I am two and a half chapters away from finishing a yet untitled book about the fears that circle around us when we write. I’m sputtering at the finish line, so for motivation, I’m publishing an excerpt. Now, back to writing.
I love learning random facts I’ll never need. Like, you burn more calories than you consume when you eat celery, and the word “bride” is derived from an Old English word meaning “cook.” Like most little girls, I went through a horse-crazy era, but I never knew horses have eyes located on the sides of their heads, which gives them a field of vision that extends to almost 350 degrees. As it turns out, this random fact helps explain why horses wear blinders, or blinkers, when they race: they don’t need to turn their heads to see who’s gaining on them.
The most famous racehorse, Secretariat, won the Triple Crown in 1973, and he was wearing blinkers. This horse was bred for racing and had a chest so large that it required a custom-made girth, but he also had a tendency to notice the other competitors in the race, and his attention to them could be disastrous to his performance. Cover the eyes so he could only see in front of him, and he was unstoppable.
The temptation to compare is in our human DNA. We have an instinctual need to protect ourselves, which extends to scanning our surroundings for competitors. Like fear, this was necessary when our clans were claiming land or fighting for food survival. Jump forward to our modern era, where a healthy sense of competition is crucial to many endeavors. Music competitions or scholarly debates require competitors to watch each other so they can level up their performance. We watched the Olympics over the summer, and I was grateful the athletes didn’t wear blinkers. The competition fueled them. But this type of competition is different than comparing your creative work to someone else’s.
Sitting in my office in front of my computer screen is not a team sport, and I’m not in danger of losing my next meal to a rival hunter. I shouldn’t need blinkers to keep me focused, but my writing derails when I start looking around. And these days, we don’t have to look far to see what everyone else is doing. We’re bombarded with our peers’ daily activities, achievements, and accomplishments. We see them in real time from the palm of our hand. This can cut both ways: I applaud my friend who won “Teacher of the Year,” but feel a tug of insecurity when a fellow writer churns out two books in eleven months. What was supposed to be a morning of writing becomes an hour of pondering why I’m such a slow writer and descends into a rabbit hole of existential pondering. Did I choose the wrong path in life, or am I just lazy? Or delusional? Why is this so easy for her? How does he juggle writing two books at once? Is my brain wired wrong?
Comparing our work—and ourselves—to others shuts down our creativity. We begin to feel inferior, questioning our abilities and skills until we’ve convinced ourselves we’re a big fat zero. Ten minutes earlier, before we looked around, we were happy with our creative project, confident in our ability, and happy with our place in life. Now, in an instant, we aren’t so sure about anything.
No one makes blinkers for writers. We can’t cloister ourselves off in a room and happily write, never knowing what lies outside our door, except for Emily Dickinson, who did just that. I doubt Emily spent hours wringing her hands over the other poets who were doing it better, but maybe she did. Comparing ourselves with others is not something we like to talk about. At my monthly book club, I don’t follow up a five-star endorsement of a novel with the honest admission that after finishing the book, I wanted to quit writing. That would make me sound petty and adolescent. And yet, these are the thoughts we’re plagued with as writers. One of the many minions of fear, comparison, does its work by making us feel like we’re losing a race we were never in.
Some people never start the race because the competition is too stiff and the field is overcrowded. Why add your voice to the millions of memoirs out there with your similar story? Why write a young adult fantasy novel when there are so many on the market? If you decide to research the competition before you start your creative project, be prepared. For some writers, this is not a problem. They can scroll through the dozens (hundreds, thousands?) of published books with themes similar to theirs and come away with fresh motivation. But for the reluctant writer, this is a dangerous undertaking. Instead of motivating, it’s disheartening.
Three years ago, I started a novel. I’m not a fiction writer, but the hype around National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) finally lured me in. The challenge of NaNoWriMo is to write the first draft of a 50,000-word novel in 1,700 words a day. I could veer off here and list the reasons this is not a good idea, but I was in a particularly hopeful season of writing and wanted to push myself. There is an official NaNoWriMo website where participants can log in and post their goals and progress, as well as a community forum, but I was content to go it alone. That was a good decision because I sputtered to a stop around 20,000 words for several reasons, which included the decision to research published books similar to mine. This isn’t hard to do. Amazon makes it easy to type in your book’s theme using keywords, which I did, and I was immediately gifted a list of books in the order of their good reviews. This means the bestselling books with a similar theme to mine were staring at me on the screen, each with a tempting button below the cover image: Read Sample. Which I did and then wished I hadn’t. In the interest of researching my unfinished novel, I kept scrolling through the books, clicking the buttons, and feeling worse about myself. I was like Secretariat without blinkers—checking my competition and falling behind in the race. Except I hadn’t entered a race, but my brain had been misinformed. Comparison, under orders from Fear, began to whisper to me. You aren’t as good. You can’t compete. You can’t win. And the final blow. Don’t even try.
My NaNoWriMo efforts were derailed for several reasons, but comparison was the final blow. I gave in and quit. I’m not proud of this, but my NaNoWriMo failure provides a real-life illustration for this chapter, so it wasn’t all for nothing. That year was also the catalyst for deciding to deal with my writing fears. I’ve learned that my tendency to compare myself to other writers, especially best-selling authors and those who churn out a book every six months, stems from a fear that someone will discover I don’t belong here. That I’m not good enough, or smart enough, or talented enough. We all have our moments of feeling this way, but for writers and artists, these thoughts paralyze our creativity and often keep us from starting—forget finishing.
My daughter learned to crochet in college and continues to make the easiest of all projects: blankets. She shops for her materials, chooses the color combinations, and gets to work. She loves the process and is proud of her finished product. There are only so many crocheted blankets a household needs or wants, so she now gifts them to family and friends, then moves on to the next. She doesn’t research other crocheted blankets before she starts, and even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. There is joy in the process of creating, and at the end of it all, someone has a gift that keeps them warm.
I’m not comparing writing a novel and crocheting a blanket. Writing involves pouring so much of ourselves into the process. We risk vulnerability with our words and expose ourselves within the themes of our novels. Memoirists must dig deep into their experiences, often going back to childhood trauma, and tell the reader how they have changed because of what happened. Writing a nonfiction book means entering a crowded field and the inevitable question, “Do we really need another book about that subject?” This is exactly the question I asked myself about this book. There are many writers, editors, and book coaches who have published excellent resources for those of us who struggle with fears around our creativity. Do I need to add my voice? Why would anyone read my book when there are so many better books already published? I can’t compete with all the experts. Here’s the liberating truth for you and me: We don’t have to compete. You are good enough to write your story, even if you will never be at the top of that bestseller list. Even if you never come close to the bestseller list. Actually, let’s forget the bestseller lists and all the other lists.
Secretariat, wearing his blue and white blinkers, won that final race for the Triple Crown and was the first horse to hold the title in twenty-five years. The following week, one reporter wrote about Secretariat, “His only point of reference is himself.” Writer friends, don’t lose your individuality by comparing yourself to others. When we conform to what we think is expected of us, we shape our work to please others instead of staying true to our authentic selves. We stop taking risks and trying new things for fear of not measuring up.
What would it look like if your only point of reference were you? What would you write? What would you create?
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