In an excerpt from her book Maybe This Will Help: How to Feel Better When Things Stay the Same, Michelle Rial reminds us that there will always be writers who are better than we are…as well as writers who are worse.
“We want to compare ourselves to others because we want to know where we stand. But is that comparison useful?” Rial asks. “You will want to be the best, but you probably aren’t. You will want to be first, but it’s not likely. Even if you thought you were first or best, you will carry the dread that someone else has already done this before (they have), or someone is doing it in tandem (they are), or someone has done it better (they did).”
Rial’s response: So what if you’re the worst (you’re probably not)? And why does it matter? “If you’re [creating] for the attention, for the accolades, for the likes, then you’re already unhappy,” she says. “Everything happens on your own time line, and all the time you spend torturing yourself over the success of other people is a distraction from the little time you have left in this life to do the thing you love doing.”
