Episode 07: Comparison is the Theft of Joy
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Welcome to the Shy Girls Finish Last podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Lathen, a certified shy Black girl. I hope you’ve had a restful day. Let’s get into it!
Hey ya'll, thank you for joining me. Today, I want to talk about comparison and competition. That pervasive running thought that the grass is always greener on the other side. We all have this thought. It's okay to think it. But today is when we stop letting it control our lives. This is Common Myths and Where to Find Them, Part 1: Comparison is the Theft of Joy.
In the last episode, I talked about finding the fun and the joy in writing. Eventually, I'll circle to how we get there, but remember, I take the long way around.
We are a social bunch, aren't we? We love to talk and gossip and deep down, it feels really good to be a bit of a hater right?
One of my favorite bands is Infinity Song and I adore their Hater's Anthem track. I bump it nearly everyday because it does feel good to be a hater. People think we have to be nice twenty-four seven and that's killing our social circles. We have to be on our best behavior all of the time, despite plenty of people getting away with crappy attitudes. We have to edit ourselves because at any moment, someone can record us and put it on the internet for views.
All that makes us do is bottle up our real emotions, suppress our darker thoughts, and walk around a little more bitter. It's okay to have the thought but never okay to act on it or be cruel. That's what a journal is for or a trusted friend group. It's healthy to complain. Just don't be a jerk about it. So how do we do that?
What's most cool about being a writer is that all the jokes are true. If we don't like someone, we just put them in a book as a villain. The character of Valerie in my book is a combination of various mean girls in my life. Not terrible, not horrible, but self-centered in a way that doesn't allow room for a great friendship. Because why not? Who's going to stop me? Obviously, don't make your villains a direct copy, but you get me.
That's a healthy alternative to being a jerk. We have to let those negative emotions, opinions, and thoughts out some kind of way so that poison doesn't rot us from the inside out. That's why creative self-expression is so important. One of those negative thoughts is comparison. Writing is both solitary and social. You are the only one who can write your story. You are the only one who thinks about it or daydreams about it. You are the only one who sits in front of that computer and put the work in.
But, we do have to rely on the social aspect of it. We are sharing this piece with a potential audience one day. People who will love it and those who will hate it. We can't control that. We can only control what we like. We can only control the stories we want to read. And share it for others to enjoy it with us.
Writers who focus on themselves and their own work will have a much more thrilling experience than an aspiring writer worried about someone else. Sometimes, the grass looks greener on the other side because someone waters their lawn more often.
While Writer A is daydreaming about their story, Writer B is jotting down notes from those daydreams. While Writer A is talking about the vibes with a friend, Writer B is brainstorming with their writer group. Writer A is on Pintrest making a moodboard for their story, while Writer B is finished with the first three chapters. Writer A starts and stares at a word document, while Writer B is finished with the first draft of their novel.
The entire time, Writer A is prioritizing not writing. Writer B is focused on writing. One ends up with a book. The other is still trying to figure out how to start.
Just start. There's no magic time, there's no magic button, there's no series of words or chants to give the perfect conditions. You have to change your mindset and decide to start. To let yourself go there.
Writing is a business and every so often, we get news of a random author who got a six figure book deal. They are in talks to get the movie adapted. There's fan casting posts and fans who are excited. And that hurts a little bit, right? Like dang, I sure wish that was me. It leads to procrastination and self-doubt. To let intimidation and fear hold you back from trying. Yeah, failure sucks. But how else are we supposed to learn?
In my writing community, I was a bit of a mother hen to new writers. I loved being on that journey and witnessing someone discover writing and the love for it. But I would get the inevitable question. How do I write like you?
I will toot my own horn and praise my writing and I can't wait to share my work with you. I worked really hard on my writing and that question always flattered me. But it also broke my little heart. If you learn nothing else from me, then know that you will never write like someone else. You will never, ever write like your favorite authors.
You can learn from them definitely. You can study their style, of course. But at the end of the day, only you can write like you. And that's the beautiful thing about writing. It's not supposed to be a one size fits all. It's not supposed to be uniform or sound the same. We read to learn. We read to see things from a different perspective. No two people have the same lives. We read to experience that nuance. The in-between. To peek into someone else's life.
So when you have an author you admire, it's a great thing but it is not the end all and be all. As writers, you have to have a growth mindset. You can only get better. You can only challenge yourself. You can only go up from here. But only if you take comparison and competition out of it.
If someone's skill seems better than yours, it's because they're further along in their journey than you are. They put in the work. What can you learn from them? What are they teaching you?
They're teaching you that you have to want to write. They're teaching you that you have more studying to do. What do you admire most in their writing? Is it their dialogue? Do you need to work on your own? Is it the tension in the story? How do you build more tension?
One of my favorite authors was Sherrilyn Kenyon. She wrote a series of Dark-Hunter novels, about immortal warriors brought back from a bloody death by the Greek goddess Artemis and allowed their perfect revenge on those who betrayed or killed them. In exchange, they promised to live out their immortal lives protecting humanity from a vampiric-like race condemned by her brother Apollo.
I ate those suckers up. I think I stopped at around…book thirty? Somewhere between Ash's and Styxx's books. The subject matter grew too dark for me and somewhere between that, the stories got repetitive. But before then, I was locked into those characters. They felt real in a way that still lives with me today.
They were all basically jerks and ne'er-do-wells, the outcasts, the ones who lived in Ancient Greece and had regular talks with the gods for fits and giggles. The found family trope was strong with these books. And the characters were full of snark. I love me a snarky character. I didn't know it at the time, but it was teaching me that I love when misfits find each other and I love banter.
I love the back and forth rhythm of it. I love how much nuance I could convey in dialogue through banter. Would I have had that same reaction if I saw Sherrilyn as competition? If I read her books and the green-eyed monster reared it's ugly head and I assumed I was better for it?
Absolutely not. Learning from those books, my banter is stronger. My dialogue is stronger. And trust me when I say, that as I work on the banter for my vampire novel, I am only falling deeper and deeper in love with Josette and Laurent. They give me all the warm and fuzzies because I live for a good banter scene. And just one book series taught me that.
I'll give you another example. Another one of my favorite authors is Marie Lu. She wrote the Legend series, a dystopian young adult romance adventure about two fifteen year olds on the opposite side of the law. Day is a rebel, fighting for the criminalized poor of the Republic while June is a military prodigy sent undercover to find Day and bring him in to be arrested. Marie Lu writes many stories in wildly different worlds. One is based in an alternate Italian setting about people with superpowers. Another is about a pop star used as a spy for an intelligence agency his late brother was apart of.
And what that taught me was that I wasn't limited to just one genre. Just one story. Just because I want to write a contemporary story in With These Words, doesn't mean I can't also write a vampire novel. And of course, that's common knowledge. It's not world-changing news.
But I was attracted to that freedom. Black people are often pigeon-holed into roles, like those stereotypes I outlined in Episode 2. Subconsciously, I believed that I'd only be able to do one thing. One way of writing. But it's not true! I explored many different worlds and genres in my writing community and it only made my writing stronger. Because I'm interested in so many topics, I get to explore with no limitations. As long as I was having fun, there was no harm in it.
You can also learn from books that you ended up not liking. A friend had recommended the Anita Blake vampire series by Laurell K. Hamilton, that follows a powerful necromancer named Anita that also hunted vampires on the side. Vampires were granted equal rights and walked among the living openly but it also gave way to easier targets. The series begins with a serial killer murdering vampires and one of the most powerful vampires in town wants Anita to find the killer.
The series didn't flinch away from telling a death scene in all its bloody glory or taking on heavy subject matter like endangering children, but it wasn't gratuitous. It towed the line in some books, but I forged on because I really loved Anita's character. She didn't take anyone's nonsense, she stood up to vampires, werewolves, and witches and she got banged up, but she always got back up.
She was also one of the first characters I've read where she had hangups about sex similar to my own. I grew up religious so you can imagine the rest. And I had to challenge those beliefs, but on my terms. Anita was similar in that way. It had the oblivious beauty thing going on; attracting hot men left and right and hey, she's no one special. But, it was treated honestly. Openly. They talked. And though I had to push through some scenes, the characterization really hooked me.
By the time I got to the tenth book, Narcissus in Chains, it seemed like Anita did a complete one-eighty. There were things she did in that book or had done to her, that ended up completely reversing her attitude towards sex and relationships. Ohhh, I was hot. I felt duped. Played like a fiddle. I had to read the reviews and I wasn't crazy, everyone had been feeling the same way.
And I learned from that author to keep my characters true to themselves. As long as it remained something they could do, then I was free to let my characters push the limit. It also taught me to speed up character arcs and find better transitions from a non-believer to a believer. No shade to the author, but I refuse to continue with that series. Nothing justifies a poor plot twist and expect me to just accept it. I'm a why person, I need a reason.
I wouldn't have learned that lesson if I saw Laurell K. Hamilton as competition. If I followed whatever silly rule I imposed on myself or what I thought society wanted from me, then I was only hurting my own writing. Writing does not have a cement ceiling. The limit does not exist.
Sherrilyn, Marie, or Laurell are not competition. They're teachers. They focused on what brought them the most joy. I'm not supposed to write like them. The ideas that they had are perfect for them. Perfect to read as a reader interested in the genre. But that's not what gets me fired up as a writer. Sure, I love dystopian novels. But I don't really see myself writing one right now. Maybe in the future, but who knows. And sure, I love Greek-mythology as much as the next person, and wrote a young adult novel about it, but that's not where my interests are right now.
So why would I waste my breath comparing and competing with my fellow writer? They're my colleagues, my teachers. They're in the trenches with me trying to take this abstract idea in our minds and make it tangible.
I don't know about you, but I'm a big believer in variety is the spice of life. There will be tropes and ideas that will be similar, there will be moments where you think, "oh no, I had that same idea, I have to start all over now." And I'm here to tell you that's just not true!
Unless you're actively trying to copy someone, you will never write like someone else. They will never write like you. They don't have the same experience, interests, or belliefs as you. That's what gives us so many stories to choose from. And if I find a trope I like, best believe I'm gobbling up all of the stories that are just like it. Because while we may follow similar thought paths, we will never end up at the same destination.
Friends to lovers is one of my top tier favorite tropes. Don't get me wrong, a good enemies to lovers will get me going too. But more often than not, they're just bullies or rivals to lovers. Friends to lovers hits just right. The innocence of it. The obliviousness. The fact that one starts getting irrationally jealous when the other is tired of waiting and there's that dawning horror that they're in love with their best friend. And I eat it for breakfast. Give me fifty more right now. Inject it straight to the bloodstream at this point.
The nuance comes from each different writer bringing their spin to it. I could give you the same exact prompt and fifty of you will take it to wildly different places. And each one would hit if you authentically explored what makes you most happy to write. One could write about a small town friends to lovers, where they were childhood best friends and one left and came back after a bad divorce and it forces the other to recognize their feelings.
One could write about college friends to lovers who went their separate ways and end up in proximity to each other for a mutual friends' wedding. They rekindle the feelings and openly talk about making it a thing.
Two wildly different stories with the same trope and I'd eat both of them up. You know why? Because I love to read my favorite trope. Give me fifty more straight to the vein, please and thank you!
There's no comparison there. There's no competition there. One writer likes the idea of a sweet, small town romance. The other likes the idea of an edgier destination romance type of environment. Both are valid. Both have a fan base.
Another message I want to impart is that you physically, statistically, and realistically cannot have all of the readers in the world. No one is taking readers away from you. No one writes so much better than you that they get all the attention and there's none left over for you. I read from both Sherrilyn and Marie because that's what I like. There's Sherrilyn fans who have never heard of Marie. There's Marie fans who will never pick up a Sherrilyn book. And there's the rare breed who will read both. Emphasis on rare.
There will always be a reader for you in this world of eight billion people. But you can't have all eight billion readers. You can only focus on one: you. That is the only reader you need to appease right now. The only one who matters. If you focus on others, if you worry about competition and comparisons, you are only strangling your growth. Don't do that to yourself.
You will still have those thoughts. You will still have that urge to look at a fellow writer and think they're competing. It's okay, everyone's human. But you can't let it control your life. You have a story to tell that only you can tell in the way you tell it. So start learning from writers, not keeping them at an arm's distance.
I'll leave you with one last example. Do you remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare? Do they still tell that story to kids these days?
It was a fable about how a haughty Hare teased Tortoise about being slow and never getting anywhere. The Tortoise challenges the Hare to a race to prove he does. So the race began and the Hare took off, so far ahead it was laughable. It was so laughable, he stopped midway through and took a little nap, just until Tortoise could catch up. He slept so long that Tortoise long passed him and was very near to the finish line when the Hare woke up. He ran and ran but could not catch up in time for Tortoise to cross the finish line first.
Slow and steady, wins the race.
Before we wrap up, I invite you to join me. In your journal, write down every hater-ish thought you had about someone you admired. Or someone you hated. And give yourself permission to feel it. Write about what your current priorities are and be honest. Then figure out where writing fits into that. Write about what makes you nervous to start or nervous to keep going despite the fear. I'll post my answer on my Instagram.
See you next time for Common Myths and Where to Find Them, Part 2: Kiss Cringe On the Mouth With Tongue. It's time to accept that the call is coming from inside the house.