You actually cannot skip to being good at a creative endeavour that you haven’t put much practice into. You cannot trick your way out of the ‘knows that your work is not what you want it to be but don’t know how to improve it’ stage by planning or reading or talking about it really really hard. At some point you just have to craft through it until your brain finds it’s own unique way back to the 'everything I make slaps’ stage and be prepared to start the cycle all over again. You just have to make that project you’re excited about slightly less good than you want it to be. (Says this standing in a pool of blood and covered in blood and also coughing up a little blood)
everyone stop reblogging this I hate to be reminded of my own good advice
I managed to skip through “knowing it’s not what i want it to be but not knowing how to improve it” with some of my skills (mainly writing and drawing), by being an egotistical little ass who was 100% convinced everything I did was the best at all times and ignoring anyone who said otherwise, until I got enough practice to actually see how shit my earlier stuff was when I look back on it now.
I did NOT manage this with sewing. I went through HELL with hemming the same damn rectangle pattern a hundred times to make a hundred useless failed handkerchiefs and knowing each one looked like garbage.
and yet being ABSOLUTELY BAFFLED at how eventually each one started looking slightly less garbage, even though I wasn’t having any big realizations or making any big changes in how i did it.
intellectually I’ve never believed that old cliche about how “repeating the same thing and expecting different results is insanity.” Obviously you’re gonna get different results. it’s impossible for the circumstances to ever be exactly the same
But there was still a part of me screaming that stupid cliche the entire time i was learning to sew, and being outraged at the proof of how wrong it was