Ira Glass may be talking about storytelling but this applies to all artists.
Every artist, at some point in their journey, feels like they aren’t ‘good enough’. There is no artist in history who emerged as an incredibly skilled, fully formed genius. And anyone who says that they always felt their art was good is lying through their teeth.
We can see the gap between our art and the art of those people we admire – and that’s a very good thing.
As artists, we know the difference between what’s good and what’s not. That’s how we realize that we aren’t good enough – yet. And this is good because it lets us know that we have work to do, that we have skills that need to be improved. So how do we close this gap?
Keep creating and you will become a better artist.
If you want to become a better artist, keep creating. Create daily and create as much as you can. Take heart in your taste, your ability to see whether something is good or not, and keep creating art.
The audio is from a weekly American radio broadcast called This American Life. You can watch to the interview in its entirety here.