Still not where you want to be with writing? Don’t be too hard on yourself. Here’s what I learned.
A couple of years ago, I posted my very first YouTube video, and I thought it was okay. But when I watch it now? Yikes! It’s hard not to cringe. And yet, that gap—the one between what I thought then and what I see now—that gap is the whole point. Because writing works exactly the same way.
When you’re early in something, whether it’s writing, YouTube, or anything creative, you feel like you’re doing your best work, and you probably are. That version of you is showing up with everything that they’ve got. But you can’t see the missing pieces yet. You’re still building the skill set that would even allow you to spot what’s not working.
So it makes perfect sense that you might think, This should be getting traction by now. Or, Why am I not seeing results? Maybe I’m just not good enough.
But that would be like me expecting thousands of views on one of my first 10 or 20, 30 or even 50 videos.
When I look back at my very first short story—which was a children’s story that I thought was decent at the time—I can see now how raw it was. The dialogue, the structure, particularly the pacing, were amateur. I didn’t have the tools yet, and I didn’t know how to fix what I couldn’t see was wrong.
So if you’re in that place where it feels like you’re doing everything right, but you’re still not breaking through, this might be why. You’re just too close to see the gap.
Cringing at Old Work When You’re Still Not Where You Want To Be
Here’s where it gets risky. If you don’t know there’s a gap, you might start to think that there isn’t one. And that can actually stop your growth before it even begins.
When we don’t realize that there’s a gap between what we know and what we don’t know, we start to assume that we’ve already crossed it, and that the work that we’re creating is good enough now. Therefore, if it’s not succeeding, we believe something must be wrong with the system or with the readers or with Amazon or whatever.
Thinking you’ve arrived too soon is one of the fastest ways to hurt your career. The moment you decide that there’s nothing more to improve, you stop getting feedback. You stop stretching your skills and trying to do better. You stop inviting mentors, editors, and outside eyes who could help you see the gap more clearly. And without even realizing it, you start circling the same plateau. You stay right where you are.
I’ve seen this happen with writers again and again. I’ve even been this writer at one time. And I get it. It’s a protective move because telling yourself, “Oh, I’ve got it now!” is a lot easier than admitting that there’s still a long road ahead. Especially when you’ve already been at it for a while, maybe even years, or you’ve poured your heart into something like your first book, and it’s still not landing the way that you hoped.
But here’s what I’ve learned both from writing and from my YouTube journey so far. You don’t have to be ashamed of not knowing, but you do have to be willing to keep learning. That’s what makes the difference over time.
Still Not Where You Want to Be—the Student Mindset
With YouTube, I came in as a complete beginner. I never thought I had arrived, and I still don’t. I still have so much more to learn.
When I started on the platform, I was hoping to improve over time. So, I gave myself that space to grow.
I knew that it would be messy, and I knew that I didn’t know anything because I had not done any video work before. I had a mindset of being fine with being a student—a complete beginner—and just diving in and learning everything I possibly could. And I’m still in that place today.
But with writing, it can be different, because most of us were taught to write in school. We learned spelling and sentence structure and paragraph structure and grammar and essays and all these things. And many of us who turned out to be writers got good grades on those projects. Maybe we even got praise, won awards, or were called out by the teacher for our good writing.
So when we decide to sit down and write a story, we assume that we’ve already learned how. And if that story doesn’t land the way we hoped—if it gets rejected by that publisher or agent or is ignored on the market—we take it personally. We think, I must not be good enough, or maybe I’m not cut out for this.
The story we tell ourselves does real damage. Very often, the reality is simpler: we haven’t learned enough or practiced enough yet.
What We Learned in School is Not Nearly Enough
What we learned in school does basically nothing as far as training us how to write stories. What we learned in school was only the very basics. If I were to compare that to YouTube, what we learned in school is that you need to have some sort of camera and some kind of software to be able to post on YouTube. I’m talking about very basic stuff—that’s what we learned in school.
It’s not anywhere close to what we need to learn to become novelists or short story writers or memoir writers or poets. It’s not nearly enough.
And yet, for some reason, in our culture, we think that it is enough. I did at first. I did well at school with writing. So when I finally decided to give this writing thing a try, I thought I was well prepared for it.
I went out and read magazines and learned about submitting to publishers, but I wasn’t spending nearly enough time learning about story structure, dialogue, pacing, and those kinds of things. I knew nothing about those and, worse, I didn’t even know that I needed to learn about them.
It wasn’t until long after I started that I realized I was missing a lot. Gradually, over time, I realized I didn’t know what I was doing, and I needed to learn a lot more to be able to succeed.
If you still feel like you’re not where you want to be, this might sound familiar.
Feedback, Mentors, and Moving Closer To Where You Want To Be
Many of us also don’t reach out and get the feedback that helps us to level up. This was also a failure on my part. I resisted paying for a book coach, editor, or book doctor.
It wasn’t until I’d spent many years spinning my wheels and getting rejections from publishers that I finally thought, You know what? I’m sick of failing. I want to succeed. So, I’d better get some help.
I hired my first editor, and she looked over my first novel. That was some of the best money I have ever spent. Getting her insights about what my strengths and weaknesses were in storytelling changed everything.
When she told me what my weaknesses were, I dove into those with all kinds of enthusiasm. I did all the research I could do. I looked it up on the web, bought and read books, and attended workshops. Now, that weakness has turned into a strength of mine.
But I never would have known what my strengths and weaknesses were had I not gotten some feedback from an experienced source.
We Judge Ourselves Too Soon
The other mistake that happens here is that we judge ourselves as if we’re supposed to already know all this stuff—as if we’re supposed to be at the end of this writing journey. When things don’t go the way we hope they would, self-blame creeps in. We think, It’s just me. I’m not talented enough. I just don’t have what it takes.
We take that as a verdict instead of taking it as a clue that there’s still a gap here. There’s still a gap between what we know and what we don’t know. And there’s still a gap between how we’re writing the story and how we need to write it for it to perform well on the market.
When we start approaching our writing the way I approached YouTube—as something that we have to keep learning for a really long time—everything shifts. We stop looking for validation that we are good enough and start looking for growth.
How can I get better?
You stop asking, “Is this good enough yet?” And you start asking, “What am I ready to see now that I couldn’t see before?” Or, “How can I make this better?”
That’s when things start to move in your career. It did for mine.
How To Tell If You’re Still Not Where You Want To Be
So how do you know if you’re still in the gap? If it’s not obvious yet, how can you tell?
There is one sign that almost always shows it, and it’s simpler than you think.
If you haven’t yet reached the level of success that you’re aiming for, that means you’re still in the gap.
That realization can sting, especially if you’ve been working hard. But what that really means is you haven’t finished learning the skills you need to get there. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s normal. That’s how every craft works.
We just forget that with writing for some reason, because we think we should already know how to do all this. But storytelling is a skill set all its own. And so are editing, revising, and book marketing and platform building.
When I finally got my first publishing deal, it wasn’t because I suddenly became more talented. It was because I’d finally developed enough craft, knowledge, and perspective to bring all the pieces together in a novel that worked.
And that only came with time. It was actually over ten years of it. Practice and feedback from coaches and mentors and a lot of mistakes along the way.
Hang In There and Keep Learning
So if you’re not where you want to be yet, don’t assume the worst about yourself. Assume there’s just more to learn. And then the next thing you have to do is trust that you can learn it if you put in the time and the effort.
That’s the real test: whether you’ll keep going long enough to let your growth catch up to what your vision is. It sounds simple, but it requires a lot of patience. The good news is that you are already doing it just by being here, still writing, still learning.
You are not stuck because you are hopeless. You are in the gap because you are on the way.