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I believe you have to have good taste and take it from there. [1] [1] Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me.
by felipemnoa 8y ago
I believe you have to have good taste and take it from there. [1]
[1] Ira Glass quote:
> 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.
- perl4ever 8y agoSturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap. Ironically, or fittingly, I've been reading a comprehensive collection of his short stories, because it was impressed on me early in my life that he was a great author, and I have recently been horrified at how terrible many of his more obscure ones are. The interesting thing is that the quality does not simply improve with time and experience. There are extreme outliers.
- FiatLuxDave 8y agoWeird question: I've been trying to find a short story I read years ago, which I think is by Sturgeon. Is there any chance you have run across it? In it, an engineer is brought into a war zone, where giant tank-like creatures are on the edge of overrunning the front lines. The lines must be maintained in a cave system to keep extracting a valuable mineral. The generals keep pressuring the engineer for weapons, but he wants to understand the problem first. After lots of analysis, he directs the troops to destroy a certain structure. Within days all the tank creatures die. Then the engineer explains that the cave system is actually the inside of a caterpillar on a cosmic sized leaf, and the tank creatures were its immune system. Killing the caterpillar allowed the troops to loot the caterpillar's body in peace. Ever heard of it? I'm not sure that my memory is completely accurate.
- gluegadget 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!_(short_story) ?
- FiatLuxDave 8y agoNo, it's not killdozer, but thank you for the reply.
- perl4ever 8y agoI've never read that one, but if it's by him, I should find it eventually.