Confession: I was reading a book on the bus to school this morning and the entire time I had to put a stop to one of two narratives in my head: "Is my writing as good as this?" and "I'm pretty sure I'm better than this."
Ugh. Fuck. Gross.
It's a delightful book. Oops, sorry, it's called Blaine for the Win by Robbie Couch. A queer book with lovely character and style about a kid who gets dumped by his boyfriend for not being serious enough. Yeah, I know, it sounds a little like a gay Legally Blonde, but who cares. Robbie Couch has a fun voice and colorful in his writing and I'm enjoying it. It's light, it's heartfelt, it's relaxing. I needed it after the heaviness of Young Mungo.
But more importantly, back to me (you love it). You know that narrative scrolling at the bottom of my mental TV I've mentioned before? The one playing all the little things my brain is firing off in reaction to a multitude of stimuli both present and past? Like, way distant past? Yeah, that's where my comparison game was trying to gain traction this morning as my eyeballs were simply trying to soak in the story offered to me in the book between lurches of the bus attempting to weave its way through standstill traffic. I think the jerking and gunning of the bus actually served to snap me out of the good-enough narrative a few times.
I go to this comparative place a lot and not just in writing. What I look like, my teaching and directing abilities, my parenting, my relationship with the boyfriend, my spirituality, my parents. All of it. It's a constant need to measure myself up against someone else to see how I'm stacking up, whether I'm better or worse than others. And admittedly, it feels fucking awesome when I can check the better box, and it's equally crushing when I check the worse box. And who's doing the measuring? Just me. It's my measuring tape. God, you know what I realized sitting here right now? Even Mary fucking Poppins did it to Jane and Michael! What a bitch. I knew there was something off about her. "Practically perfect" my ass.
Several years ago I read an idea in The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (yeah, I know, I've mentioned it once or twice or a billion times . . . maybe you should read it?) which helped me out quite a bit in this arena. He offered the theory of two ways to look at this, as a hierarchy or a territory. In the hierarchy, I'm constantly looking up and down the ladder, trying to surmise where I stand on it, how I move up it and climb past the people above me and how I maintain my position above those I've passed. He suggests one of the problems with this is it takes focus off what it is I'm working on and places it on the works of the people around me, whether it's their writing, their workouts, or their parenting. Rarely does this sort of focus actually improve anything I'm doing. Generally, it ends with me feeling insufficient, and more perilously, quitting.
Pressfield's idea of the territory is far healthier, I think. In the territory, there's space. Loads of it. Never ending. This isn't a territory where you stake your claim and everyone else has to keep their fucking distance, it's more like a gigantic-ass national park where we can all set up camp and chill. The thing I love about this idea, and what's been very helpful for me, is in the territory I get to learn from you and vice versa. Your work isn't threatening to me, it's an opportunity to glean ideas and better my own craft. It's part of the reason why I've started reading so much more. I'm finding myself tearing through young adult fantasy and LGBTQ+ books, soaking up the stories, making deposits in my imagination bank, and learning from people who are in the territory within which I've chosen to set up camp. And I'm finding with this mindset, I'm learning a shit ton: pacing of YA books, content for YA books, voice and story structure. Tons of good shit.
Switching from hierarchy to territory is a constant game of vigilance for me in all of the afore mentioned areas, but the more I shift the focus, the easier and quicker it becomes and I spend less time in my self-judginess.
With what areas do you struggle in the hierarchy or do you have a way of dealing with it you'd like to share? Tell me about it in the comments below!
Later.
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