It Is Vital to Embrace Discomfort-A TedTalk Review
Trinity Larsen | Nov. 8, 2025
Author Leigh Bardugo speaking at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 6, 2025. (Wikimedia Commons)
You open Instagram or TikTok and see a 20-year-old celebrating that their debut novel is on the bestseller list. A well-regarded movie you found entertaining wins an Oscar. A near-perfect painting ends up in a gallery and sells for the price of a mansion. An indie short film by a kid who dropped out of college gets millions of views on YouTube.
Where are the moments of staring at a blank page for an agonizingly long time just for the words to never come? The months of filming scenes that never make it into the movie? The days of not feeling like getting out of bed because inspiration failed to strike you? And if producing art is so hard, why not let AI do it in just mere seconds? In her TEDxTalk, “The art of discomfort”, Leigh Bardugo asserts that “By erasing discomfort from the process of creativity, our culture has fed us a myth.”
Bardugo, the author of the bestselling “Shadow and Bone” series, which was adapted into a highly successful TV show of the same name, shared in her TED Talk that it took her 15 years after graduating college to publish her first novel. That might seem like a long time in the age of social media, when it seems like we see book deals being given out left and right. This is exactly what Bardugo tries to convince audiences: all great artists have experienced rejection.
Bardugo structures her talk around giving myths and truths about the creative process of art. I agree with most of her truths, while others are more specific to Bardugo's personal experiences. Her first myth is “Art happens in the first draft”. Bardugo explains this idea with the concept of the montage, the archetypal sequence of clips of a painter or writer furiously working. She says that “The media scrubs over all the trial and error and years in getting proficient in [one’s] craft for a montage that takes mere seconds to consume.”
Bardugo’s truth, contrary to the image painted by the montage, is that “Art happens in revision.” I think audiences might assume Bardugo is claiming that the first draft is complete garbage and never good. Most times, a first draft is just that: a first draft. You’re still creating art, no matter how ugly it may be. The little nuggets that cause the artist to come back to the project are inklings of the great art that project can become.
The second myth Bardugo has is the romance of the big idea. She compares this “big idea” to being in a relationship, where at first you want to ask it all sorts of questions. For Bardugo, that was “What if darkness was a place?”, which ultimately led her to write the “Shadow & Bone” series. After a while, the appeal of the shiny new idea fades. The discomfort of continual effort sets in, sometimes causing you to abandon the project you were working on. Her truth: art isn’t about falling in love, but staying in love. Calling back to her relationship metaphor, Bardugo compares this to asking the question of “How did you two stay together?” rather than “How did you guys meet?”
This leads Bardugo into her next myth: that discomfort is a warning sign. The second we aren’t comforted by praise, we tend to move on to a new idea. Bardugo distinguishes “good” discomfort as curiosity rather than “bad” discomfort, which she sees as a challenge that you're unable to see becoming complete. Her truth: “good” discomfort is a compass needle pointing to something you’ve never attempted before.
In the age of AI’s instant gratification, more and more artists are turning to technology to avoid discomfort. Bardugo alludes to this phenomenon, saying, “If we want art to be our job, we have to cultivate and recognize moments of discomfort.” AI capitalizes on our discomfort, allowing people to be praised for a product rather than the act of creation; to be handed an award for a perfect piece of “art” that took seconds to generate instead of years of falling and staying in love with an idea, through the countless drafts and revisions.
Bardugo closes out her TED Talk by reminding the audience that how we treat our bad days, the days when the inspiration isn’t there, is “The difference between amateurs and professionals, the fantasy of being an artist and the act of making art.” There will be some moments of genius, but the moments of struggle are the true gateway to making something extraordinary. By refusing the comfort AI tempts artists with, we allow ourselves to create the art we desire in spite of pesky discomfort.