Sausage... And A Big, Painful Gap
Here at Ad Zombies HQ, we’ve often joked about why we don’t have any ads that show people writing. After all, copywriting is our bread and butter.
But here’s the thing: watching the (creative) sausage get made…YUCK…no one wants to see that.
Because, for most people, writing is excruciatingly hard. That’s why they don’t do it.
AND THEN there’s the small subset of humanity you call writers. For them, writing is… ALSO excruciatingly hard.
Here’s the difference: they’re good at it, and they can tolerate the pain. Sometimes with procrastination, sometimes with humor, sometimes with just the promise of relief when a project is finished.
So, what separates the writers from the rest of us? A big, painful gap between WANTING to write and actually becoming GOOD at writing.
This American Life creator Ira Glass has perhaps the most popular quote about this amongst creatives, and rather than try and reinvent the wheel, we’ll just give credit where credit is due and quote him (because if writing is hard, imagine writing about writing):
“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. It has potential. But your taste -- your taste 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. Our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you’re just getting started or 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. Put yourself on a deadline, so that every week, you will finish one project. 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. It’s gonna take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
That’s a lot to digest. But here’s the tldr; that quote is NOT just about writing, or doing creative work, it’s about doing almost ANYTHING.
If you have good taste and want to make The Thing you wish existed, you’re in for some pain and heartache.
You have two choices:
Give up on it. Certainly easier in the long run, giving up on The Thing gives you back lots of time in your week to binge-watch an entire series on <insert streaming platform of choice here>.
Fight your way through. If you’re really committed to making The Thing, the only way out is THROUGH. That means going through the pain of making The Thing, only to see that it doesn’t live up to your standards. Then doing it again. And again. It may feel like you’re getting nowhere, but every time you DO The Thing, you’re learning and improving!
Much like starting a new workout plan, it will be painful. But if you stick with it, it will get easier and less painful — or at a minimum, the pain will become a familiar frenemy.
Almost NO ONE likes writing. What most writers actually like is HAVING WRITTEN. Yes, it’s weird and kind of perverse. But that’s the secret.
Oh, and do you want to see the ad we’ll never run? Here you go: