Thursday, October 30, 2008

You are Not the Best Writer on the Planet

It may not sound like the most encouraging piece of advice, but sometimes, you need to get a really nasty reality check before you move forward.

When you know that you are not the best writer on the planet, you need to take steps to improve your craft. Not only that, you need to constantly learn more. You need to go to workshops, mingle with other writers, and edit your work. You need to turn your writing into an art and a profession, not into a job that you can do haphazardly. Instead of moping in despair about not being a great writer, you need to find ways to make yourself better.

Compete with your own standards, and do your best to avoid comparing yourself with other writers. Whenever you start comparing yourself to other writers, you can mislead yourself into believing that you are improving – when in fact, you are just being a better someone else.

Besides, how can you compare your craft to someone else who is writing from another perspective, from other experiences, and with another background culture? The best that you can do is to compare grammar. As for styles, they will differ from writer to writer, so there isn’t a better one or a worse one. There are just different styles, and different ways to say the many different things that make up our lives.

So what are you as a writer? You are you – be the best you, and be a better you every single day. And, when you find that you are disappointing yourself, don’t stay down in the dumps. Find ways to improve your craft and make your work much better than it ever will be.

No comments: