"At Vogue, she learned the tight, functional economy of public prose. Her editor, Allene Talmey, would assign her to write a story in three hundred words, then, when she was finished, tell her to pare it down to fifty. 'We wrote long and published short and by doing that Joan learned to write,' Talmey told the New York Times. ... 'It was at Vogue that I learned a kind of ease with words, a way of regarding words not as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically on a page.'"
George Leonard on how mastery is nothing but a series of plateaus with brief spurts of progress:
“The most important lessons here — especially for young people — is that even if you’re shooting for the stars, you’re going to spend most of your time on a plateau. That’s where the deepest, most lasting learning takes place, so you might as well enjoy it. When I was first learning…I just assumed that I would steadily improve. My first plateau was something of a shock and disappointment, but I persevered and finally experienced an apparent spurt of learning. The next time my outward progress stopped, I said to myself ‘oh damn, another plateau’. After a few months, there was another spurt of progress and then, of course, the inevitable plateau. This time, something marvellous happened. I found myself thinking ‘Oh boy, another plateau. Good, if I stay on it and keep practicing, I’m absolutely assured another surge of progress. It was one of the best and warmest moments of my life.’"
Slowly then suddenly.
