Ira Glass On Creating Something Noteworthy

Ira Glass is an American public radio personality. He is the host and producer of the radio and television series “This American Life”.

The beginning of your creative journey can be confusing & messy. The poor quality of content you’re producing can really depress you into not taking action.

He reveals that the quality of work you wanna produce is a byproduct of your experience coming from producing a volume of work.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good.

It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has the ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you.

A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short.

Everybody goes through that. And if you are just starting out or if 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.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap.

And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.

It takes a while. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

Ira Glass

Read that again. Get yourself the courage to get through the sucky phase of what you intend to create. Keep going & Embrace the suck. The beautiful masterpiece is just behind the shit load of work you do. Don’t quit.

XoXo,

Vignan Kurme.