About ten years ago, I started playing guitar. I’d always wanted to learn, beginning back in high school when it was still the ultimate in cool. But I am a very lazy person, and the costs in terms of time and money turned into one of those things that I never got around to. And even when I came into possession of a cheap, hand-me-down acoustic guitar I didn’t do anything serious with it, because the idea of actually engaging a tutor to learn seemed like an impossible social leap, and the Internet did not quite exist back then so there wasn’t a guitar channel on Youtube to do some self-learning.
After hearing me whine about this, The Duchess finally bought me some lessons and forced me to go, and it was awesome. I actually learned to play! And then, because of who I am, I decided I wanted to start composing and writing songs. I downloaded some software and bought some equipment, and set up my own little desktop studio, complete with drum apps and midi keyboards, and I began making music.
Terrible, horrible music.
Beginner’s Crap
Look, any time you start a new activity or discipline, you’re bound to suck. No one just picks up a guitar and understands instinctively how to shred. It’s the same with writing, really—your early efforts are going to suck with a capital ‘S.’
But when I recorded my first recognizable song, I wasn’t depressed because it sucked. I wasn’t aware that it sucked, at least not on one level. On another, very sober level, sure, I knew it was awful. But there was a part of me that was just so jazzed that I’d done it, that I’d created a song, a composition, all on my own, that I was super excited about it.
It’s the same with writing. That first story maybe sucked, but I wrote it anyway, and I was so excited to have finished a story I didn’t dwell on whether it was any good or not. I kind just assumed it was good and moved on to the next story.
That last bit is the key—the insane overconfidence that makes you think that the thing you just wrote is actually awesome, even if it is objectively not. Years later, you might come across that story and realize with dawning horror that it is, in fact, terrible. But that’s something for Future You to deal with. In the present, the key to creating is to just assume what you’re doing is great and worry about making that conform to reality later.
Everyone’s first attempts suck. It’s okay. And yes, sometimes your later attempts suck, too.