 Noticing Newbies: June 01, 2022 Issue [#11391] |
This week: The Competition Edited by: Jeff  
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"You never know what you can do until you try,
and very few try unless they have to."
-- C.S. Lewis
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of your regular editors for the Noticing Newbies Official Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 350 newsletters across the site during that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or the handy feedback field at the bottom of this newsletter! 
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The Competition
We spend a lot of our lives in competition with other people. Some of us are competing against thousands of other applicants for a spot at a prestigious university or for a desirable job. Some compete against others in games of skill or chance, and others still are taught to see others as competition in any number of other areas: competition for the favor of a parent, the affections of a romantic interest, or even for scarce resources.
Writers are often conditioned to see one another as competition as well. After all, publishers can only publish so many books a year and there are only so many awards given out every year. If someone else sells a screenplay, or secures a publishing contract, or wins a prestigious award that must mean you've lost out... right?
This week, I want to take a look at what and who writers are really competing against.
While it is true that only a certain number of writing jobs, publishing contracts, awards, etc. are available to writers each year, it's not anywhere near the zero sum game that many writers make it out to be. Zero sum games, by definition, mean that an advantage for one side creates an equal and opposite disadvantage for the other side. When one baseball team wins, their opponent loses. When one candidate in an election wins, the other candidates necessarily lose. That's not necessarily true of writing endeavors, because there are other factors involved in the decisions being made. Many authors see the scenario like a zero sum game, where because Simon & Schuster published yet another Stephen King book this year, that means they lost. But that assumes that if, for some reason, Stephen King didn't publish a book this year, theirs would have been.
This is a popular sentiment among screenwriters in the film and television industry as well. The idea that the only thing standing between them and success is the fact that someone else got the job they were meant to have. Shonda Rhimes sold a new pilot this year, so the network couldn't buy theirs instead. Dan Gilroy got hired to do a high-paid rewrite of a big franchise picture, but if Dan hadn't taken the job it could have been theirs. What this thought process fails to take into account, though, is that there's another option available to the company. They could just not hire anyone at all, if they don't find a writer or a project that they like. And with expensive endeavors like the millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars that go into making movies, the "maybe we just don't pull the trigger on anything yet" approach is an understandable one. They're not going to spend that kind of money on just any old thing. It has to be something they're excited about.
Imagine if this argument were applied to a less subjective field. Let's say you're planning on remodeling your house. You look for an architect and, for whatever reason, you don't find one. Maybe the architect you really want is too expensive, and the other architects you talk to have terrible plans that don't match your vision for your remodel. Do you just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, we have to pay somebody for this remodel, so let's pick the best of these bad options!" Do you think to yourself, "Well none of the architects with good reputations worked out, so let's just hire an engineering grad student instead?" No, you most likely would simply just not move forward with the remodel until you're able to find an architect that matches your vision. Not proceeding with something is a viable alternative.
The other thing that writers often miss is that, just like the architect in the above example, the work has to be a good fit for the person hiring you. Most people who are paying for things, whether they be a home remodel or a book or a television series, have specific ideas about what they want. As a writer, what you have to offer them may not be a good fit for that criteria. Maybe the vision is wrong. Maybe the proposed budget is wrong. Maybe they just don't think it's good enough. There are hundreds of reasons why the thing you've written may not be a good fit for the people looking to pay a writer for their work, and none of that has to do with the other writers you're "competing" with.
The modern media landscape has become fractured into two major areas. The first is the traditional media landscape where gatekeepers (agents, publishers, movie studios, etc.) determine what gets released to the public through the traditional channels they have control over (bookstore shelves, movie theaters, etc.). The second is the new media landscape where anyone can create something and put it out in the world with relative ease (you don't need permission to self-publish an ebook, upload a video, etc.), but you're competing for the attention of readers and viewers whose attention is being vied for by literally thousands of other pieces of new content every day. Again, the "competition" here isn't necessarily with other writers. Even if it were a zero sum game where because Stephen King didn't publish a book this year you suddenly get the call-up, there's no guarantee that an audience will respond.
At the top of this editorial, I mentioned that we'd talk a little about "what" and "who" you're really competing against as a writer. The "what" is audience attention. The "who" is you. You are competing against yourself to create the best possible work you can create, in hopes that it will capture an audience's attention. When there's something out there to be had (a slot on a publisher's release calendar, an award, a contest win, etc.), it's not yours to lose. It's not yours by default. It's yours to earn. And, yes, you will have competition from other writers. But they are not your primary competition and they are not the main thing standing in your way. You can write an excellent work regardless of who your competition is.
As someone who runs the site's official writing contests, wherein we have many repeat winners from month to month and year to year, I often hear complaints that the same people always win. "What's the point of even entering?" I'm sometimes asked. "Why don't you disqualify the winners of the last round so someone else has a chance to win?" I'm sometimes asked. Both of those questions, and ones like them, are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of your true competition as a writer. You should be competing against yourself, pushing yourself, to be the best you can be, to create the best work you can create. It's not about disqualifying the other entrants until you win by default, and the existing repeat winners only keep winning until a better entry comes along. If you're tired of seeing someone else's name on the podium month after month and long for it to be your own name instead... keep competing against yourself and pushing yourself to be better until you are the one in the winner's circle.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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This month's official Writing.com writing contest is:
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