Your tenth song will be better than your first. Your hundredth will make your tenth look shy.

Skill accumulates in a way that is invisible from the inside, because your taste improves alongside your ability and keeps the gap between them roughly constant. That is why the work rarely feels good enough while you are making it, and why the only honest comparison is between what you make now and what you made a long time ago. Volume is doing most of this work, not talent.

Count the finished pieces rather than the good ones. Set a number for this year, and let quality arrive by way of quantity.