This is a quote by Ira Glass, a storyteller, that I read some time ago and it really resonated with me. As a more creatively minded person, it can be very frustrating to have an eye for something or a vision but fail at creating it the way you envision it. When learning another language, reading comes before speaking. As strange as it sounds, grasping ideas and getting them out of my head and into reality sometimes feels a lot like trying to speak a foreign language. It doesn't help if it requires learning a new skill, like say, software or lots of time that you don't have. (I admire women who can work on their craft/art/whatever with their children alongside them. I can not.) I was comforted to learn this "translation problem" and accompanying frustration is a part of the creative journey. Persistence is the key. I'm not sure how to reconcile this with perfectionism.
"Nobody tells people who are beginners, I really, really wish somebody had told this to me... Is that, all of us who do creative work, like y'know we get into it, and we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there's a gap. That for the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, ok? It's not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you, y'know what I mean? A lot of people never get past that phase, and a lot of people at that point they quit. And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. It didn't have the special thing that we wanted it to have. And the thing what to do is... everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase you've got to know it's totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. Because it's only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions. In my case, like I took longer to figure out how to do this than anybody I've ever met. It takes a while. It's going to take you a while. It's normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that. Ok?"
-Ira Glass
