Ep 108: When Writers Compare - The Good, Bad, and Ugly

As we seek out mentor texts to imitate or emulate, we encourage the mindset of comparison. When I suggested you search out writing you admire, you’re going to be drawn to a writer you look up to, whose work dazzles when you compare it with your own. Naturally, this writer naturally seems superior to you in some way—otherwise, why would you select this author to learn from? It’s appropriate to admire skilled authors, which is why Ben Franklin's method and straightforward copywork help us learn from the techniques employed by more experienced writers. But as soon as we starting thinking in terms of better or worse, superior or inferior, more or less advanced, more or less prolific, more or less famous…we’re using the language of comparison to label who's better or worse than us at something. And that’s when we teeter on the edge of unhealthy comparison. Comparison: The Good Before we get to the not-so-good, let’s start with the good. The good news is that there are benefits to comparison. Really! Aspirational Comparison When we read people we admire, we see what’s possible—we aspire to write as well as this author or that blogger, this poet or that novelist. One day, we think, maybe I could write something as sharp and clear and scintillating as that. And thanks to aspirational comparison, we might set a word count and get to work in hopes of improving and moving toward that level of excellence. That’s a good thing. Discover Ideas and Solutions Comparison leads to another good thing: When we compare ourselves to other writers, we look to their text to figure out how they handle the very things we struggle with. We get ideas and solutions from the mentor text we choose—maybe they handle flashbacks with ease, for example, and know just went to end a chapter or stanza; they integrate ten-dollar words without sounding pretentious and make humor look easy. So we compare their strengths with ours, spot their techniques, and decide if we can apply those to our own efforts and improve so that our own transitions seem more natural and our own chapters make the reader turn the page. By comparing their approach with ours, we see how to improve as a writer. Critical Analysis Helps Writers Improve Comparison really isn't a problem when we see ourselves as students seeking to improve, as professionals taking our work to the next level. MFA students read and analyze mentor texts all the time as part of their study. They discuss the strengths and learn how to apply similar approaches to their own work. We don’t have to be in an MFA program to compare one short story or poem to another—or to our own—in hopes of improving. Critical analysis is essential to growing as a writer and represents comparison at its best as we learn from excellent texts. Comparison: The Bad When you started thinking through writers you admire—writers you’d like to emulate—did a range of thoughts and feelings squirm inside? Did you realize you don’t just admire those writers—you actually felt something negative as a result of reading and reviewing their work? Maybe you started to compare their work with yours and felt inferior, like you’d never be able to write as capably as they do. You feel inadequate. You begin to doubt yourself and wonder why you even bother writing when others do it so much better than you ever will. This is comparison gone bad. When Comparison Diminishes Us Comparison that leads to self-doubt and an inferiority complex can leave us frozen, unable to put another word down on paper. With social media, we compare followers and likes and shares and feel very small and insignificant compared to that writer with a major following or that author with a bestseller. When we feel we don’t measure up to the talent that’s out th...