eyes on the prize

[truepenny]

matociquala and I made a post last night, and then she went and made a post this morning, and the two whomped into each other in my head and became one thing.

SFF authors are not in competition with each other. This is hard for us to get our heads around, because we live in a society that privileges competition (call it Darwin's Hangover) and because to be a successful writer, you have to be driven. Whatever it is that motivates you (and that can be anything: money, art, fame, the stories pounding on the inside of your skull screaming to be let out ...), it's a nasty-tempered monkey in cowboy boots. And the boots have wicked spurs.

And some of us, having internalized our society's values, are vicious little competitive minks. (I would, of course, be speaking of myself.) And we need something to channel that competitive urge into--not out of any fundamental truth of the world, but just because that's what we're used to. We fall into a new situation, and we look around for someone to compete with.

And if you're an SFF writer, the obvious co-competitors are the other authors. One thing awards do (and I'm not saying that this is what they're intended to do or that their value as awards has any correlation, positive or negative, with this phenomenon) is they concretize and codify that vague twitchy free-floating competitiveness. Because, yes, I was in competition for the Campbell this year, and I had co-competitors: John Scalzi, Chris Roberson, Brandon Sanderson, K. J. Bishop, Steph Swainston.

And John beat the pack. (Frankly, I don't think any of us would have looked nearly as magnificent in the tiara as he did, so it's just as well.)

But.

This does not mean that John and I are in competition with each other. That's a nonsensical notion. Because publishing, as Bear says, is not a zero-sum game.

We aren't in competition with each other.

We are, each of us, in competition with ourselves. Or, rather--since that starts trending toward the territory of the Stanley Ellin story where they guy goes crazy playing chess with himself--we must necessarily challenge ourselves.

Challenge is a better word.

This is the "effortful study" idea Bear and I are talking about in that glass_cats post. Your reach has to exceed your grasp. You have to take on things that are too big for you. If you're not scared, you're not doing it right.

And, let me tell you, that's hard. It's hard to do once, and it's even harder to do twice. And it's hard to keep doing, day in and day out. It's so much easier to externalize the challenge, make it competition, to look at other writers as if they're the ones keeping you back, keeping you down, keeping you (in some mystical fashion that won't bear close examination) from writing as well as you want to.

When the simple, ugly truth of the matter is, it's all about you.

And until you can admit that, you are dooming yourself to bitterness and anxiety. Because the thing about externalizing that competition is that by doing so, you make yourself dependent on external validation as well. And that external validation is never going to come. Because even if you do win an award or make the NYTimes Best-seller List or whatever it is you think will prove you've "won," it won't be enough.

No.

Trust me.

It won't.

Because there'll always be the guy who wins two awards, or the gal whose book stays up a week longer than yours. Or something. It's a trick of perspective. The finish line is always ten yards further off.

Now, this is true of effortful study, as well. But the critical difference is that effortful study can be understood as a process, rather than a situation out of which you emerge a "winner" or a "loser." Effortful study is on-going, and if you wipe out spectacularly, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, do the post-mortem analysis, and get on with trying it again. It's a conceptual framework that lets you channel your energy--your drive (remember the monkey with the spurs?)--in ways that are constructive rather than destructive.

Challenge, rather than competition.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think we're in competition with ourselves. But we're also in competition with nothing, with not-doing, with not-appreciating, with not-art. "Read this book" and "read this short story" are in competition with "eh, who cares?".

(Inigo. I hope we win.)

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I agree with this very much.

After all, when I go into a bookstore, some of the time it's "I could buy this one or this one or this one, but I don't have enough money to buy them all"--but more often, it's "Somebody, anybody, give me just one book that I can love."

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

The other competition I see people falling into is genre competition. My genre is cooler than yours! Sf readers are smarter than mainstream readers! Readers of literary fiction have more exquisite sensibilities than readers of mystery or sf! And so on and so on and so on. And really, the thing I love best about literature is that you don't have to choose. I can love my deeply internal plotless character studies and my fast-paced thrillers at the same time. I don't have to pick just one book. I don't even have to pick just one book a day.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

This is very true.

[clarentine]

If you're not scared, you're not doing it right.

Ah. So I should stop being terrified of this 18th C. pirate tale that seems to have developed a life of its own and just keep doing the research, and the first draft, until it's done and I've gained a new competency.

And then I have to repeat the exercise.

You're right, this is scary.

fear

[barriequark.livejournal.com]

Yesh, but the best work that I have ever done has been the things that utterly terrify me. I find that the fear is telling me that I am stretching.

Remember the gleeful terror when the training wheels came off? You knew that you could and probably would fall on your butt trying to master this. Still, you did it, didn't you? You wanted to see how far you could ride that bike, how fast you could make it go, you wanted to feel the wind whipping by you. Even though you knew you could tumble off and break something, you did it anyway.

That's the feeling to reach for. Find that moment when the characters take over and are yanking you along after at top speed. Find that place where you can feel the ship's deck under your feet and hear the wind whipping the sails and you know the storm is coming. Find that place and just go, because when you get there, despite how scary it can be, there is no better feeling on earth.

That is the madness and addiction of being a writer.

Re: fear

[clarentine]

I bet you like roller coasters, too. *g*

Re: fear

[barriequark.livejournal.com]

Actually, they scare the crap out of me. LOL

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

You smart.

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Uhuh. Amen. Yep. Zactly so.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Don't know why, lj is giving me two sentances and cutting off.
So I'll keep it short: Word.

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

Beautifully articulated. Thank you.