Everyone who attempts to be creative, and writers not the least, know the feeling of envisioning a super-awesome story or artwork or song. Excitement courses through your veins! This will be a masterpiece! And then… you try to create it. It sounds/looks/is terrible. There’s an enormous gap between what you want to create, and what you’re able to create with the skills you currently have.
Ira Glass advises us that this is a good thing. I hope he’s right, because I know this feeling all too well. In the beginning, he says, you have to feel your work isn’t as good as it needs to be. It means you have good taste. (I’d like to believe this is true in my case!) The challenge is to not get discouraged, and keeping fighting through this!
This bit of advice for beginners has been wonderfully illustrated in comic form by Gavin Aung Than – I’m going to post the first bit of the comic here, but please follow the link to see the whole comic and read all of Ira Glass’s advice! Gavin Aung Than also did the sweet comic using a quote from Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin & Hobbes) that’s been spreading around the internet, so I think his comics should really be viewed on his own website. But here’s the first part of the Ira Glass one, to give you a taste:
Is this a familiar feeling, to all you writers out there?
Hmm... 