this thing.

All this being said, I don’t want to hear any whining when I tell you that you’ve got to sink more than a week into this book writing thing. Don’t make me hurt you.