Prove you are a bad writer

You don’t write because you’re afraid you might be a bad writer. You don’t sing because you might be a bad singer. You don’t paint, or act, or dance because you might be bad. 

Here’s what’s interesting: if you don’t write, you might not simply be a bad writer. You might not be any kind of writer at all. 

“Prove you are a bad writer.” Dan Harmon, who wrote a few hit TV shows, said this on a podcast once. “You’re trying to prove you are a good writer. That’s what’s blocking you.” Isn’t this painfully true? We all know what good writing and singing and acting looks like, because we love art and we’ve seen thousands of examples. We also know that it’s unlikely that we’ll be immediately good at these things. 

This reminds me of that famous quote from Ira Glass. “There is this gap,” Glass says. “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.”

Is it better to be a bad dancer, or to never dance at all? Is it better to be a bad singer? Or to never sing at all? Some feelings in life are unmatched. There’s nothing like the feeling of singing a song on stage for an audience. There’s no feeling like dancing, or finding a flow state editing a video, or free-writing on a topic you’re passionate about. Just like there’s no feeling like “pure-ing” a golf ball, catching a runner’s high, or surfing a barrel. 

If we want to feel more of the unmatchable things that life has to offer us, we must be willing to be bad at them first.