I wish a woman could have action in her life, like a man. It agitates me to pain that the skyline over there is ever our limit. I long sometimes for a power of vision that would overpass it. If I could behold all I imagineâŚ
Mia Wasikowska in the title role of Jane Eyre (2011, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga)
lookâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚ.. write as much shitty fic as you want. nobody can stop you. youâre learning constantly and itâs better to write hackneyed implausible ridiculousness than it is to not write at all out of fear of fucking up. youâre good
There was an experiment a professor did. I think it was pottery students. He did an experiment of âqualityâ vs âquantityâ. One half of the class he told; you have to make as many pots as possible. Good pots, bad pots, shitty pots, whatever. The more pots you make, the higher your grade.
The other half of the class were told, âyou can make only one potâ. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.
But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.
All the best quality pots were in the âquantityâ group.
The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) – they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the âqualityâ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but theyâd had no further practice at actually making pots.
The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you wonât improve, because how can you improve on perfect?