Willow Shields’ ‘DWTS’ Blog: This Is Real

“Hunger Games” star Willow Shields joins AccessHollywood.com as our behind-the-scenes celebrity blogger for Season 20 of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”

Here is Willow’s latest post…

Willow Shields and Mark Ballas on ‘Dancing’ (ABC)

When I decided to do “Dancing With The Stars,” I knew it was a reality show, but I’m used to working on movies where nothing is very real. I’ve even had to learn a dance for a film, but I had to master only parts of it knowing the camera would be on me at certain times. It’s called acting. Although acting helps in being a great dancer there is no getting around the reality of learning to ACTUALLY dance! So yeah, I knew on “Dancing with the Stars” we would have to dance, but part of me figured that with some great camera tricks or some secret dance shortcuts there may be a sort of easy route through this. Boy was I wrong. For me, this is REAL. The true reality of the show is that last week’s group dance we did not perfect until minutes before we were live on TV. The lift Mark and I did in our dance had problems until seconds before going out on stage and the lighting last week was changed to make it better only moments before show time.

PHOTOS: ‘Hunger Games’ Darling Willow Shields

No one tells you that this will be one of the hardest things you will ever do. For your time on the show dancing will become your life. You really have no time for anything else. Dance, eat, sleep (whenever you can), repeat. I’ve often laughed when my dogs fall asleep and their cute little legs move and twitch like they are running and playing in their dream. I think I’m doing the same thing, but practicing dips, lifts and movements while dreaming!

I am lucky to have Mark as a partner. When there is work to be done, he is right there, always willing to put in the hours I need to succeed. Sometimes he will ask me “So what do you think?” Maybe a hint we have the dance in a pretty good place? Doesn’t matter, we try it again, always some little thing that could be even better. He won’t give up, and I certainly won’t. So we pretty much max out the allowed training hours each day.

PHOTOS: ‘Dancing’ Pro Mark Ballas

I recently read somewhere that it takes about 10,000 hours to master something. Not really sure if that’s true, but it sounds about right to me. How much work does it take to do something well? How many hours? How much commitment? Sweat? Achy muscles? How many thousands of hours of training did Olympic gold medal winner Nastia complete? I’m going to ask Nastia this question at rehearsals today! But doing the math, I figured I have put in about 540 hours dancing so far. Far from mastering something, but getting better every week.

— Willow Shields