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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justonceokay 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I am a handyman and have a lot of weird, specific physical skills. Like being able to paint around an electrical outlet, caulking, leveling concrete, juggling, cartwheels, tying cherry stems in my mouth, etc. The life of an embodied worker.

When I am teaching anyone any of these skills, the first thing I say is “are you ready to be bad at this for a long time?” Sometimes it catches people off guard. On the other hand, if someone says “yes” then I know that they are going to be a good learner.

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mrexroad 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Heh. I’m not in the trades, but ~15 years ago I decided to rock/tape/mud ~800sqft of my house myself… to top it off, my lighting design included wall grazing lights and a satin sheen finish and another wall that gets hit lengthwise for 10’ at sunset. That was a long, long period that tested my sanity and marriage. It was probably good enough after first pass, but my standards were far beyond unreasonable and I had to live with results.

I eventually got rather good, albeit slow, and now can easily finish a wall where you can’t find butt or tapered seams with a flashlight, with minimal sanding. It took many hundreds of hours over the years, and a clear idea of what the bar was, for me to get there. The results still bring me joy, but more also the intuition built up around working with mud translated to a quick ramp up for more ambitious projects with stucco and concrete.

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robocat an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Flat surfaces seem like such a modern obsession. I feel the attraction, but defiantly try to oppose the gravity.

At least you limited yourself to human scale hand-y work.

An engineer type can go down some dark yak holes trying to find solutions to achieve inhuman flatness

	▲	detritus an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yet the same skill that leads to perfect flatness then also leads to being able to make something look organic and natural, should they so wish. It's about honing ability and competence.

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turtlebits 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Id love to develop the skill for drywall, but then amount of mess and dust it creates is too much for me and my SO. Even if I did it off site, taking a shower and changing clothes every time is a hassle.

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m463 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I had an electrician come out, it was a younger guy who owned the business and his crew.

And they had these minor-superhero things they could do.

Like he could hammer around a corner. You would think it wasn't a big deal, but he could put wire staples places where a beginner or a fancy staple gun couldn't reach.

	▲	CapitalistCartr 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm an industrial electrician. I'm also skinny; people often undrestimate me. Once I had two non-electrician coworkers helping me pull some large wire and make up splices in a trough. One beefy guy was struggling with the wire, so I grabbed it, twisted it around into place. The other guy says, surprised, "You're stronger than you look." I just said, "Sure". Because of the way the strands are laid, wire has a direction and way it "wants" to go. I'd been an electrician twenty years by that point and knew how to work it. Not strength. Not that I said any of that.

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drtz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not a handyman, but I am a man who happens to be handy.

I have done quite a bit of painting and caulking for a guy who's not in the profession. I despise both with a passion, though, especially caulking, and I have never once been satisfied with a single paint or caulk job I've done. I feel like I'm the embodiment of "be bad at this for a long time," although I'm objectively probably halfway decent at it.

That is to say I think Ira Glass' quote of "You've just gotta fight your way through" to get where you want to be seems especially meaningful in the context of something like painting, where most everyone _can_ do it (or writing / storytelling in Ira's case), but very few are actually good at it.

	▲	sokka_h2otribe 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You need a silicone caulking tool, and a video. I have spent many years caulking like a fool listening to other fools who spray water and use their thumbs. Don't. Use the tool. Use the kind with a little oval tip usually (I mean, there are exceptions with harder caulks but for softer e.g bathroom caulks this is more superior.) There's one UK guy on YouTube that convinced me of the evils of water/iso sprays and the beauty of the proper silicone caulking tool. The little wedge shaped caulking tools btw are not enough, as you need some stick to it so you can get around certain angles/items.

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jonahx an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> But there is this gap... it’s just not that good.... But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.

That is, verifying a solution is much easier than finding it!

P != NP

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stackghost 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>And your taste is why your work disappoints you. [...] We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.

I think most of us have experienced this. I consider myself an above-average writer and I absolutely hate everything I write.

But the problem, for me anyway, is that it's exceedingly difficult to know what to work on next in order to improve. In that regard writing is entirely unlike a lot of sports.

My throws are bad? Better throw 100 passes a day, every day, until my muscle memory is there. I'm getting beat deep? Better work on my fitness. Maybe I'll never get to where I want to be, but at least I know why.

But improving one's writing is seemingly impenetrable, to me. I read what I write and it sucks but I have zero intuition about how to un-suck it. I fucking wish I could write like Heller, or Didion, or Tolkien. Not even in terms of writing novels but just the quality of their prose.

	▲	embedding-shape 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> But improving one's writing is seemingly impenetrable, to me. I read what I write and it sucks but I have zero intuition about how to un-suck it. I fucking wish I could write like Heller, or Didion, or Tolkien. Not even in terms of writing novels but just the quality of their prose. In the beginning it's great to practice your art by yourself with lots of safety, but sooner or later you're gonna want to to ask the public/community at large what they think of what you do, so you can get external feedback from people other's who love the same thing. I think this is probably the only way to actually get better, you need to connect with other people around it, and get their point of view. I've found this true for any creative endeavor I've tried to get better at. Receiving criticism is probably as hard to get good at as giving criticism, so don't let the harsher stuff get into your skin as some people aren't so good at giving criticism, but you'll find lots of other useful advice that you'll agree with, and find directly actionable :)
	▲	billypilgrim an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The thoughts you are having about this show me that you are at a local maximum, but you will find your way out if you keep trying everything. There is no single thing that will help. Read novels, copy them word by word, translate them, write short stories, dissect stories, stop movies halfway and ask yourself how you would continue them. Read a ton of writing advice, try them out but don’t take it as gospel. Even if you don’t improve for 100 days straight, small successes accumulate. In a decade you will have transformed yourself. There is just no way you won’t improve significantly if you keep trying new things and bring yourself to fail ever day. What helped me was the saying “your first million words are gonna be shit”. I still distinctly remember, four or five years into writing every day, when things finally clicked, my voice came through, and my sentences became fun. It is delayed gratification to the max.
	▲	bpavuk 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		one concrete thing I can name is "widening" your view on writing. force different styles upon yourself, different constraints. the results will keep being shit for a while, but at least it will be very fun to tonally cosplay Shakespear before the mirror! you won't notice how time will pass :) listening to narrations of vast variety of poetry and narrating something yourself will help you develop your specific voice and read with more intent. you may not even need the "science of writing" this article describes. let yourself just... be with text.