"It's Like a Movie"

Comparison.

This is a topic that's been on my heart a lot lately.

As a society, we're constantly comparing ourselves to others in the way we dress, eat, weigh, even take social media pictures (yeah, I'm especially guilty with this one).

But right now, I'm talking about comparing ourselves to others as authors.

Have you ever . . .

-Read someone else's book and thought wow, why can't my writing style be more like theirs?

-Wondered what it would be like if you could be as popular as that one author?

-Thought that if you just tried a little harder, your prose would be identical to your favorite author's?

-Actually tried to copy another author's writing style?

-Looked at a fellow author with envy because they're cranking out three 80k-word novels per year? (yeah, definitely guilty of this one)

I could go on and on and on. Why? Because in this day and age, we're taught to act like everyone else to 'fit in.' To dress like everyone else, to talk like everyone else, to be like everyone else. For some reason, it's unacceptable to be uniquely you.

Because if you're you, then you must be weird.

Y'all, we as authors have such trouble with comparison. I'm speaking from my personal experience, but I'm pretty sure that I can accurately say with confidence that this is something that we all struggle with at some point.

She wrote a longer novel.

He has a more popular novel than yours.

She is everyone's favorite.

He is just . . . better.

No. Stop it. You hear me? Stop. It. Now. Those kinds of thoughts are toxic.

A friend (sorry, girlie, I'm gonna use you as an example xD) and I were once messing around with a story, and I was way out of my element, trying to write about something that I knew next to nothing about. I couldn't do it. I couldn't feel it. I couldn't put it into words because, frankly, I had no idea what I was doing.

"It's like a movie," my friend said. "Just imagine that this is a TV show and you're just describing what happens." I gave her the keyboard, and she took off with the story. It was great . . . except that I felt like a horrible writer because she could do something that I couldn't.

Unless I'm writing it, I can't see it in my mind.

She outlines everything. She plots out every scene, every chapter, and the expected word count for each.

Me? I'm a pantser. Except for one story (that I still haven't finished, surprise, surprise), all of the stories that I've written had no ending in my mind until I'd written it. In most of my stories, I can't even tell you what the next scene is. Because I can't see it in my mind. I can't visualize the story in my mind like a movie; in reality, the one scene I'm working on replays itself over and over and over in my mind until I manage to figure out what comes next.

For me, writing is a struggle for words. A struggle to make my sentences sound coherent. A struggle to add description.

But for my friend? She can crank out analogies right and left.

See what I did there? I just compared myself to one of my close writer friends. When she told me, "just think of it as a movie," she wasn't trying to make me feel bad; she was trying to help. But I compared myself to her because I didn't feel adequate.

Y'all. God made us each with our own writing styles, our own methods, and our own paces. The stories your friends write aren't going to be like yours; and yours aren't going to be like theirs. That's okay. When God gives you a story to write, you write it. Because He didn't give it to your best friend or your favorite author to write; He gave it to you.

And you are the only one who can write it.

Not your best friend.

Not your favorite author.

You.

I watch other people crank out novel after novel every year, crush NaNo, get all the congratulations . . . and I get discouraged. Because I must not be a good enough writer.

But in all honesty, all I'm doing is convincing myself of something that really isn't true. 

Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Because only you can write the story that God gave you.