The Great Gap
The gap between taste and skill is torturous. Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life explains about the most frustrating period in an artists’ development in the video below: that is, when your taste far outweighs your skill to deliver content that lives up to your taste.
“Your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you… that you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy.”
Glass claims that most of the creative people who he’s known have lived in that phase for years. He lived there for eight years, he says in the interview.
I’ve been chasing that gap since I started writing. It is probably why I always hate my work when it’s finished. There’s always a betrayal of what I’d hoped for, what I’d dreamed of delivering. Sure, there a couple I’m proud of, now, but the rest? Oh man, how the shortfalls torture one!
He says people outgrow this phase. I’m not feeling hopeful at the moment. It’s true: I am proud of a few of my last ones. They are closer to being the writer I want to be, and I’m not sure I would change or could change the books into something better: books are limited to the level at which you are when you begin them. Maybe you can make it a perfect book at that level, but all the editing in the world won’t make it as good as the best book you’ll write ten years down the line. Some knowledge just has to be there before you begin, has to be an organic component of the process, a part of your subconscious understanding.
Glass says that the most important thing you can do during this phase is just to do “a huge volume of work.”
I’ve written and sold a million words. (I was close two years ago before I lost the paper keeping track.) I’ve been writing for just over eight years. I still feel like I’m chasing that gap, like I’ll be forever chasing that gap. I do feel closer, but it’s a definitely a daily battle.
Part of the problem is that I work on improving my taste as much as I work on improving my writing skill. That’s sort of a two-edged sword, isn’t it? Because if you keep on improving your taste, then your skill can never catch up.
I guess I can live with that.
Do you struggle with the gap? Have you ever conquered it? Is it behind you? Is there hope? Or do we just have to enjoy living in the gap?
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Natasha Fondren is a writer traveling the U.S. in a camper with her four cats. She is currently enjoying the lizards and desert heat in Arizona.
I think we’d all better be chasing that gap. But I also agree with you. My taste has changed over the years, and I can tell, based on my rewrites these days, that it’s changing again. Not necessarily dramatically, but I’m becoming more attuned to certain things, so I’m incorporating it more in my own writing.
This is true, Mark. Chasing the gap and trying to push the forward edge of the gap up every day, LOL…
The gap has always been there for me. I’m never satisfied. But I tell myself that this is the best I can do with my current level of skill, and that I will get better.
Charles, me too! (I always seem to say that to your comments, lately!)
I always want to write better, but I can tell in the last couple years my writing has taken a jump for the better. My writing on my wip is different from what I’ve done before. I don’t know at this point if it’s good or bad, but I think this has more depth. I’ll decide when the revisions are done.
But even if it is an improvement, I’ll still want my next one to be better.
Edie, I know what you mean. Sometimes I fear my better might be making me worse. I hear you; I live for Nora’s review, what was it? “Nora just keeps getting better and better!” Some such thing?
I’m voting that you’ll get better and better with each passing year, Natasha. Some drop off; I think you’ll always improve no matter how good you get!
I hope so, Rick! I’ll throw my money in the pot for the same thing for you, too!
What an interesting post! (Plus, I’ve always wanted to have Ira Glass’s children.) I think my taste has gotten worse over the years, if that’s possible. Maybe it’s from working with kids. It feels as though my sense of humor has gotten more childish and slapsticky. I used to worship comedians like Dennis Miller, who were clever wordsmiths. Lately, I went to a Lisa Lamponelli concert and laughed till I cried. Oh, dear.
I LOVE LISA LAMPANELLI.
And while I’ll admit her humor is crude, it does take a lot of skill to tread as fine a line as she does.
And the reason I’m crying is not from laughing, but rather that she’s about to be performing within 30 minutes of my home back in Ohio, and here I am stuck in Vermont for college. T____T
Really? Aw, Joey, that’s a bummer!
LOL, Robin! I was talking with a 6 year old the other day, and realized we completely related as equals and spoke the same language. It, um, scared me, LOL!
Oh, this SO describes me.
But before I continue on that line of thought, allow me to observe the dichotomy displayed here: there is a difference between what Glass describes and the room we all have, at all times, for improvement. “The Great Gap” does not apply to the latter, for even when one knows one can improve, one still ought to be satisfied——or at least not actively disappointed——with one’s work.
And now back to me. XD
First off, obviously my gap applies to my poetry, and not my barely existing prose. I have read more poetry in the last two years then most people will read in their lifetime. Maybe even more than several people added together will read in their lifetimes. Point is, it’s a lot. And so I have very refined tastes and I know exactly what good poetry sounds like, and let me tell you that it’s REALLY EASY to tell when one’s own poetry doesn’t measure up. I don’t know…I imagine it would be more difficult with an entire novel(la), but with a skimpy little poem, it is beyond obvious.
But I’m not giving up. Something akin to this gap has been mentioned to me before, and (as I frequently tell myself) I’m only 18. Of course, this ignores the fact that most good poets were the sh*t by the time they were 20…but…yeah.
It is indeed frustrating, though. I can’t tell you how many poems I’ve scrapped because I just knew they were going to be More of the Same. And with each day that passes in my two poetry classes, and with each day that passes in this newfangled college environment in general, I become more aware of what good poetry is, and less able to write it.
I think I’m biding my time, waiting for a breakthrough. (Still writing poetry, naturally, but in a “biding” fashion.) Is this likely to happen? Glass makes it sound like the gap is something you ease out of(/over?), but I’m wondering whether it doesn’t require a giant leap.
I suppose it’s a bit cliché, but it’s true that I can only burn with unwritten poems for so long before I’m just cinders and ashes, cinders and ashes.
Joey, I don’t think any poem you’ve ever showed me can be described as a “very skimpy poem,” LOL. And yes, it’s totally obvious in a novel/la/short story, too.
I think the “giant leap” is the “producing huge volumes” bit, LOL.
And I refuse to believe the cinders and ashes bit. I think you have a long and fruitful writing career ahead of you!
We’ll see. I’ll give the poetry a few years, at least.
And yeah, writing a bucket load of poems is unimaginably difficult. Skill aside, I’m neither Dickinson (1789 poems) nor Cummings (a /reported/ poem per day for ten years!) in my output. Gah, I can barely bring myself to write at all!
Joey, I’m so sad you’re missing her performance! Maybe she’ll get to Vermont. You know, you’re totally right. It’s incredible how she can say some of the stuff she says to audience members and not only get away with it, but have you really like her. Their was a huge gay contingency in the crowd cheering for her and wearing shirts with her sayings which tease gay people! I’d be frickin’ lynched if I were her!
Well, my college is getting Margaret Cho (tickets on sale tomorrow!), who is kinda like LL Lite. Not to mention she also has a gay fanbase.
My gay heart has been given to Lisa, though——I am part of that cheering contingency, but have all her gay jokes memorized in lieu of a shirt! XD
Totally jealous of the Margaret Cho tickets, too!
I think I read somewhere most good writers are compulsive. An auto mechanic who checks a repair ten times is crazy. A writer who rewrites a passage of her or his first book ten times may be just getting started.
This is true, but I want that auto mechanic, David!
Joey, my gay heart and my straight heart and my hermaphroditic heart have been given to Lisa, too. (But I’d still kill for some Margaret Cho tickets.)
Okay. I’ll say it out loud, but with shame: I don’t know Lisa. I will remedy that, I promise.
YOU MUST!
Take It Like a Man is my favorite, though Dirty Girl and Long Live the Queen are, of course, also hilarious.
I brought them to college. I am tempted to watch them. Soon.
LOL, Joey! Okay, I will!
Yeah, if I can’t get my hands on some…
No. I WILL. There are no other options.
I get what Glass is saying, and I do agree in general. At the same time, though, I feel like my last couple of published stories aren’t as good as one or two of my older published stories. Neither is anything I’m working on right now. :/ I have a lot of ideas, but nothing seems to be gelling at that higher level, however one defines it. It’s definitely annoying.
Angie
I definitely have been there, Angie. I often think that while we can become better at writing with each story, not every story necessarily has the same pizazz as all the others. You know, that extra zing.
It’s frustrating. Even writers I love sometimes write total flops.
Enjoy the gap, dearest. Move in, hang a few pictures, rearrange the furniture, spill a drink on the carpet. Make it your own. Taste always changes, and so does skill.
And after all, if your skill was equal to your taste, there wouldn’t be anyplace left to go, right? You don’t want to be stuck on a level plane churning out the same old, same old forever.
This is so true, Elizabeth! I think I’ll get a huge, comfy couch first..
I don’t think I feel any need to improve my taste. If I like it, I like it. There are plenty other people who like what I don’t, after all!
This is true, Written! Come to think of it, Ira was sort of mis-defining taste as an understanding of what makes something great, and I went with that mis-definition.
Great post. Now I’m wondering why Bloglines didn’t alert me to this when it went up. Well, I am glad to know someone else hates their work when it is finished, and sympathize too. I never have any pleasure when a book’s finally done. I just feel let down, disappointed, embarrassed by the ineptitude. And yes, there is this massive gap between what I enjoy reading and what I can write, between what I define as “good” and my own work. But look at what I read. Mostly old books. Books that people still read after 50 or 100 or 150 years. In other words books that are pretty great. And how many authors ever manage to prouce books like that? The work of most good authors, most successful authors, are swept away in the mists of time. (Authors good enough never to write a sentence like “swept away in the mists of time) And you get to an age when you look back at what little progress you’ve made in learning how to write and you have to figure you’re just not going to have enough time to reach anywhere near the level you aim for. Unless, (as Joey wonders) there’s some giant leap to be made. But, to be honest, I don’t think “great writing” is something you learn. Competent writing you learn. Great writing is something you have to have inside you to begin with.
Eric, I mainly have an uncomfortable feeling of relief. Honestly, sometimes I wonder which part of this process I actually enjoy… even though I know I enjoy all of it, too. LOL, that made no sense.
I wonder if there is a giant leap at some point.
I’m not a big believer in talent, as you’ve probably heard me say.
I’ve had so many average students who become “talented,” and so many talented students who do worse than even those average students who don’t become talented. In fact, I found talent to be a greater predictor of under-achievement than anything else.
I still struggle with the gap, Natasha. But I do think that I am getting more hits than misses. The most amazing feeling is writing something and thinking, wow, I got it out like I envisioned it, as though I had this movie in my head and there is a record of it!
Keep at it. You are a fabulous writer.
That’s awesome, Jewel! I love that “nailed it!” feeling!
Thanks for the encouragement.
I know that my writing is vastly different from when I first began. I’m hoping that its because I’m forever learning as I go.
Great post, Natasha. Makes one think. Love those.
Mine is, too, Liz. I tried to finish a short story I started six years ago, and there’s no way… I can’t write badly enough to match the beginning, LOL!