Rob Kelley here, writing this week about creative humility. I’ll get to writing in a moment, but I’ll start with music.

In summer of 2020, faced with the long pandemic quarantine ahead, I decided to finally fulfill one of my lifelong goals: to learn to play a musical instrument. Music hadn’t been part of my childhood, and I always regretted not learning an instrument. I masked up and made my way to Starbird Piano in Portland. I found a teacher who would do Zoom lessons, and met with him every week for five years. I got better, but those first two years were brutal.

Then in 2025 I took up what was always my dream instrument: cello. Cello makes piano look easy. Hit the middle C on a piano and it always sounds like middle C. On the cello? Not so much. If the left hand doesn’t hit the right spot on the string, if the right hand isn’t placing the bow in the right place or with the wrong level of force, the squeaks and off-key sounds can be (and often are) horrifying.

I had transposed a piece of music I really like for piano down an octave so I could play it on the cello. The first time I played it, I thought I’d made a bunch of transcription errors because I didn’t even recognize the piece. Played it next on the piano, it was fine. The problem was my cello playing. A humbling experience.

But creative humility is necessary. Critical. The only way to improve.

There’s a lovely short recording of This American Life‘s Ira Glass talking about the gap between taste and ability early in a creative practice. It’s good. Give it a listen. You’ll recognize the feeling he’s talking about.

Now to writing. I owe my manuscript for my next novel Critical State to my editors at High Frequency Press in the next couple of days to make the fall 2026 list. As part of final edits I have a very long list of words I chronically over-use: what I call my “Tic List” (as in verbal tic). How chronically? 1134 instances of “that.” 1792 uses of “and.” 134 of “just.” And the list goes on.

Do you need those words sometimes? Yes. Do I overuse all of them? Absolutely. I really hate that edit because certain turns of phrase just flow from my fingertips and it’s hard to imagine saying things differently. But the effect of removing those words or finding synonyms absolutely makes the prose sparkle. Makes it move faster.

It is a humbling edit, not the least of which because it foregrounds the fact that I had 700 instances of “and” I absolutely did not need.

What sorts of edits do you know you have to make every time?

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