output vs taste

When you start making creative work, your taste is better than your skills. You can tell your work isn’t as good as you want. Apparently, that's normal and the only way to close that gap is by making a lot of work.

“There’s stuff you love. You’ve got really good taste, but there’s a gap. For the first couple of years you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good.

It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste – the thing that got you into the game – is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell what you’re making is a disappointment to you; you can tell it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people quit. Most everybody I know who does interesting creative work went through years where they had really good taste; they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short; they didn’t like it. [...] We knew it didn’t have the special thing we wanted it to have. Everybody goes through that. If you’re going through it now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, if you’re starting off and entering that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal. The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work – a huge volume of work.”