What made me think I could write a book.
What made me think I could write a book? Bold and unwarranted hubris? Perhaps. Absolute delusion? Probably. But mostly, my inflated view of self comes about because of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule from his book Outliers. The concept is simple. You can become an expert in anything if you put roughly 10,000 hours into it. Years of training as a ballerina or violinist, about 10,000 hours worth, result in proficiency and excellence.
I will admit to one superpower… I read FAST. Like end-of-the-page-before-some-people-finish-the-first-paragraph fast. I don’t claim to read dense technical text, so reading fast is just something I can do. Some might think I don’t enjoy things I consume that quickly, but I do, and I get to consume more than the average person. I just spend a fortune on reading when I’m not haunting the library.
Simply put, I read 200 plus books a year. I think in 2024, I read about 218 books on my ereader. Let’s say each book takes about 10 hours for me to read. Some are slightly shorter, but many are quite a bit longer. For math’s sake, we will call it 10 hours per book, so that’s 2000 hours a year. Now you can see how it was possible for me to get to 10,000 hours of reading romance books in under 5 years.
Let’s address another controversial topic in the reading space: audiobooks. Yes, listening to an audiobook is reading. It is not as passive a process as you think. I mean, if I stop paying attention for 30 seconds, I am lost and have to rewind. Many of those 10,000 hours have been spent listening to audiobooks. It’s a little slower than reading, but it allows me to do other stuff, like driving and housework, while I listen. My husband will guffaw at that last sentence, but yes, I sometimes do housework while listening to my books… sometimes.
I understand that reading (and listening to) romance books doesn’t necessarily translate to writing romance books, but let’s look at what gives me a leg up on other authors who maybe don’t read as much. I get to compare and contrast hundreds of authors’ styles, stories, characters, and plotlines. I’ve read a book that makes every mistake I don’t want to make, and I have read books from authors I would love to emulate. I have noticed common themes and micro tropes across the books, like pitting a ‘black cat’ FMC against a ‘cinnamon roll’ MMC -- I’m a sucker for a cinnamon roll. I can pick elements from stories that I have enjoyed and incorporate them in a whole new way into my current work in progress. I have learnt from what’s out there, what people actually want to read.
Only time will tell if I will be successful, but I don’t feel those 10,000 hours were wasted. Because not only did I learn about the romance genre, but I got to enjoy them as well! So, I will continue to pretend… to sorta be… an author… kinda. I’m definitely a well-read storyteller, full of creative, evocative stories that I would like to read. And with the right friend like Tabi, I can be an author of love stories worth reading.