Welcome to Week 34!
After much practice, I am finally getting more comfortable with the editing process. Still, I stand by my earlier assessment that editing is more challenging than the initial act of writing. At least, that has been the case for me.
I have been ruminating on the issue and was finally able to pinpoint the source of my challenge.
When I started this project, I prioritized quantity over quality, telling myself that the quality would eventually come if I just got enough words on the page. Now, as I work to refine and polish my novel, I'm learning firsthand that quality requires an entirely different level of effort and focus.
This week, I found myself revisiting Ira Glass’s idea of the Gap.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, 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. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.
And if you are just starting out or if 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. 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. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.
Recognizing something beautiful is easy. Trying to create something equally beautiful takes work. A lot of work. Works of art that may look simple are often the product of endless hours of struggle and love.
This thought led me down a different rabbit hole. I started wondering if that is why I often struggled with finishing creative work.
The answer was simple: when I left them unfinished, I could tell myself that I could always make it better, but I was choosing not to. Finishing things meant accepting my limitations.
The takeaway was something familiar. Mastering the craft of writing requires practice and persistence. While the 10,000-hour rule may be an oversimplification, there are no shortcuts to getting better. My current goal is simple. It's to keep practicing—to work on my novel until I feel I've given it my absolute best effort, regardless of whether the end result matches my initial vision.
Then, when I reach a point where I feel like I have fixed things to the best of my ability, it will be time to start the process over again on the next book. Learning never stops.
Goals for the coming week(s):
Continue rewriting
Ideas I was trying to incorporate.
Ideas from previous weeks:
As always, thank you for following along with my writing journey. Until next time, keep writing and stay inspired.
What are you writing this week?
P.S.- If you are new here, you can learn more about the project and find the previous week’s updates here.
Oh man, this week's entry hits deep. As someone else who has chronically abandoned projects, Ira Glass's comments and your essay are right on point. It's like the people who are afraid of success, self-sabotage on an interview, then go "Eh, I didn't get it, but I didn't really try." It's far scarier to give it 100% and wind up short, but that's the only way to get better.