There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

Before my first published novel, Something Missing, I wrote hundreds of thousands of terrible words. Pages upon pages of uninspired, unentertaining stories. I spent more than eight years writing bad fiction before finally stumbling upon a method and mindset that made fiction writing click for me. Had I not allowed myself to write poorly, I never wo