A rec and a wreck
(Not a real wreck, like the car wreck kind; that was last month.)
The rec: go read The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan. It's a fast read--short chapters, a story that grabs you by the throat on the first page and never lets go. Visceral, in the way where there are lots of viscera splashed around as well as the way where the story climbs into your guts and pokes around and says This is how it would feel. This is you, feeling it. Now pray that werewolves aren't real.
The wreck: me.
Not really a wreck, as such. I'm not that delicate. Still.
I'm a writer and because writing is my identity I am a perfectionist about my writing. I like to be told my writing is good. But I hate anything that reeks of competition; I'm not motivated by a desire to be better than anyone else; quite the opposite. As a fanfic writer, I've very rarely shared a fandom with someone whose writing I really abjectly admire. And, as a fanfic writer, I've learned to separate the writing-and-reading world into domains like that. Fandoms, genres, pairings. I know my writing is only being directly compared to the people doing exactly the same kind of thing; if I don't want to compete with someone all I have to do is something different.
I therefore very rarely feel the crushing deterrent of competition with someone amazing when it comes to original writing. It is, by definition, its own fandom, its own kind of thing. And it really is, for all that the thing I'm working on fits tidily into an obvious subgenre with just a few outre modifiers. No one else would write this story.
All the same--after reading The Last Werewolf I think I will just... let the novel alone for a few days, until I am feeling a tiny bit less crushed.
Also, holy crap, you guys, that is a really good book.
The rec: go read The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan. It's a fast read--short chapters, a story that grabs you by the throat on the first page and never lets go. Visceral, in the way where there are lots of viscera splashed around as well as the way where the story climbs into your guts and pokes around and says This is how it would feel. This is you, feeling it. Now pray that werewolves aren't real.
The wreck: me.
Not really a wreck, as such. I'm not that delicate. Still.
I'm a writer and because writing is my identity I am a perfectionist about my writing. I like to be told my writing is good. But I hate anything that reeks of competition; I'm not motivated by a desire to be better than anyone else; quite the opposite. As a fanfic writer, I've very rarely shared a fandom with someone whose writing I really abjectly admire. And, as a fanfic writer, I've learned to separate the writing-and-reading world into domains like that. Fandoms, genres, pairings. I know my writing is only being directly compared to the people doing exactly the same kind of thing; if I don't want to compete with someone all I have to do is something different.
I therefore very rarely feel the crushing deterrent of competition with someone amazing when it comes to original writing. It is, by definition, its own fandom, its own kind of thing. And it really is, for all that the thing I'm working on fits tidily into an obvious subgenre with just a few outre modifiers. No one else would write this story.
All the same--after reading The Last Werewolf I think I will just... let the novel alone for a few days, until I am feeling a tiny bit less crushed.
Also, holy crap, you guys, that is a really good book.