midnight rowboat

Me, after learning that Athena holds herself to the ‘not like other girls’ standard and usuallys sides with whatever the nearest dick-toting diety says: what the fuck what a fake bitch

If you’re a writer and you’ve thrown yourself into learning the craft–following writing blogs, reading craft books, attending workshops–there’s this thing that is very likely to happen. 

Armed with newfound knowledge of what makes a piece of writing fantastic, you’ll realize that your writing.. isn’t. 

It may even start to feel like your writing is the worst writing that has ever existed. It may make you scared to put a single new word on the page in front of you. You’ll see exactly what you’ve been doing wrong, and you may very well not know what to do fix it. 

I’m here to let you know that it’s natural to feel that way when you’ve reached a point where your knowledge surpasses your ability. A secret for you? Your knowledge of craft–any craft–will always surpass your ability if you do what you should and continually study said craft. It’s a good thing. 

It’s okay for your writing to be flawed. 

You can write a book, know it has flaws, and still be proud of everything you’ve accomplished. 

Published books are flawed. Best selling, critically acclaimed books are flawed. Readers love books with flaws, because those flaws tend not to matter as long as the story connects with them. 

There are people who complain about all the adverbs Rowling uses for dialog tags in Harry Potter. Features in Harry Potter can be used as examples of “bad craft.” Does it mean the books are poorly crafted? Does it lessen their value to the literary world? To the world at large? OF COURSE NOT. 

No book is perfectly crafted. Not a single one. The book you’re writing will never be perfectly crafted. So what do you do about it? 

Tell your story. 

Do your best. 

Keep Improving. 

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me … is that 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, and 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.