(no subject)

[owlectomy]

I 98% finished the revised proposal for my new book. (The 2% is mostly collating and emailing, but I do have a tendency to procrastinate really awfully on that sort of thing, so I am On Notice to try to get this out Monday.)

I made significant progress on Yuletide!

So that's something.

I used to be pretty much at peace with my self-doubt. It's like, of course I think everything is terrible; that's just what it feels like to be writing a book. These days it's hard not to see that as a sign that everything is, in fact, terrible. Really, it's pretty irrelevant.

It's hard not to get fixated on getting it right. But the story about the pottery teacher who graded half their students on quantity of pots, and half their students on the quality of a single pot has some truth in it. It's not just that you need to practice as much as possible to get better; it's that greatness is not achieved by trying to be great, but by stepping up to the plate again and again and again, trusting that one day you're going to get just the right pitch at just the right time.

Bad metaphor segue! Whee!

Comments

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have found that both aspects apply, but they teach you different things. In order to improve your skill, you must try things you can't do yet, until you figure out how to do them. But sheer mass delivers rewards of its own: not only do you learn faster, the accomplishment of any one thing seems like much less of a bother.

When working to push a new skill, choose something a step or two beyond your current level. When working for practice, whack out a bunch of things at or just below your current level.

Pottery is an excellent example because it has a fundamental base skill: using the wheel. You get better at that by doing plain old pots a zillion times. But then there are finicky little skills like making a very tall pot or one with a narrow mouth, where a small mistake can ruin a considerable amount of work. You need to do those too, but you can't afford to do that as often; it's frustrating and consumes resources.

[littlebutfierce]

Yaaay for all that progress! Good luck getting the proposal out on Monday. & I think having a changing relationship to self-doubt seems pretty natural -- idk, it's hard to maintain peace about anything steadily, I think?!