Feelings of competition with other writers?

[2DaveWixon]

Yes, yes to pretty much everything I've read so far. Well, apart from the bit where we all become Phyre's dancing minions.

I am not yellow! (although I have at times worn goggles...).

 

[zmunkz]

It DOES make me feel intimidated or question my own talent more often than I'd like it to.

Yeah, that is how I feel more often than not. I don't know many writers personally, but when I am reading published works, I sometimes get overwhelmed by how brilliantly they've pulled me into their story, or their casual turning of phrases... It convinces me I just don't have the chops to play on their level.

I try to stay grounded by remembering that I'm looking at someone else's final draft and comparing it to my own first draft, which is silly. I'm also looking at people with decades of experience learning the craft, so I really can't be discouraged that my short few years don't already compare. It can be hard to keep those rationalizations in mind, though.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Yeah, that is how I feel more often than not. I don't know many writers personally, but when I am reading published works, I sometimes get overwhelmed by how brilliantly they've pulled me into their story, or their casual turning of phrases... It convinces me I just don't have the chops to play on their level.

I try to stay grounded by remembering that I'm looking at someone else's final draft and comparing it to my own first draft, which is silly. I'm also looking at people with decades of experience learning the craft, so I really can't be discouraged that my short few years don't already compare. It can be hard to keep those rationalizations in mind, though.

Let me further that reassurance (although not about the time writing - I've only been at it five years, some less, and I'd hate to put someone off just because they don't have decades of writing behind them. Whilst also not to encourage the idea it takes no work...)

I have three books published to date - none of them resemble the drafts I first submitted (and got agented for) in many ways. They have been edited, they have been copyedited, they've been honed and buffed. A published book that follows those finishing steps to publication (which, btw, self published ones should - the days of readers being tolerant of typos cos you are an indie are gone, if they were ever really there) will always read more professionally, with fewer places to trip over than anyone's earlier drafts.

In fact, I'm currently working with two publishers on my next two books. One of my publishers has a tough editor (Ms @teresaedgerton pulls no punches), one does multiple runthroughs with an editorial team, each with their own strengths. The books will change. I've already seen the one coming out next summer change from one of my weaker mss into something I'm very proud of.

I also have two out on submission. I know they are not as good. I know they will eventually be. But not until they get the honing and tidying that professional eyes support. So, yep, be not down.

 

[pambaddeley]

I always view that you are only in competition with yourself, to continually improve and to be the best writer you can be.

 

[Dan Jones]

When I worked in the aerospace sector a few years ago our Chairman was a chap called Sir John O'Reilly, who was the Vice Chancellor of Cranfield University. He always spoke to us of creating a culture of "co-ompetition," a rather ham-fisted portmanteau of "cooperation" and "competition" that nonetheless conveyed a noble sentiment. By getting companies who traditionally competed against each other to work together to identify key strategic areas of national importance, they were able to collaborate, improve market conditions, create an innovation culture, and also tell a compelling story to Government ministers, who like that sort of thing.

That was aerospace, but there's a similar thing going on here with writers. By nurturing and supporting each other, creating new collaborations and identifying what the market might want and how to achieve it, we're actually creating a very similar innovation-style culture, improving quality, output, creating new networks and partnerships, and ultimately changing the market. That might sound a little lofty, but it's true - the breakthroughs made by people like Stephen, Jo and Nathan are testament to that. And if a few of us make it, then they're in a great position to haul a few more of us up with the momentum they create. So yes, it's utterly worthwhile and possible to be connecting, collaborating and creating with other authors, while still remaining "in competition" with them.

Co-ompetition gets the point across. But to put it more elegantly, all ships rise in high tide.

 

[CWScott]

On one hand, I don't think we compete with one another. If I see a couple of books I like, I'm not going to pick one over the other. I'll probably buy both.
I see authors helping each other all the time which is amazing, and I try to play it forward with my meager experience.

On the other hand, if someone is in the top 100 of a category, and I'm at 101, well...someone between 1-100 needs to be crushed! I see books that are poorly written sell like crazy, further bumping others down the ladder. You need to claw your way up to get visibility, and that means doing it better than everyone else. Practice your craft, be professional, throw your best stories out there, build your readership, advertise etc.

But you also can't lose what makes you passionate about writing in the first place.

 

[SciFrac]

DZara- Howdy, fellow Texan! I've found the Chrons and other writing groups extremely supportive. We should be, because this is art, not a zero sum game. I want brilliant authors to succeed, because I want to read brilliant books. The more they improve and push themselves, the more I improve and push myself. That's the only way we grow. And it takes community to hold your hand through the rough patches. When a book's artistic success overwhelms you, enjoy it, study it, and be thankful you found an opportunity to learn something new.

 

[ZombieWife]

I think feelings of envy come up from time to time. We're all human. But in the end, you write for yourself and for your audience. I've really developed some amazing relationships with writers. I suppose you could put me in the comrade camp. I find these folks invaluable.

 

[MWagner]

If you're writing in comparison to another writer - any writer - you're setting yourself up fr misery and definite failure simply because we are our own worst judges. You have to write for yourself and no one else. If you don't like what you write, then it's likely others may not. If you do like your writing, then what does it matter?

...How do you measure success? Or, how do you measure failure? Go down that rabbit hole and you'll lose yourself.

"Success" is for people who are interested in success. But if you're going to make the transition from writer to author you're going to have to realise your work is - or should be - art. Artists don't give a damn about much except their art. Also - if you're feeling envious, that means you're desperate for something, which "success" is a short-term replacement for. Maybe get some therapy.

I have to disagree with these sentiments. Competition, jealousy, status, the desire for fame and fortune have inspired many of the great works of art.

The earliest works of storytelling recognized as great today, the plays of Periclean Athens, were the products of competition. Sophocles and Aristophanes wrote their plays to compete in Athens' annual theatre festival, and it was a very, very big deal to win. Athenians kept score of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishes the way we track the standings in sports leagues today.

Dickens had a burning desire to sell piles and piles of books, to be the best and most famous author in England, then the world. Gigantic ambitions for fame and fortune inspired David Coperfield, Great Expectations, and Bleak House.

The first thing the Beatles did every day was check the papers to see where their latest record was sitting in the charts.

John: "Where are we going, lads?"
Paul, George, Ringo: "To thetoppermost of the poppermost, Johnny!".​

They took it personally whenever someone else's record bumped them from the #1 spot. And internally, Lennon and McCartney competed with one another in songwriting, vying over whose songs would make the A sides of their singles.

Genre fiction is no different. George RR Martin has blogged at length about the history of the Hugo Awards, and expresses how desperately he and his peers wanted to win them. They were friends with one another, and would get drunk together at the awards show. But it's clear that winning those prizes - representing recognition of the community and their peers of their excellence - was a major motivator for those writers.

Today, Martin avidly waits for announcements of Emmy nominations for Game of Thrones, and crows when the show gets more nominations than rivals.

This year's Emmy nominations were announced this morning, and once again GAME OF THRONES and HBO kicked ass and took names.

HBO collected more nominations than any other network... once again.

And GAME OF THRONES was responsible for a big chunk of those... 23 nominations all told, more than any other series... for the second year in a row (we had 24 last year).​

It's a fascinating paradox - some of our most unpleasant desires are responsible for our most beautiful works of art. As Grahame Greene wrote in the Third Man: "In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

 

[Stephen Palmer]

So, in a nutshell, you propose (via Greene) that all Swiss people are homogenous and only ever produced the cuckoo clock? Hmmm, let me name some names: Paul Klee, H.R. Giger, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Jean-Luc Godard, Leonhard Euler, Patrick Moraz, Jean-Jacques Rousseau… and so on and so on. Creativity is creativity is creativity; it comes from the human condition, not anywhere else. I do think that competition can be a factor in creativity, but it's certainly not the wellspring.

 

[Foxbat]

Writing is like golf. The hardest competitor you will ever face is yourself.

 

[ratsy]

Writing is like golf. The hardest competitor you will ever face is yourself.

Tell that to my buddy who wants to gamble on every round!

 

[MWagner]

So, in a nutshell, you propose (via Greene) that all Swiss people are homogenous and only ever produced the cuckoo clock? Hmmm, let me name some names: Paul Klee, H.R. Giger, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Jean-Luc Godard, Leonhard Euler, Patrick Moraz, Jean-Jacques Rousseau… and so on and so on.

Take it up with Greene . But were those artists all the product of a specific time and creative environment, the way the Italian Renaissance was?

Creativity is creativity is creativity; it comes from the human condition, not anywhere else. I do think that competition can be a factor in creativity, but it's certainly not the wellspring.

I'm just challenging the assertions that status-seeking is antithetical to creativity.

How do you measure success? Or, how do you measure failure? Go down that rabbit hole and you'll lose yourself.​

Artists don't give a damn about much except their art.​

There's a strong correlation between competitive, status-seeking environments and historic outbursts of creativity. We're social animals. Some people can write (or run, or invent things) for the solitary pleasure of it. But many others push themselves to excel out of competitive and status-seeking drives. I don't think the work of Sophocles, Dickens, or the Beatles were tainted by the deliberate ambition of their motivations. They wanted to be on top. To beat their rivals. To win fame and fortune. And they produced great art to get there.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm just challenging the assertions that status-seeking is antithetical to creativity.


By all means push your own argument, but please please don't put words in my mouth - you can't conflate anything in my post with your own assertions. At no point was I talking about status. I was referring to self-belief, self-esteem, and the mutability of success or failure's definition.

pH

 

[Mad Alice]

were those artists all the product of a specific time and creative environment?

There's a strong correlation between competitive, status-seeking environments and historic outbursts of creativity. We're social animals. Some people can write (or run, or invent things) for the solitary pleasure of it. But many others push themselves to excel out of competitive and status-seeking drives. I don't think the work of Sophocles, Dickens, or the Beatles were tainted by the deliberate ambition of their motivations. They wanted to be on top. To beat their rivals. To win fame and fortune. And they produced great art to get there.

Actually I think these examples speak more of a gesault type of ubermenschen mentality, wherein there is an environment of creativity nurtured by both external and internal forces. A sort of over mind that is formed when a group of really creative talented people join together in their pursuits. They prompt and push and persuade each other on because we are indeed social animals. We seek our place in the group. For instance the Oxford writers group alumni included Tolkien and C.S.Lewis, among other showstoppers.
Or a more to home example, the world wide effort to create writers from slackers of NaNoWriMo.

Yes the works produced often are less then saleable, but people who have done it have reached beyond their own limits. And that's a lot of what it takes to make something new, something good. Every year more writers are produced from their boot in the bum boot camp then are ever hand held through university's fine arts writing programs to get their magnum opus written.
There you have a group working towards a common purpose. Get it done. And that urging and prompting in any field of endeavour, whether we are speaking of art or the Manhattan project, gets results.

 

[Dan Jones]

Actually I think these examples speak more of a gesault type of ubermenschen mentality, wherein there is an environment of creativity nurtured by both external and internal forces. A sort of over mind that is formed when a group of really creative talented people join together in their pursuits. They prompt and push and persuade each other on because we are indeed social animals.

Yeah, exactly this, this is what I alluded to in my earlier post. There's nothing wrong in wanting to be the best, but your chances of being the best while operating in splendid isolation is impossible. Much better to be supportive and bring the quality of the whole group - and therefore, in some small way, the whole industry, upwards.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Paul McCartney may have been in a competitive environment in the '60s, but he is the example par excellence of a creative individual who would have created works of genius regardless of his environment - like Mozart, to whom he is akin.

 

[Vladd67]

I have to disagree with these sentiments. Competition, jealousy, status, the desire for fame and fortune have inspired many of the great works of art.

The earliest works of storytelling recognized as great today, the plays of Periclean Athens, were the products of competition. Sophocles and Aristophanes wrote their plays to compete in Athens' annual theatre festival, and it was a very, very big deal to win. Athenians kept score of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishes the way we track the standings in sports leagues today.

Dickens had a burning desire to sell piles and piles of books, to be the best and most famous author in England, then the world. Gigantic ambitions for fame and fortune inspired David Coperfield, Great Expectations, and Bleak House.

The first thing the Beatles did every day was check the papers to see where their latest record was sitting in the charts.

John: "Where are we going, lads?"
Paul, George, Ringo: "To thetoppermost of the poppermost, Johnny!".​

They took it personally whenever someone else's record bumped them from the #1 spot. And internally, Lennon and McCartney competed with one another in songwriting, vying over whose songs would make the A sides of their singles.

Genre fiction is no different. George RR Martin has blogged at length about the history of the Hugo Awards, and expresses how desperately he and his peers wanted to win them. They were friends with one another, and would get drunk together at the awards show. But it's clear that winning those prizes - representing recognition of the community and their peers of their excellence - was a major motivator for those writers.

Today, Martin avidly waits for announcements of Emmy nominations for Game of Thrones, and crows when the show gets more nominations than rivals.

This year's Emmy nominations were announced this morning, and once again GAME OF THRONES and HBO kicked ass and took names.

HBO collected more nominations than any other network... once again.

And GAME OF THRONES was responsible for a big chunk of those... 23 nominations all told, more than any other series... for the second year in a row (we had 24 last year).​

It's a fascinating paradox - some of our most unpleasant desires are responsible for our most beautiful works of art. As Grahame Greene wrote in the Third Man: "In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Grahame Greene actually didn't write the Cuckoo Clock speech, that was all Orson Wells, Greene hated it.

 

[Toby Frost]

I take a slightly different view to this, because I know of no other authors who are doing the same sort of thing as me to the extent that they feel like direct competition. I don’t say this because I claim any great originality or genius, just that the field is very wide and I don’t feel directly in competition with anyone in particular. However…

I can’t help wishing that I had the “people skills” of other writers. Jo and some of the YA writers I know have far greater skill with media and self-publicity than I do. I’m hardly a recluse, but for me publicity is not something that comes easily, and not really something I enjoy. But that's just one aspect of it all. Other writers might wish that they had another author’s prose skill, characterisation or even jacket photo (roguish charm/wide-eyed manic pixieness are always useful, it seems). But it’s probably very rare for a writer to have all the skills that they need to the right degree to both write and sell well: in fact, such skills may even contradict each other.

But more than that is the general sense of annoyance that comes from dealing with an industry that makes little sense. I stopped caring about the silly money thrown at bad books like 50 Shades of Grey years ago: those are advertising phenomena more than real novels. There is, however, a sense of being in competition with the system itself in getting published - frustrating not so much in trying to overtake other writers, but that the race itself is uphill all the way.

 

[Charles Parkes]

When I worked in the aerospace sector a few years ago our Chairman was a chap called Sir John O'Reilly, who was the Vice Chancellor of Cranfield University. He always spoke to us of creating a culture of "co-ompetition," a rather ham-fisted portmanteau of "cooperation" and "competition" that nonetheless conveyed a noble sentiment.

Rather liked this.

It seems especially in tune with niche genres and mediums, like interactive fiction. There does seem to be a lot of innovation and challenge in forums for these, but that's superseded by the community, the support and the sharing of advice and perspectives. I'd have to point to the massive help with free editing (in my choicescript world 'beta-testing') that probably tips the community side heavier than the competition : )