Compare like with like

When critiquing my own work it’s tempting to compare it unfavourably with something good. But almost all early drafts need improvement. For example, here’s the final version of a well-known voiceover: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise Its five year mission To explore strange new worlds To seek out new life And new civilizations To boldly go where no man has gone before. But here’s an early draft of that famous start to Star trek. tl;dr it sucks too. [Neatorama.com] The lesson? If your terrible draft lacks sparkle, it might just be because almost everyone’s does, at first. So if you can’t compare like with like, then don’t compare at all. Unless you really are planning to regulate commerce and so on.