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by wallflower 3091 days ago
Good luck! We can all do this. Create and create and you will eventually catch up with your taste.

I have a personal theory that unhappiness is due to too much consumption, not enough personal creation. Even if it just a sketchnote or a doodle... that is enough.

> 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 it’s 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’s 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

Video version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

https://youtu.be/E1oZhEIrer4

2 comments

This reminds me of a famous quote by Chuck Jones[1]: "Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out."

In the same way, we probably all have thousands of bad programs/scripts/classes in us. Code 'em out.

[1] I've also seen this attributed to others and phrased differently

Usually, I don't find "Inspirational Talks", all that inspiring, but Ira Glass has his way.