You know what I haven't done in a while? Posted my thoughts. · 12:53am Apr 15th, 2019
There's a few stories that crops up every so often that have a couple similarities to mine and it sends me into this self-loathing spiral.
I keep trying to find reasons on why our stories are the same, with things like "Well in my defense, it's my first serious writing." but then I remember "Why the hell does it matter if I'm better or not?"
I keep going into this spiral of trying to find ways of justifying why our stories aren't even. At the end of the day though, they could just be downright better than me at writing and that's totally okay! But why the hell does it still bother me? I never claimed to be the best writer ever. I keep going through reasons that revolve around the idea of "Well my story didn't do as well because yada yada and in my defense-" but I know that's not the point. Why do I have this internal obsession with wanting my story to be on par with theirs?
I mean their initial writing amount was just insane, like 8k words every few days. I don't think I've ever written that much in that amount of time before my fingers get fatigued, assuming i even had something to write 8k words on.
I mean I don't really know how they did it like if it was mostly prewritten but just released in large chunks at a time. That doesn't matter though. I keep trying to find reasons on why they got popular and I didn't in a way that makes me feel less inferior, but again why does that even matter? I know i'm not the best, but it's like I have this subconscious obsession or w/e with trying to BE the best? I don't know.
My friend Zana had this to say: "It's fairly likely that content you enjoy the most will be at a higher skill level than you (and I don't know how much this applies since you don't read that story but I run into this with comics I read sometimes). so you end up just being like "why am I not as good as this, it's unacceptable because this is what I enjoy so if it's better than my work therefor my work must suck and no one will enjoy it" except that's totally untrue because you are always someone else's art goals (or writing goals in your case) so I try to just look at other people's work like that as a source of inspiration, like noting techniques they use that I should try, but like never ever compare myself because down that route lies madness lol" -Zana
And she totally hit the nail on the head. It's like no matter how many damn times I have this sit down with myself, even if I bring myself out of it, I go through it all again every time I see their story.
Special, eh? I guess it comes with being a writer. All in all though you are quite accomplished as far as story writing goes.
King of he Dead was one of the first mlp fanfics I've ever read, or more like one of the first 'good' ones. Really kicked me into the swing of things.
Be proud ah yahself. You ain't the best, but ya still pretty damn good.