We recently connected with Christine Sharp and have shared our conversation below.

Christine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

When learning a difficult skill, a person needs two things: drive, and time doing the thing.

Malcolm Gladwell said that it takes roughly ten-thousand hours of practice to master a skill in a cognitively complex field—the “10,000 Hour Rule.” Plenty of people agree, and plenty of other people rage against the idea. I’m not here to jump into that debate, but rather to point out that whether you think it takes 10,000 hours, 20,000 hours, 15 hours, or whatever, it is clear that it takes time doing the thing to become better at it.

I’ve been a voracious reader all my life, and in college, I majored in English, so I’ve spent a lot of hours reading and studying literature. All that time reading has shaped me as a writer, but it did not give me skills as a writer. Even reading about writing wasn’t enough to drop skills into my lap. To become a better writer, I had to write.

When I began writing Elwyn, I was (like most first-time writers) fantastically enthusiastic and desperately unskilled. I studied writing-craft, outlined the novel, wrote a couple chapters, studied more, changed everything and outlined again, wrote a few chapters, went to a writers’ conference to learn what I could from masters of the craft, changed everything and outlined again, wrote a few chapters, studied more, changed everything and outlined again, then wrote the first full draft.

By this point, I’d been working on this one novel for five years. I’d put in a lot of time and work, and I thought I’d done a decent job. I sent the draft to two readers for feedback. My first reader read it in two days and loved it. My second reader, whom I knew had spent a lot of time studying the craft of fiction writing, told me it was completely unreadable and she couldn’t get past the first quarter. As you might expect, that felt like a knife to the gut. I wept for a bit, then put on my big girl pants and faced the important question: What now?

I’d done plenty of research, listened to master storytellers, gone to an expensive writer’s conference, etc., all to learn to write fiction, but I still wasn’t good at it. At this point, the easy thing would have been to say, “Maybe fiction writing isn’t for me”, and move on to something else. But I felt deeply that this was a story that needed told, and that I was the one who was supposed to tell it. I had drive, which compelled me to keep going.

My first reader’s feedback told me that there was something in the story worth keeping. My second reader’s feedback told me that I was not good at writing fiction. So, if my drive compelled me to keep going, the next step was obvious: I needed to learn how to write fiction.

I got a babysitter for my toddler and newborn, took my laptop to Panera, sat down, and asked the Lord, “What now?”

I cannot tell you how I found it, but suddenly I was on a site called “Helping Writers Become Authors” by K.M. Weiland: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com Everything K.M. Weiland said made sense. I finally understood story structure, which had before been an elusive concept I’d known existed but couldn’t ground into reality. I learned countless elements of the craft that I’d heard of before but hadn’t been able to understand. I’d been listening to author-coaches for years, but everything they’d said felt fleeting, like clouds I could see for a moment but then were gone. The thoughts were insubstantial, and I couldn’t grab onto them. I hadn’t had a foundation their advice could build on. Now, I had a foundation, and the blocks of information could finally begin to grow into skills.

I believe there are two reasons why K.M. Weiland’s author-coaching worked for me:

The first reason is: by the time I encountered K.M. Weiland’s system for fiction writing, I had already written a full draft. I had a completed story to ground the information in. The elements she taught made sense because I understood them in the context of the story I had already written. It didn’t matter that my story was poorly written, it was a foundation to build on.

Before that, I had outlined the story from start to finish many times, and written chapters for each outline, but this was the first time I had written the whole story. I could see all the details, because they were there on paper. My brain had made many connections in the process of writing that first draft that I couldn’t have created for myself in any other way.

The many hours I spent actually writing the draft prepared my brain to take in the advice and learning that I was lacking. All the hours before that, in which I had been studying but not actually finishing a draft, were helpful to an extent, but they weren’t nearly as helpful as just writing a terrible first draft. Having written that first draft, my learning process became faster and faster. I spent another several years writing several more start-to-finish drafts, and each one was significantly better than the previous one.

So all that means: do the thing. You can learn all you want about a skill, but you won’t learn the skill itself until you start doing it. It won’t be easy, and you won’t be good at it. But doing it will begin the process of getting better. Then, after your brain has had time to make some connections relating to the skill, seek training from a master.

The second reason K.M. Weiland’s author-coaching helped me is: her system works for me. I understand the way she thinks, and the way she categorizes and communicates. It may be that she is an exceptional communicator, or that our minds work similarly. Either way, find a master whose teaching works with the way your mind learns.

I hope my years of floundering are both a warning and an encouragement:

Do the thing! Time doing it is foundational. Everyone has time. We tend to think that we don’t have time, but really if you think about it, how many seconds and minutes and hours and days and years have you had in your life up to this point? All of that is time. You’ve had lots of it, and you have more coming. Use your time well, and all your seconds/hours/years are worthwhile. Spend your time thinking about what you should be doing with it, and you’ll live a disappointed life.

But also, there is no workaround, no “quick fix.” No make-it-rich-quick scheme will help you build skills. So you need to decide: What is your goal? Is your goal to get a certain dollar amount? Then pursue dollars not skills. Is your goal to do/make something worthwhile? Then build that skill. Dollars may come, or they may not, but the goal is met by spending time doing the thing.

Christine, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a chronically-ill stay-at-home wife and mother, and a young adult fantasy author. I began writing when I was a high school English teacher, as a way to get my mind off work, and it quickly morphed into a passion. With my husband’s support, I committed to writing the novel. It was a long process (it took ten years from beginning to write to publication), but I’ve now published my debut novel:

Elwyn, Heir of the Eudaimonians, Book One

Sixteen-year-old Elwyn is heir to ancestral gifts, but she’s hunted by her nation’s immortal Sovereign. How can she defeat the enemy who’ll outlive her no matter what she does?

Integrated into the conflict between Elwyn and her enemy runs a research-based model for trauma resilience through building community.

Eudaimonia, meaning “good spirit,” is a millennia-long debate about human flourishing, begun by Aristotle. He defined what he believed human flourishing looks like, and how to get there, which he termed “eudaimonia.” Since then, many have contributed their theories of eudaimonia. This book, and the rest of the four-book series, is my small contribution to that debate.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I spoke earlier about drive, that it is what compels me to keep going despite substantial setbacks. No creative or professional endeavor will come without setbacks. An important thing to realize is that setbacks aren’t hindrances, they’re a necessary part of the process.

No worthwhile endeavor will become what it needs to be without the process of overcoming setbacks. So, within any worthwhile endeavor, drive is a necessary component: drive is that which will push the human to overcome the inevitable setbacks.

But where does your drive come from? Drive has to be real. If you try to base your drive on something artificial, it won’t work. You can’t make yourself believe something that you don’t know to be true at the core of your being. You can’t tell yourself, “This will work,” or, “This is the thing that will make my life better,” when you don’t know whether or not it will. My goal can’t be based on an idea I don’t know to be true, or on an outcome I can’t control, because neither of those categories of goals will create real drive. My goal will only drive me if I know it is true.

So, where does my drive come from? My goal is to follow the Lord. My drive in all areas comes from pursuit of that goal. I feel in the deepest parts of me that the Lord wanted me to write this story. Because the goal that drives me in all things is to follow the Lord, and I feel he wants me to write this story, I write this story. I don’t know what he intends to accomplish with it—it may be that he wants people to read the story, or it may be that all that work was simply to change me. But either way, I do it. There is no setback difficult enough to stop my drive, because the goal behind my drive is too strong to be held back.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

“Society” is a cold and indifferent system. I don’t have high hopes for a society-driven “thriving creative ecosystem.” But any society is built up of individual humans, and individual humans can do a lot.

To accomplish big change, we tend to think big. But I think it’s more effective to think small. Small is accomplishable; small is something I can do myself. Rather than asking “How can society change?” I can ask: “How can I change?”

If I want to “support artists, creatives, and a thriving creative ecosystem,” what can I do personally toward that goal? What is one thing I can do to effect change in my small community of real people?

Well, I can support artists I know. I happen to know a talented musician and writer, who is beginning to grow her audience. I can be a devoted part of that audience. I can listen to her music on Spotify, I can voraciously read her fiction, I can tell my family and friends about her work, and I can attend her shows. A real human she can see and talk to, who genuinely appreciates her work, is worth a hundred anonymous “fans” on the internet. A real person who likes and consumes her art does more to build her up, and to encourage her to make more art, than a hundred likes on social media.

Notice, I’m not saying it’s worth more than a million fans/likes. There is a place for anonymous fandom. But as one individual, being one anonymous fan on the internet does not do a significant amount toward supporting a thriving creative ecosystem. Toward that goal, I can make a bigger and more lasting difference by encouraging my friend to keep going, by being humanly present and by appreciating her art in real life. (By the way, if anyone is interested in discovering a talented writer and musician, her name is Ashley Emerson. Her music is on Spotify under “Ashley Emerson” https://open.spotify.com/artist/2mlaxTcZl7DXVxuH1U07gt?si=CH4VVmVKS0yCIJF513ajlQ and her writing is on Substack under “Ashley Nicole Emerson” https://substack.com/@anintrovertatlarge )

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.christinesharpbooks.com