Still on a break from thinking about conspiracy theories to bring you these words of encouragement for my fellow writers.
This restack from
caught my eye a few weeks ago:It’s true! As writers, it’s hard not to compare how we’re doing with other writers, or to compare our writing with theirs. Mine’s either garbage or the best thing anyone’s ever written, depending on my mood.
I had my own note about this form of writer’s jealousy sometime before that:
These feelings of jealousy when comparing either success or quality of your writing to others’ work will poison your soul, and they’re unproductive to boot.
And this got me thinking about the long-ago days when I used to run 10Ks and half marathons. I was pretty fast! I’d usually finish in the top 10% or 12% of a given race. But that meant that I was something like 500th or 1000th, depending on how big the race was. The winners and even the rest of the top 1% would finish with times that made me look like I was walking. In that context, was being faster than 90% of the runners something to crow about? Certainly not.
So why would I subject myself to this exercise for so little apparent reward? We live in a society where the winner takes all, right?
The answer: the only person I was competing with was myself. And this is true of the vast majority of participants in any type of race. Am I a better runner today than I was yesterday? Am I getting faster or slower? When I started cycling back in the ’90s, thirty miles seemed like a long ride. Now I’ve completed centuries, so thirty miles doesn’t seem that far. Yet 100 miles is just a nice afternoon ride for elite cyclists, so even completing a century isn’t anything to boast about.
So I encourage writers to adopt some good old sports clichés:
Stay within yourself
Don’t try to do too much
Concentrate on the things you can control
Don’t worry about the other guy
You’ll have more peace of mind and probably be more productive as well.
The obvious caveats
Now, writing and running a race are two different things. Race times are objective, while the quality of writing is subjective. Sometimes, in my own mind, I’m the greatest writer who ever lived (when I’m not the worst), but never did I feel I was the fastest man alive. That would be ludicrous!
Race results depend on a combination of innate talent and training volume, while metrics like books sales or Substack subscriber numbers depend on a lot of factors beyond the words on the page. It’s easy to fall into thinking “my novel would have been big, if only….” (In the olden days, that sentence would finish off with complaints about the publisher’s marketing efforts.)
But even if the analogy isn’t perfect, I think it’s healthier for writers to adopt a runner’s mindset. Concentrate on your own writing, on being a better writer today than you were yesterday. The process will be more enjoyable, and probably more productive. Or, if a larger readership is what you’re after, don’t focus on anyone else’s numbers; focus on whether your own readership is growing. Did it grow more this week than last week?
So come on, writers, let’s all sing kumbaya, or maybe “We’re All In This Together.”
If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll give it a like, a share, or a restack. Or maybe even:
What do you think? How do you combat these common writer’s insecurities? Leave a comment below!
Come back on Friday for a new chapter from Ship of Fools. Liz arrives at NASA HQ only to discover that something terrible has happened. Then on Sunday, space tycoon Lonnie Ester gets a rude surprise.
I struggle with this. I see writers pumping out novel after novel and meanwhile I've been working on the same project for 4 years. I know I'm getting better through the process, but it's been so hard not to push the product out and start working on something else so I can catch up. Great article.
Every morning I pray to be relieved of seven defects, and envy is one of them.
And the answer to that prayer is always the same: “you’re stuck with it. Just don’t live by it.”