Improve Everyday

Whenever I think of quantity vs. quality, the following example from Bayles and Orland’s book, Art and Fear, comes to mind:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an A”, forty pounds a B”, and so on. Those being graded on quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Writing is important to me. I want to get better at it.

Like the quantity” group in the ceramics class, I’ll make make my work everyday. I’ll push myself. I’ll make mistakes, but I’ll learn from them.

Every single day, every single post, I aim to do better than I did yesterday.

So I’ll keep writing…

January 17, 2020


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