Several colleagues have recently asked me how I’ve been able to write like this every day. (As of this post, it’s day 62!). The truthful — and unhelpful — answer is, “I just do it.”
I wake up. I make coffee. I sit down and I write stuff. This has been my morning routine long before I started blogging on this site again. The only difference now is… I hit publish.
What they’re really asking, I think, is not “How do you write?” — but “How do you write something good?”
That’s the part that held me back for a long time too.
Bad drawings
There’s an artist I follow named Kenn Yap, aka Chroma Moma. A few years ago, he posted a video called How to Be OK with Bad Drawings. He opens with a bold statement:
“Your art is bad, and you know it.”
(Sidenote: I only dabble in doodling, so I wasn’t watching this from the lens of drawing — but from the broader act of making. Writing, sketching, prototyping, speaking… it all applies. Back to the post.)
What struck me was that someone so good at their craft openly admitted they struggle. That they still think they suck.
In that video, Kenn shares a quote often attributed to Chuck Jones:
“Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them. And the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out.”
That stuck with me. Still does. The idea is simple:
You get better by getting the bad stuff out. The only way to the good is through the bad.
Bad perspective
For years, I’ve privately practiced getting the bad writing out of my system. Fragments. Bits. Drafts. Blurbs. Probably nonsense. A lot of it I look back on and cringe.
But that’s the point.
The challenge isn’t writing. It’s not even writing something good. The real challenge is overcoming the belief that it has to be good in the first place. To fight that voice in your head that says you have to earn your right to create.
Because every time you write, you’re not just practicing the mechanics of writing — you’re dismantling perfectionism. You’re disarming ego. You’re working through self-doubt.
That’s what thousands of bad writing can do for you.
And eventually, writing — or whatever your thing is — starts to feel natural. Automatic. Like breathing. There’s less in the way between what’s in your head and what lands on the page.
And when it’s done? It probably won’t be perfect. But it’ll definitely be better than the thousands you wrote before.
Bad start
So if you’re stuck, staring at a blank page, waiting for a good idea before you start…
Remind yourself: that’s not standards. That’s fear, cosplaying as taste.
Write something bad. Write something messy, awkward, uncertain. Then write the next thing. And the next.
To quote Kenn:
”Just because you know you’re bad. It doesn’t mean you need to feel bad about it”.
The sooner you get through the bad, the sooner you uncover the good. Not by waiting for the perfect idea — but by showing up, every day.
That’s the secret:
You don’t write because you’re good at it. You get good at it because you write.