the thing Ira Glass would just like to say to you with all his heart

There's a great series of videos of Ira Glass giving advice on storytelling up on YouTube. But for those of you who, like me, dislike video/audio information formats, I've transcribed the most striking bit below:

"All of us who do creative work, like, you know, we get into it. And we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean? So you've got really good taste, and you get into this thing, like, I don't even really know how to describe it, it's like there's a gap, for the first couple of years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, okay, it's not that great. It's really not that great. It's trying to be good, it has the vision to be good, but it's not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, 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? You know what I mean? Like you can tell that it's still sort of crappy.

"A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point they quit. And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart, is that most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work, they went through a phase of years, where they had really good taste, and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it felt [sic] short. And, you know, some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves. But we knew, that, like, it didn't have that special thing that we wanted it to have.

"And the thing I would say to you is, everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase, or if you're just starting off and entering into that phase, you gotta know that it's totally normal, and the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work.

"Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline, so that every week, or every month, you know you're going to finish one story, do you know what I mean? Whatever it's going to be, like, you create the deadline. It's best if you have somebody who's waiting for work from you, somebody who's expecting a work from you. Even if it's not somebody who pays you, but that you're in a situation where you have to turn out the work. Because it's only by actually going through a volume of work that you're actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you're making will be as good as your ambition is."

This struck such a chord with me. Logically, I know it's nothing I haven't heard before, but the way he describes it is fresh - a gap between taste and ability - and God, if I could only consistently follow this, it would change my life. So far, no luck on the consistency, but a little inspiration never hurts.