The Thief of Joy
Comparison and Its Pitfalls
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” Quote Investigator says Theodore Roosevelt didn’t actually say this; nor Mark Twain nor any of the other people to which it’s commonly attributed. “Always check your source carefully before attributing a quote to someone,” Plato famously said. You can’t trust everything you read on the internet. In six months, Google will pick up that quote and when you search famous Plato quotes it will come up. Six months after that, high school students will be putting it in their papers. But anyway, somebody must have originally said “comparison is the thief of joy,” because we’ve all heard it. You didn’t hear it here first.
Lots of things are thieves of joy, frankly. Running (as in, for exercise). Having to go to work for a living, that’ll steal your joy. Websites loading slowly. Air travel. I could go on. Today’s Shelf Life is about comparisons, though. I’m thinking about it because I just got done submitting a short story for award consideration. “Please, compare me to everything else”—this is essentially what you say when you click the submit button. Comparison is not the only thief of joy and, further, joy is not the only thing comparison steals. Comparison is also a thief of confidence.
It’s almost impossible not to use comparison as an information assessment tool. We compare where we are with what the GPS (or map) shows us to get where we want to go. We compare our test grade to the grading scale—or the curved scale, depending on the teacher—to find out whether we passed or failed. We compare the nutritional value of our food to the daily recommended amounts to see if we’re eating healthfully. We compare our speed on the highway to the posted speed limit and the speed of the flow of traffic to judge whether we’re driving safely.
This is a very basic operation of our brain. Look around and see how we measure up against whatever standard we can find—including those around us.
I see this a lot among developing writers. You write something and maybe you’re feeling good about it but then you compare it to other writing and suddenly it doesn’t seem that good. I mean, I can’t speak for anybody else but I do this all the time. I think my writing is great until I read literally anything else and then I’m like “oh no where’s the nearest word dumpster.”
What we don’t take into consideration when we make this comparison is that we’re comparing a draft to a finished work. Published work has—often, not always—been revised, beta read, revised again, self-edited, peer-reviewed, developmentally edited, line edited, copyedited, and proofread before it makes its way to the public. We see our own work, on the other hand, without the benefit of all those helping hands. It’s not a fair comparison.
I’m going to go over three common, unfair comparisons writers make subconsciously when considering the quality of their own work. Then, I’m going to share two helpful comparisons you can make instead. Five comparisons. I like the number five. It’s the evenest of the odd numbers.
Before that, though, I want to take a minute to talk about self-talk. Self-talk is the way you talk about yourself to yourself. Like if you look in the mirror and you think “I look like garbage,” that’s negative self-talk. If you look in the mirror and you think, “Yesssss I’m rocking these boots” that’s positive self-talk. If you know that you are prone to negative self-talk about other things than your writing—for instance about the way you look, the way you interact with others, your performance at work, and so on—then it’s likely that your self-talk about your writing is also going to be negative. If you habitually trash talk yourself, consider it may be time to retrain your brain. If you can’t say positive things to yourself about anything else, you won’t be able to say positive things to yourself about your writing.
Okay, so: What are some unfair comparisons?
Comparing your writing to the writing you read when you pick up a published book—that’s an unhelpful, unfair comparison. The traditional publishing process takes months or years and involves dozens of professionals whose job it is to make that manuscript as perfect as humanly possible before they let it out the door.
This comparison is especially unfair if you’ve picked up a book from the shelf of your local bookstore or library. Consider that titles from traditional publishers are only a small portion of the number of new titles published each year—self-published titles make up a larger proportion of the new titles that come out each year. Bookstores and libraries will only stock traditionally published books, with few exceptions. So when you are in the bookstore or library, you’re only seeing books that were good enough to be selected for trad publishing. Further, bookstores and libraries don’t carry every title that trad publishers put out. Bookstores and libraries only carry the titles that are most likely to sell or have been requested the most. So even among traditionally published titles, you’re only seeing the best few when you look at what’s on offer at a bookstore or library.
Comparing your manuscript to what you find available for sale is not an apples-to-apples comparison. These books not only have received a numerous editorial services to make them as polished as possible but also have been winnowed down to only the most compelling, most in-demand, “best” (in theory) books.
Comparing your writing to the writing of others in your writing group, or your critique partner’s writing, is also going to do you a disservice. You may think your peers are better writers than you, or you may think you’re a better writer than them. Unless you’re closely matched in skill level, it’s kind of hard to avoid making a comparison. That said, this isn’t a profitable comparison. Being better than the others in your critique circle doesn’t mean you’re good; and being worse than others in your critique circle doesn’t mean you’re bad.
Just as it can be demoralizing to read writing that’s that much better than yours, it can feel encouraging to read writing that’s that much worse than yours. When you come across something that’s—in your estimation—not as good as what you can write or have written, you might feel a boost, like your own work is that much closer to publication, or winning a National Book Award, or anything like that.
Everyone’s at their own place in their writing journey. Someone whose writing doesn’t line up with yours isn’t necessarily more or less talented; they may just be more or less experienced. They may have taken more or fewer classes, read more or fewer books on craft, or received more or less critical feedback than you have.
Finally, comparing your writing to the writing of others at your age/stage/education level is not going to do you any favors. That is to say, when you see social media posts like “I published my first book when I was 25.” Or when you compare your writing to the writing of someone else who has—or doesn’t have—an MFA. Someone who’s younger—or older—than you. Someone who’s got more publications—or fewer—under their belt than you do.
I’ve found there’s really no sillier comparison than this kind because it makes no sense. “I should have X professional title by Y years old.” “You should have $X dollars saved for retirement by the time you’re Y years old.” You should have the same success your peers have.
Who “your peers” are is like the broadest possible intersectional group. I should have $X just because other people my age have the same? We all have different jobs, and different education levels, and started our careers at different times. That’s like saying “all women should have a horse” or “all people of Irish descent should have brown shoes.”
All writers are on their own path. We’re all—well, most of us—moving in the same direction. That is, we’re getting better all the time with study and practice. Most of us are not getting actively worse. There’s no way to look at another writer and say “Yes, there, that’s the exact spot I should be in based on having the same characteristics as that person.” No two of us are on the same road.
Now, the fun part, let’s talk useful comparisons.
Not all comparison is bad. There are comparisons you can make from which you can learn useful things about your writing. For instance, you can compare the quality of your writing today versus your the quality of your writing in the past. That might be yesterday, last week, a month ago, ten years ago—or, ideally, all of the above.
The most valuable comparison you can make, in my opinion, is the comparison of your own work against your own work, to see how much you have grown and developed. I have manuscripts sitting around on my computer from when I was in college more than 20 years ago. Nothing gives me a boost of confidence like reading that old garbage and looking at how far I have come.
You can also compare your writing accomplishments against your writing goals. Use caution: This works best if your goals are within your control. An example of a goal within your control might be, “I’ll write 5,000 words this month.” An example of a goal that is not within your control might be, “I’ll win a Hugo award this year.” If you’ve set goals that are within your control to attain, comparing your progress against your set goals is one of the healthiest and best ways to measure your success.
Need help setting SMART writing goals? Check out Metrics of Writing for ideas.
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