They say that you have to do bad work before you can do good work. Not just one piece of bad work, but tons of it. Some really bad stories have been written, and even though you have to do bad work before you can do good work, the bad work still exists and the writer has to deal with it. Sometimes it's published to wither and die on its own; most of the time, it isn't. But sometimes the work was good, yet the writer would rather keep it to themselves rather than posting it online.