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- one minute blog: the taste gap
one minute blog: the taste gap
check this out and lmk what you think
This is the One Minute Blog (OMB). An email of good stuff for you to think about over the weekend, that takes about a minute to read.
Today’s word count: 414
It took me 57s to read this.
In the 1970s, there was a janitor working at a high school in Maine.
One day while cleaning the locker room, he got an idea for a book. The janitor went home excited that night and wrote the first three pages.
He read them over... and hated it. (womp womp)
So, he threw it in the trash.
Later that night, his wife found those crumbled up balls of paper while emptying the trash. She read the beginning of the book… and loved it.
She got curious what happened next and begged her husband to finish it.
Like any husband knows - happy wife, happy life (and he knows she wouldn't stop nagging him about it until he did it)... so he finished the book.
That "garbage" book? Carrie.
That janitor? Stephen King.
Carrie ended up being Stephen King’s first big hit and has sold over 4,000,000 copies… but it almost didn’t even happen!!
You see, Stephen King experienced a phenomena that most of us face: The Taste Gap.
Here's how Ira Glass (host of This American Life) describes it:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.”
Here’s a visual:
We all start with the ability to recognize greatness. We know what we like. We have taste. But our ability to create that greatness? It lags way behind.
So we make something. We look at it. And we think: "This f*cking sucks."
But The Taste Gap isn't a sign you're failing. It's a sign you're on the right track.
Ira Glass continues: “We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.”
Here's the secret: No first draft is good. Not Stephen King's. Not yours.
The ones who make it are the ones who keep going despite the gap.
So next time you create something and that voice in your head says "this sucks" - remember the janitor from Maine who almost threw away Carrie.
And keep going.
-Uncle Shaan
P.S: if you liked this story, you’ll love this deck I dropped earlier this week. It’s full of stories about Rick Rubin, Dr. Seuss, Elon Musk, etc - check it out here.
P.P.S: If you do read it..
you’re a real one
email me what you think!
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