Writing.Com General Discussion

I couldn't identify with this feeling more! That fear is hard to overcome, but WDC is such a great place to start.

It can be difficult to just sit down and write when you fear your words won't be good enough before you even put (figurative or literal) pen to paper, but there's an interesting experiment I read about a little while back. I'll call it the "Pot Experiment."

A ceramics teacher at a college separated his art students into two groups:

Quantity: The first group had to make as many pots as they possibly could. Quality didn't matter. They could be the most terrible pots in the world. They just had to produce a lot of them. They would be graded, at the end of the semester, on the volume of work they created.

Quality: The second group only had to make one pot. One very, very excellent pot. They had all semester to perfect their theories and ideas before throwing the Best Ever Pot, which the professor would evaluate.

All of the best works, however, came from the Quantity group. Turns out, the more you do something, the better you become at it. It's inevitable.

The story is not about writing, exactly, but it applies just as well to words as it does to art, and it really made me rethink the whole way I went about writing.

This year, my goal is to (figuratively) make a whole bunch of bad pots in hopes of learning a few things and coming away from the experience a better writer.

It's amazing that you're writing every day. Keep it up, because I know the effort will bear fruit! All the best.