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Dealing with Self-Doubt & Comparisons

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This week I thought we’d do something different from our usual dive into Gothic book reviews or the intricacies of writing. I thought we’d talk about the one thing that all writers – all artists, even – have in common: self-doubt. I have yet to meet any writer who doesn’t suffer from this one to some extent. And yet, self-doubt and our comparisons of our work to that of other writers can be debilitating. It can shut down all of our creative capacity, ruining our ability to bring our gift to the world.

What’s to be done about it?

I worked through this lately as I’ve had my own encounter with this monster. I’ll tell you what I came away with and I promise you that it’s something that is helping me. So, while I can’t guarantee that it’ll help you, I’m certainly going to try.

Faulty Comparisons

First, it’s damn near impossible to compare experience levels between any two writers. Because it isn’t merely an issue of time. I’ve written since early childhood, but – for a number of good and bad reasons – I also went through decades during which I did no creative writing.

But even if every writer had the same solid twenty or thirty or forty years of writing, we’ve each applied ourselves to different projects. We’ve sat under different mentors (in person or virtually). We’ve pressed ourselves in different directions.

I’ve striven to perfect the Gothic (and Horror and Dark Fantasy) novel and hopefully will continue to do so until I can no longer writer. Some of my writing friends love Middle Grade or Young Adult literature. These genres are extremely different. They require different types of writing ability and they assess writers’ abilities in different ways than another genre might.

Even worse, it’s sometimes the case that we look at an established writer – let’s use George R.R. Martin as an example – and compare our work to his. We forget that he may have been writing for a lot longer than we have. The same is true for debut novels. Not long ago, I read a work by a debut author: The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian. It blew me away. But we have to be careful there as well. This may be Ms. Mustian’s debut novel, but she has still been writing for a long time.

The variables are never identical. Thus, it’s impossible [and pointless] to compare ourselves to another writer. At the end of the day, there will always be someone out there who is a better writer. And someone who is worse. If we want to write, we have to write as ourselves.

However, what helps me the most when I find myself doing this is to attempt to pinpoint what it is about that writer’s work that inspires me. Don’t use blanket self-condemnation. Instead, be specific.

Is it the writer’s ability to craft long-lasting suspense? Is it her effortless, subtext-laden dialogue? Find that thing and study it. Look up writing craft books or articles that address that subject. Look for excellent examples in other writers’ work. Learn to identify different ways that it has been done well and practice incorporating that into your own writing. That way, other writers become a community from which we, as fellow artists, can share our talents and learn from own another… rather than a marathon in which only one person emerges as the winner.

Permission to Grow

Which brings me to point number two. We have to cut ourselves some slack. I tend to be very ambitious. I’m an idealist. I have huge goals and I push myself fairly hard. What’s the hardest thing about all of these?

Executing today with the skills that I have today.

My ability right now will never be the ability that I want to have in fifteen or forty years. It can’t be. And worse (in my own mind) it’ll never live up to my idealism. I can’t create the flawless novel that I demand of myself. And I probably will never be able to.

But I can work towards it. I can’t have the ability that I’d like to have in fifteen years if I don’t start working on it now. At the same time, I can celebrate what I am creating now. It might not be what I want it to be, but it’s better than what I created last year. And the year before. Not to mention ten or twenty years ago.

There’s nothing like looking for signs of our own progress and celebrating these to remind ourselves that we’re growing as artists. This sounds obvious, but sometimes idealism is so paralyzing that I hesitate to create let alone show it to the world. There’s nothing like forcing ourselves to work at our art, to see how much we’ve learned and gained simply by virtue of practice, maturity, and a whole lot of prolific reading.

Understand Why You Write

This third one seems strange, but it helps me the most. In the press to create, to perform, to perfect, it can be very easy to measure my progress by what others think of my writing. Or what it gains – whether that’s money or some other benefit. It can be very easy to forget the purpose of it all.

Why am I writing? Why did I start in the first place?

Did you start writing because you stories in your mind that you can’t bear not to write down? Do you have something to say to the world – something that your soul struggled, perhaps still struggles with; something that you have to impart to others in a similar situation? I know of a woman who lived through domestic abuse. She writes stories partly because she loves to write and partly because she longs to encourage other women.

Did you love the challenge of story structure? Do you see fully-formed characters in your mind? Characters who are so rich and complex that they have to make it to the page? Do you long to explore relationships, or political machinations, or different stages of life through the lives of your characters?

What excites you?

What life would you have crafted for yourself if you could have? (With a healthy dose of conflict, of course.) Is it a Fantasy one in which you must challenge a corrupt ruling class? Is it Mystery that allows you to bring justice to characters who might never see it in real life? Is it a Romance in which you can explore what a healthy, thriving relationship would look like in different time periods or scenarios?

For me, when I feel crippled by self-doubt and comparisons, I have to step back and ask myself that very question: why do I write? And then I have to take my mind [to the extent possible] back to the place where I wrote as a child. A place where I wrote simply for the joy of it, with no thought for how others would receive it or how successful it might be.

That’s not to say that our audiences don’t matter or that we don’t all want to make a living from our art. But an inordinate focus on these things can be paralyzing. And at the end of the day, if we truly love to write, if we know why, if we focus our writing on what moves us most, all of these other things will fall into a proper perspective.

Conclusion

If you’re suffering from self-doubt or comparisons to other writers, I feel for you. We’ve all been there, or are there now. Each of us has also been a fledgling writer, an awkward one with stilted dialogue, talking-head settings, or purple prose. But if we love to write we won’t give up. We won’t stop putting our work out somewhere, if only in our grandmother’s inbox, for feedback and help so that we can continue to grow and learn.

Don’t give up! You can do it.

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