10

Jun

Writing Tips: Grass isn’t Greener on the Other Side

You definitely have a favorite writer that you admire and look up to. Perhaps it is a great novelist, an elegant blog writer, or an intrepid and adventurous journalist. You read their work with awe. You love the author’s ability to drag you into an imaginary world of immensely creative fiction. Is it the blog writer who engages you with their very first sentence and keeps you reading, perhaps with humor or incisive writing that plays with your emotions?

And then there is you. Struggling to earn a penny and experiencing writers block for the umpteenth time this week. You wish you could write with the apparent ease of your favorite writer and question your very existence on this earth for your inability to do so. The grass, as they say, is always greener on the other side of the fence.

You cannot be the person you compare yourself to. It’s impossible. You are you and no amount of constructive facial surgery and brain correction is going to make you any more of that person. You will always be you. Maybe then it is time to stop comparing yourself to them. For one, you do not know how many drafts your inspiring writer went through to get to that one piece of literary perfection. For all you know they may have suffered untold hours of writers block before they were finally inspired to create something magnificent.

Chances are that they did not become brilliant overnight. Consider the time they probably spent honing their writing craft. They have become brilliant by a lot of hard work and dedication to what they do.

Stop complaining that you can never reach their level of creative genius and work on your own writing.  Don’t try and emulate their writing. Find your own creative voice and do the hard work necessary to make a name for yourself.

Comparing yourself to others is a thankless task. It provokes feelings of envy, jealousy, anger and contempt for you. You were never made to be anybody else other than who you are. Start embracing yourself.

What is it you do well? Write about what you know. Find out what you are passionate about and write about it. Let your fingers flow and ignore the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors for now. You can go back to them later as you edit and re-edit.

Forgive the cliche but put your heart into what you are writing. Care for your words and evolve into a writer with his or her own style of thinking and writing. Be yourself. Improve in the areas you need to but don’t pretend to be anybody else. It takes hard work as well as natural talent to be brilliant so go for it. Who knows, you may inspire somebody to try and be like you. And then you can point them to this blog post and smile knowingly. It’s good to be you so live your life and not somebody else’s.