What makes Butler's observation so bracing is her refusal to flatter the beginner with false encouragement—she's saying the discomfort you feel reading your early work isn't a sign you lack talent, but proof you're developing taste faster than skill, which is actually the healthier trajectory. Most advice tells you to "write from the heart" or "find your voice," but Butler cuts through that by naming the specific sting of the gap between intention and execution, the one that makes you cringe at your own sentences months later. A musician learning an instrument experiences this same humbling arc: your ear gets good before your fingers do, which is precisely what keeps you practicing. The real encouragement here isn't that you'll eventually write well—it's that the very awareness of your own mediocrity means you've already begun the only education that matters.