Every expert you look up to has a pile of failures nobody posts.

What gets published is the finished version, so the people you admire appear to have gone from nothing to good with no mess in between. The mess is where the skill came from. Behind any performance you can see there are abandoned drafts, lost games and whole years that led nowhere in particular.

When you want to quit after a bad attempt, remember you are holding your drafts up against somebody else’s final edit. Keep your own failed attempts in one folder this month so you can watch the pile grow.