Inspiration and realisation

So, I have started writing a novel/book/story. This is a big step for me as I have always wanted to write a novel but have always stopped myself for various reasons. The biggest reason in my mind has always been that nothing that I could possibly produce would stand up to the comparison with my favorite authors, namely Sara Douglas, George Orwell, Terry Pratchett and, of course, the great Douglas Adams (because all of these people are hoopy froods that know where their towels are at!) However, I have come to realise that the version of these authors books that I know and love, is not, in any way, shape or form, the version that they first put to paper or computer. Ohh Duh you say but sometimes things in my brain don't always click into place nice and easy like. How I came to this quite obvious realisation is a little roundabout but bear with me. I have now been a high school teacher for three years and in Australia, there is a big focus on really supporting new teachers with professional development in order to give us the conscious skills needed to run highly effective classrooms, and I honestly praise the work that gets put in to us new teachers in order to reduce the drop out rate. It works. Hence I have a "tool kit" of skills to draw upon in the classroom to deal with all sorts of situations. This development made me aware of the tools I had to do other things outside of my career. I was a student for a very long time, and it wasn't until I repeated year 12, did I learn the skills of how to study. I then went on to do a bachelor of science in chemistry, where I learnt lab skills and research skills. This process of looking back on my life and the thing that I have become proficient at, I realised that I had to learn/be taught or teach myself all of the skills required, even if i had a natural talent for something, I needed to practice some aspect of it. With that epiphany, came the well timed "Future of Storytelling" MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). I jumped at the chance to actually learn the skills I require to get the stories out of my head. The final piece of the puzzle dropped into place when I was watching one of the MOOC's videos that had an interview with Cornelia Funke, author of the Inkheart trilogy among others. She was saying that she had read approximately 50 books in the research of one of her novels, and said novel had taken 7 years to write (or 5 years, i can't quiet remember, but a really long time.) My brain lit up. She couldn't possibly have put the whole story down on paper in one go for it to have taken that long, it must have had multiple drafts and re-writes for that length of time....I can do that. Also this year I have been hearing about the 10,000 hours theory of mastery. It takes at least 10,000 hours of practicing something to master it. Considering I'm just this semester feeling confident about my teaching in a class and I have been teaching for three years, that equates to about 3000 hrs of classroom time. So once I get to about 3000 hours of writing, I should feel pretty good about what i am producing....maybe. So, I have started writing a novel. It may take me 10 years, it may never be published, (who knows what the book industry will look like by then) but you will hear about it here and I think I will enjoy the process.