Comparison Can Kill Your Motivation to Write

 

"Why should I even bother to write anything? I'm not Stephen King!"

 

This is one thing holding back a lot of aspiring writers, as well as aspiring novelists. They read all the bestselling authors, compare their own work to that author’s brilliant masterpiece, and suddenly feel so disheartened and discouraged that they give up on their dream of getting published.

 

Some writers have felt that there’s no way they could achieve any success as a writer, because look at the kind of bestselling writers they have to compete with. Those other writers out there are better writers who make a lot of money. How is their writing supposed to stand up against them?

 

The truth is, your writing is not supposed to stand up against them. All it has to do is exist. If there’s an editor or literary agent out there who has deemed your work worthy of publication, then that is all that matters.

 

If you start comparing your writing ability or your own unpublished work with other writers and their work, then you’ll be heading downhill. It will hurt your confidence and convince you to give up on being a writer.

 

This is a problem I quarreled with when I started freelancing. I saw ALL of those amazing articles that other writers had written and worried that there was no way my own writing could compare. I thought that kind of writing was better than mine and, because of this, my writing would never be accepted for publication.

 

There were some magazines and newsletters, however, that ended up proving me wrong!

 

The next time you feel that niggling to compare your writing to all the other writing that is out there, think about this: What you are reading is NOT the writer’s first draft. In fact, it could be their fourth or tenth draft! What you’re reading is the final result of a whole heck of a lot of work the author AND the editor put into that piece in order to make it shine.

 

This is what every single writer has to go through no matter their trade. The final piece everybody is reading is the result of a lot of work and not some gifted writer’s effortless attempt to scribble a bunch of brilliant lines and send them off to markets that will be captivated by their amazing talent.

 

That sort of changes the perspective, doesn’t it?

 

So, you see, it’s a waste of time to compare your writing to everybody else’s writing. Plus, you could be spending that time more productively on honing your craft. The only way to be a good writer is to consistently write, so the more you write, the better you will get at it.

 

All you need is to just write your way and not the same way everybody else is writing. Write with your own voice, your ideas and your own style. No one can write like Stephen King because they are not Stephen King. Stephen King is Stephen King. Just write the way that you write. Write with your own voice. Because, ultimately, that is what will make you stand out: Your own kind of writing.