I came upon this quote today quite by accident. It's a good thing I did, though, as these are words I very much needed to hear. I won't explain why just yet, but you can bet that all will be revealed sometime in the future. In the meantime, I hope you can take as much away from this as I have. All emphasis is my own.
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through." - Ira Glass
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That is a great observation. We certainly helps knowing we all go through it. Not just when you start out but also when you are working on a new act.
ReplyDeleteInside the case I keep my magic stuff in I wrote a note to myself, "the act does get better," just to remind myself in those dark times when your taste tells you your act is still very far from good. This phase can cripple the best of us.