“There’s No Way This Tiny Creature Could Ever Accomplish Anything”

Our Writing is Fragile

Every piece of writing starts out as nothing. Then we have an idea and jot down a few notes.

At this point, it’s fragile, flexible, bendable and breakable. We could add to it or destroy it.

If we keep going, a skeleton or outline takes shape.Keep going still and it takes on flesh, growing larger and confident.

It all begins the same way. Even from authors we admire, from writers we emulate, from companies that amaze us.

I like what Paul Graham, the founder of start-up program Y Combinator, said in relation to Airbnb:

Almost all startups are fragile initially. And that’s one of the biggest things inexperienced founders and investors (and reporters and know-it-alls on forums) get wrong about them. They unconsciously judge larval startups by the standards of established ones. They’re like someone looking at a newborn baby and concluding ‘there’s no way this tiny creature could ever accomplish anything.’

There’s no way this tiny creature could ever accomplish anything.

I love that, because he’s exactly right.

Each idea, article and book starts out so fragile and in the same way: tiny and inconsequential.

With time and work, it grows into something meaningful.