Sian Meades-Williams considers how writers can avoid the comparison trap, and why the messy, uncertain middle of the creative process is where the real work – and joy – happens.

Can I share a secret with you? Every time I sit down to start writing something new, I freeze. How do I write a novel? How do I write a non-fiction essay? I worry that overnight – or since I made a cup of tea if I’m having a particularly tricky morning – I’ve stopped being able to string a sentence together. What if what I write isn’t as good as the piece I had published last week, or the novel I was reading before I went to bed?

Aaah, there it is. The comparison.

I’m not only worrying that my writing isn’t going to be good. I’m comparing it to something – or someone – else. I think all writers have suffered from comparison at some point in their careers. Comparison is the thief of joy, they say, and it sucks everything good out of what we’re trying to create. However, as annoying as that little voice is, I think there’s something to be gained from hearing what it’s trying to tell us.

When I get hung up on comparison, the Ira Glass quote – ‘Your taste is why your work disappoints you’ – hits home. Usually what that voice is trying to tell me is not that my work is terrible, but that it isn’t finished. It needs more time. I need to push myself into areas that I’m not comfortable with. When I hear that voice most is when I’m barely scratching the surface or I’ve hit a stumbling block. My lack of confidence in what I’m writing is when I’m most likely to play the comparison game. The only way I’ve found to get out of it is to dive deeper into what I’m doing. Inaction – freezing in front of the blank page – is no one’s friend.

We’re not so good at being messy these days. Social media makes everything glossy. We all love a success story. We focus on the finished product. Tech companies want us to use AI for the quick fix without any effort at all. But that effort – that messy middle – is where the good stuff happens.

Even if you only save one line from that chapter when you edit, that line was what you were trying to get to.

This week I’ve been sulkily comparing my new novel chapter to the first 10,000 words of my novel. A chapter so rough a character’s name changes halfway through. It has no business being measured alongside the shiny chunk of words that have been placed in writing competitions and read by agents. I’m comparing a bowl of cracked eggs to a fancy cake.

The difference between my current chapter and the ones that I wrote last year? It’s not effort, it’s time. When I get over freezing at the blank page, usually twenty minutes is all I need. I time it. That writing exercise always helps me to get started. Nothing gets written without putting the time in, however that looks in our day. There’s no shortcut to writing, there never has been.

We know when we’re doing something new; when we nail that dialogue and it’s unexpected, or that chapter opening finally comes alive. That feeling is what we’re chasing. When we read it in another writer, it sparks something in us. When we read it in our own work, we want to create it again. So comparison isn’t all bad. When our work disappoints us, we can use that energy to fuel something good.

We feel it when it’s wrong, too. And that’s scary. If we’re working on something we’ve been commissioned to write, we don’t want to let people down. If we’re writing on spec – as we likely are with our first novels – our writing comes at a cost. It’s time away from our responsibilities, our family and friends. That pressure doesn’t always help us write our best work. Our brains like to protect us from the uncertainty around what we’re doing. If we don’t write anything new, we can’t feel scared or disappointed. We can’t screw it up.

We also don’t learn anything. Even when it’s tough going, I would rather write something new and be disappointed than never dare to try anything at all. Perhaps our comparison habit is a message to ourselves that even when it’s not quite there yet – even when we’re not where we want to be – our writing is worth the time and effort. It’s worth pushing through until we get it right, however long that takes.