Competitiveness

Head’s up: This is a more serious post.

I’m not a competitive person by nature.

When I play board games, I aim to win, but it means nothing to me if I end up in last place after all. When I was in school, I never really tried to get better grades than my friends – I just wanted to get good grades for myself. And I’m not even going to go into sports…(I don’t think I possess an athletic bone in my body.)

But when it comes to writing, all bets are off.

I’ve read two books in the last two weeks that have set off my “jealousy” alarm. (I won’t say which novels they were.) I read the words that these authors have written and I’m in awe at their use of descriptions and their writing style. And it makes me want to flop onto my bed and wonder if I’ll ever reach their level.

But once I’m done pitying myself, I can guarantee you that I’m pulling up a new Word document and typing out a new story. Of course, I make an effort to incorporate whatever it was that made me jealous in the first place. I try to prove to myself that I can write just as well as that particular author.

How dare anyone – either published authors or former classmates of mine when I was in school - try to one up me?

And so, this line of thinking has gotten me pondering about why anything that has to do with writing brings out my competitive nature.

I’ve reached a couple of conclusions, but perhaps it’s a little bit of all of the following reasons: 

     1.) My writing is personal; therefore, I want it to be written in the best way I possibly can.

     2.) I hope to one day publish a book and when I look at other writer’s work, I think about the fact that that is what I’ll have to compete with.

     3.) Because writing is the one skill that I’m confident I do a fairly decent job in and I want to continue to prove that.

So, yeah, a part of me wants to keep getting jealous while I’m reading books because it pushes me to better myself and my craft. But at the same time, it’s such a nasty emotion.

…For those extremely competitive people, I have a question to ask of you: Why are you that way?

Is it the brief euphoria of winning something, of being superior? (Clearly I don’t possess this personality trait of external gratification.)

And despite being competitive, is there one thing that you’re ultra-competitive in?


For some reason, I find all of this fascinating.