The gap between your taste and ability

& Chappel Roan's Cringe Mountain

Author

Erica Mallett
July 14, 2024

Hey Climbers, today —

  • Chappel Roan on how many sucky shows it took to be Coachella ready

  • Why many creatives give up before blow up: the gap between taste & ability

CRINGE MOUNTAIN
Chappel Roan’s “overnight success”

Photo credit: Ryan Clemens, Rolling Stone

You can’t fight it, and why would you want to? The age of pop artist Chappel Roan is upon us. She’s cool, she’s disgustingly talented, and she seemingly came outta nowhere. But the ten years it took to become an ‘overnight success’ tell a different story of her career.

She faced a bunch of failure, including being dropped by her label in 2020 for a string of singles that weren’t “profitable” enough. On a recent interview with Zane Lowe, she said:

The past 10 years, [I just kept telling myself] ‘keep going girl’. This career is made up of a million baby steps and you don’t see progress for so long… It took so many years of shows that sucked. It all led up for me to be able to walk on Coachella’s stage and be like ‘I got this.’”

CREATIVE INSPO OF THE WEEK
The gap between your taste and your ability as a creative

This week I was getting frustrated that my content isn’t where I want it to be. I have notoriously high standards for myself and a pretty unrelenting inner voice. I’ve done a lot of work to quieten this voice (which is why Cringe Mountain exists) but despite alllll my efforts, it still comes up sometimes.

Anyway, in the midst of my slump, I remembered this quote from Ira Glass, radio personality and host of This American Life. It made me feel better. It’s so Cringe Mountain. I hope it can stir something sparkly in you, too:

“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. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. 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. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass

CRINGE MOUNTAIN ACADEMY
Calling creative visionaries with 1k+ followers

If you’re a creative visionary with over 1k followers, looking to build clarity and conviction in your brand & content so you can do massive things, I help people do exactly that in my 90 day program Cringe Mountain Academy. Hit the link below to find out more.

Ok that’s all for now,

Til next time,

Keep Climbin’

Erica x