I Learned That Being Bad at Something at First Is Normal

Writing a novel sounds pretty cool after you finish it.

Writing the novel is a completely different story.

I wrote a roughly 40,000-word book, researched its historical background, worked on the cover, edited it, published it, and eventually sold copies. I later wrote another novel about interplanetary war and its effects on people and families.

There were definitely moments when something I wrote sounded way better in my head than it did on the page. I had to rewrite things, change ideas, and sometimes admit that something just wasn’t working.

Coding has taught me basically the same lesson in a different way. You can spend forever writing something, press Run, and immediately get an error. That can be annoying, but eventually you figure out what went wrong and try again.

I used to think being good at something meant you should be able to do it correctly. Now I think being good at something usually means you have failed at it enough times that you know what to try next.

What life has taught me so far: My first attempt doesn’t need to be amazing. It just needs to exist so I have something to improve.