This quote reiterates a very important point, one that can be discouraging when trying to create something. That point is this: Everything is going to kind of suck in the beginning.
Obviously, you start with an idea you like, that part’s easy. But as soon as you start developing your idea you are going to run into this, and it can be very disheartening. In fact, it can actually make you question the validity of what you’re trying to do.
Ed Catmul’s quote here illustrates that this “sucking” phase is completely normal and to be expected.
This is where showing up and doing the work comes in – you just keep hammering away until things start taking shape.
Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, “from suck to not-suck.” This idea—that all movies we now think of as brilliant were, at one time, terrible—is a hard concept for many to grasp. … Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process—reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughline or a hollow character finds its soul.
From Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmul