5 ms·
That's one problem with reading too much into people's commentary and ideas here. It's been through so many filters. Who knows how long they spent refining tha
by heresy 16y ago
That's one problem with reading too much into people's commentary and ideas here. It's been through so many filters.
Who knows how long they spent refining that comment?
Seeing the end product is always more impressive than the beginning.
At least personally, if something I did is "good", it's because its been through a couple of iterations, you can bet it was ugly as sin first time round.
The problem is that you often don't get to see the intermediate steps.
Prototype -> MAGIC HAPPENS -> Polished Product
The MAGIC HAPPENS portion is what I find really interesting, you can learn a lot about how people think if you get to see how they refine their ideas over time.
And it's all sweat equity. Always. Don't let people try to bullshit you that it's not. If I've learned one thing from many people smarter and more successful than I am, its that they're always doing something moving them to their goals, and they never give up no matter how many times they fail.
- patrickk 16y ago"Who knows how long they spent refining that comment?" "The best writing is rewriting." - E. B. White http://www.paulgraham.com/quo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/quo.html
- jtheory 16y agoThere's also that horrible effect that your own ideas, however creative, original and interesting, can start to feel trite, shallow and old after a little while. Because, guess what, they've been floating around your head longer than anyone's, and you keep seeing them, picking over them, looking for weak points. Whereas someone else's idea that they've been knocking around for a few months will seem breathtakingly new and fresh, and as if it had popped forth fully formed from their head yesterday. The difference here is simply whose head you're in. This can be a very serious problem for writers -- if you spend years writing a novel, by the time it's finally coming together, you want to rewrite all of the early stuff just because it seems so overused by now....