As writers, your intrepid hosts here at Around the Writer’s Table have all grappled with comparison itis throughout our creative journeys. It’s a common issue that plagues many writers, stemming from imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and the fear of missing out on the success of others.Listen in as we discuss how we’ve learned to approach these feelings with mindfulness and actively countering them with self-trust. We also caution against seeking external validation to make up for our own insecurities and doubts. Instead, we talk about how to celebrate your own writing accomplishments and lean on supportive friends and communities. Navigating comparison itis is an ongoing process, but one that has ultimately strengthened our craft and resilience as writers.

Top 5 Takeaways:

1. Comparisonitis is linked to imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and FOMO.
2. Mindfulness and self-awareness are crucial for processing these emotions.
3. Learn how to trust your own experiences, not external validation.
4. Be cautious of reviews and critique groups as sources for writer improvement.
5. Celebrate your own writing accomplishments and lean on supportive communities.

RESOURCES

Ep. 46: The Dread Pirate Comparisonitis

Dave Hogan, Gina’s Pop
0:02
Welcome to Around the Writer’s Table, a podcast focusing on the crossroads of creativity, craft, and conscious living for writers of all ages and backgrounds. Your hosts are Gina, Melody, and KimBoo, three close friends and women of a certain age, who bring to the table their eclectic backgrounds and unique perspectives on the trials, tribulations, and the joys of writing. So pull up a chair and get comfortable here around the writer’s table.

KimBoo York
0:43
Welcome back, listeners, to Around the Writer’s Table. This is KimBoo, and we are on episode 46. This is going to be a roundtable chat discussion between the three of us where we’re going to talk about something that affects everybody at some degree in their life, at some point in their life, and that is ‘comparisonitis.’ 

So if you don’t know, my name is KimBoo York. I’m a professional author. I am also a productivity coach for creatives, especially focusing on authors. I run the 1 Million Words Club, which is a Discord membership group that is supportive for authors to be productive and hit their word counts or whatever goals they are, whether they’re professionals or amateurs or fanfiction writers. Everybody’s welcome. Also I have a new book out, The Queen’s Aerie. The serialization finished a couple of months ago, and now that book is available on most major distributors. It is a male-male-female paranormal—no! Not paranormal; that’s a different book. It is a love—what book am I talking about? It’s a love-triad fantasy book, and so you can check that out anywhere. 

That’s me, and so I’m going to turn it over to one of my co-hosts, Melody, to introduce herself. And then we’ll smoothly slide into Gina Hogan Edwards, who’s going to get us off the ground running, talking about comparisonitis. So, Melody, who are you?

Melody, A Scout
2:08
Who am I? Where am I from? I’m Melody, A Scout, and I am a writer, an author, and I love everything about plants. I am an herbalist, a plant spirit medicine healer, and a landscape designer. I wrote a book called Soul of the Seasons: Creating Balance, Resilience, and Connection by Tapping the Wisdom of the Natural World. I’m glad to be here with my co-hosts and writer buddies, Gina and KimBoo, this morning. How are you doing, Gina?

Gina Hogan Edwards
2:49
Hi everybody. I’m Gina Hogan Edwards. Welcome, listeners. I’m glad to be here today with my buddies and talking about this topic we’re gonna dive into. If you don’t know me, I am a writing retreat leader. I lead a retreat called Story Camp that we do on the coast of the northern Panhandle of Florida, in the beautiful Gulf of Mexico. I have one of those coming up in October Yes, I can’t wait. We have a house full of women. It is limited in size; we only take in eight women and I do have one spot left. So if anybody out there listening is interested, do reach out to me. 

I also have a history as an editor and a creativity coach. I am currently working on a historical novel myself, which is going to lead us into our topic today because I have been serializing that novel on Substack, and also on a platform where I have a page, on a platform called Ream. Serialization is something new to me. We’ve talked about that in past episodes, if you want to go back and check those out. KimBoo and I had a conversation about serializing versus serialized novel, which was all a learning curve for me. 

So I’ve been putting that novel out there. It’s not 100% complete. It currently stands at about 130,000 words, which is longer than a standard novel. But I needed to go through it over these past few weeks in preparation for a workshop that I’m attending in Kentucky called the Appalachian Writers Workshop.

KimBoo
4:36
I’m so excited for you.

Gina
4:38
I’m truly beyond excited. I am going to write a little bit about it on Substack, and of course, we’re going to talk about it today. The reason that it relates to the topic of comparisonitis is because I hesitated about applying for this—it’s a week-long residency—I hesitated for years. I’ve been wanting to do this for two decades. It’s been going on for 49 years [correction: 47 years]. I decided this year I was going to take the plunge. I mustered up the nerve and just sent it off, and then tried not to think about it anymore after that. 

When I got accepted, I was elated, of course, and it’s been interesting to watch myself through this process. That’s what I’m going to talk about in my Substack article, because the whole process of submitting was very unemotional for me. It was like, I’m going to do this thing and I don’t have any emotional attachment to the outcome. But then, once I got the email that said I was in, that’s when my mind started spinning out.

Okay? I started thinking of all kinds of questions like, of course: Who else is going to be there? And as somewhat of an introvert: How many people are going to be there? Am I going to get peopled out? And those sorts of things, but also really wondering: What are these people going to think of me? And: What if I don’t measure up to the kinds of writers that they are? because this workshop is open to both unpublished and published writers. 

My comparisonitis was ratcheted up this weekend when I learned that a writer that I met pre-pandemic, who has a novel out that I dearly loved—because, of course, it’s set in my home of Western North Carolina—she’s gonna be in my group! She’s gonna read my work! So I’m like, ‘Ahhhhh!’ 

This issue of comparisonitis, I don’t think, is uncommon for most writers to go through. So I’m excited to talk about it because it has been prevalent in my writing life from the very beginning. I’d love to hear from both of you how this has shown up in your life, because it’s right high on the spot—like, vibration for me right now. Melody, what do you have to say about this?

KimBoo
7:24
No, no. I’m going to stop you there first. Because I want to make sure, I want listeners to really understand what we’re talking about when we talk about comparisonitis. How would you define comparisonitis, Gina, aside from the obvious? 

Gina
7:37
Yeah, so I think it’s a—the obvious is the comparison of yourself to others. But it is connected with, very connected with, something that I know you’ve been writing about recently, too, KimBoo, which are imposter syndrome and perfectionism. I’ve always called these The Triad. They’re the three things that have plagued me the most, through my writing life. I’ve dealt with them in various ways at various levels of success. 

But I think comparisonitis encompasses those other two things. They definitely play a role in that idea of, “Am I good enough? Am I as good as this other writer or this group of other writers? How does my writing compare? How does my writing life compare? Am I doing this right? Am I doing this in a way that they’re going to look at as weird or wrong?” Because I’ve taken the leap of sharing this novel in a serialized form on Substack and Ream, which is still a very new way for us to share our work, right? It’s a very new approach to writers engaging with readers—I have to ask myself: Are they going to look at that and go, What the heck is she doing? 

So comparisonitis lives in the root of that word comparison, and it is every way, in every imaginable turn you can take, of comparing ourselves to others.

KimBoo
9:28
All right, okay.

Gina
9:30
All right. So now I’m gonna throw it back to Melody. How’s this showing up for you, girl?

Melody
9:35
I, like probably every writer since time began, have suffered from the Bermuda Triangle of writing: comparisonitis, perfectionism, and impostor syndrome. And definitely during the writing of my book because it was about a system of balance and harmony that masters have studied for 23 centuries. So I would often ask: What makes you think you have anything to add to 23 centuries of writing?

KimBoo
10:24
Yeah, no pressure, no pressure.

Melody
10:26
No, no, no. And then the comparisonitis and how does this measure up to authors that I respect and admire? Who is it that said—might have been Elizabeth Gilbert—that said, Comparison is the death of creativity, because it will just make me want to quit. When I start doing that: I’ll never be good enough. I don’t have anything to offer. I don’t have the credentials. Not smart enough for this. Yada yada, yada. 

Fortunately, I have good good friends who are good cheerleaders and reminded me what I have to say is relevant, and it’s my story, and no one can tell it like me. There’s no one in the world that can tell it like me.

Gina
Amen, sister.

Melody
It was so helpful to me. I really needed to take a break. And just, it is not easy to do, to extract yourself from that spiraling into that. Really, you need to just set some heavy boundaries with yourself. And I think someone else I know—I wish I could remember who, but we’ll try to access those brain cells another day—but they talked about that being a trauma response, especially if you grew up or had a significant person in your life that was hypercritical.

KimBoo
12:25
Ooo, ooo, yeah. I am suddenly reframing, recontextualizing my entire life. Thank you. Good times. 

Melody
12:34
Yeah. And then because, as we often do, we will pick up—that person may be dead and gone—but we pick up where they left off, and then that hypercritical business goes on inside our head. Comparisonitis and perfectionism is just just criticism, self criticism, impostor syndrome.

KimBoo
13:03
Wow. Yep.

Gina
13:05
That perspective of, if you’ve had someone in your life who has been hypercritical, I think that that can also be—I was fortunate; I had a dad who was very encouraging. Most of the people in my life either were encouraging or didn’t know what the heck I was doing and so they just didn’t say anything about it—but there have been moments when certain people have said things framed as being helpful. Especially, and this is why, and we’ve talked about this before, why I dislike—I almost used the H word—but dislike critique groups so so so very much, is that people who think they’re being helpful sometimes can say the most hurtful things, and when we are given a litany of compliments, if there is one thing in there that stings us, we’ll remember the sting before we’ll remember the compliments.

KimBoo
14:13
So true.

Melody
14:15
And go over and over and over that little criticism and completely discard the rest of the positive things that was said to us.

Gina
14:25
Well, and we also make that one little sting mushroom and affect other things in our lives. I don’t know about you guys, but it’s very easy for me to just build on one tiny little thing until I’ve made up this entire story in my head about how I must be the most horrible person in the world. Has nothing to do with my writing, but… 

All right, so KimBoo, what about you? How has comparisonitis touched your life?

KimBoo
15:00
In every aspect. Yeah, so comparisonitis definitely touches my life in every aspect. But in writing specifically, it has, you know, it’s kind of funny in that it has mostly affected me on the publishing side. Because while, perhaps I sound a little arrogant, I’m usually pretty confident about the stories. I may not think it’s a great idea at first, or I may hit a point in the story where I think it’s all crap, and it just needs to go out the window—I think everybody does that—but by the time I get to the end of the story, I’m usually pretty confident about it. And what I tend to fall into is looking at authors who have more sales, or who are more popular, or who have a big fandom. 

For me, comparisonitis really shows up a lot as FOMO, fear of missing out. So I think they’re getting something that I’m not getting, that I’m not going to get. That they’re better at that thing than I am, and so I’m missing out on all the opportunities and the chances and the things that I want. Yeah.

Gina
16:29
Wow. I find that fascinating, because I’d never equated comparisonitis to FOMO, but it makes perfect sense. Perfect sense. Is that writer living a life different from the one that I’m living? So I’m comparing that, and is what she has better? Am I missing something that would fulfill me or make me the bestseller, or whatever?

KimBoo
16:59
Are my books, is my writing good enough that people are going to want to create a fandom around it? Which is really a personal goal of mine. I would love that. So I see these other writers who have rabid fans, and it’s the FOMO, fear of missing out. I’m missing out on this part of life that I really, really want. Then the impostor syndrome and perfectionism, and that all stuff, starts really rolling onto the scene to beat me up.

Melody
17:31
Yeah, along with some maybe jealousy and envy. I find myself stepping into that. Well, they have this and this and this and that. Why don’t I have that? Right?

KimBoo
17:45
Right. Right. So for me comparisonitis is very much linked to those elements of it, because I don’t have… I don’t, sometimes I come up to a writer, and I’m just like, Oh, man, I will never be able to write that well. I will just never be able to write that well. 

And this is true, even in fanfiction. I was reading a fanfiction last night that’s in the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation fandom. And there’s a sentence there, where the character says, and I’m paraphrasing at this point, but he says he was up against this massive supernatural creature, this massive dragon, and he was trying to talk to it. And he said he felt like a word on a page in a very thick book. Right? That’s how small he felt next to this supernatural, mystical beast. And I thought, Oh, man, I will never write something that good. And that’s the comparisonitis, because I’ve written some really good sentences in my life. I will own that. But it’s just, yeah. You read something like that, and you’re just like, Oh, oh, that rips, that rips my heart out, because that’s just so beautiful. That just captures that image so perfectly. “I felt like a word on a page in a very thick book.” How inconsequential that must be.

Gina
19:10
How can we turn that comparison into a learning opportunity instead? 

KimBoo
19:23
These learning opportunities, gross. [laughing] I’m so tired of learning opportunities. Come on.

Gina
19:32
I know, I know. Well, a couple of things that both of you have said is, that question came up in my head, obviously, as I’m listening to you, KimBoo, of how can we take those moments when we see something someone else has written and we go, Oh, I could never write like that as a way to learn our craft better. But also, I’m just intrigued about that connection that Melody made between FOMO and envy. They’re definitely partners in some way, I think. And again, I never really thought of them in those terms, which is one of the reasons why I love having these conversations with you guys. You always open my eyes to so many different perspectives and ways of looking at things. I just absolutely love it. 

So I’m curious, from both of you, how you have navigated. Are you able to recognize when this comparisonitis is surfacing? And what do you do when it happens, if anything?

KimBoo
20:42
I think, for me, it has been a very long, long, ongoing lesson in mindfulness, being aware, and I think Melody would echo this in the sense of being aware of your body. Being aware of where you are in the world. Being aware of how you feel. What your emotional temperature is. Because when I was younger, I would read something like that and get really hot, temperature hot, body hot. Just throw the book aside or whatever, and get off the webpage, and go stomp around the house, right? Well, that was just the envy, the jealousy, the FOMO, the comparisonitis, all just being trapped inside my body, and I didn’t even know what was happening. I just felt ugly. I felt awful.

So when I read something like that now, a sentence that just knocks my socks off in an excellent story overall, I just like, Oh, I know what this is. This is me comparing myself to someone for no reason. It’s oh, this is what this emotion is, and allowing myself to process it. You know, me, I’m not all that woowoo, but it’s very down to earth. I think mindfulness is a very practical approach to so many things in life and being mindful of what you’re feeling, where that emotion is coming from.

I loved, also, Melody’s connection to connecting comparisonitis and impostor syndrome effects as a trauma response. That really did open my eyes to a lot of things. And being aware of that and mindful of it and saying, Oh, this is probably a reaction to criticism from my first editor, as we all know, is my mother. And her too-high expectations of me coupled with her assumptions that I would never be good enough. And so all of that wiggling around, when I’m aware of it, when I can process those emotions, then I can get some distance from it. And I can say, Yeah, maybe I never will write a sentence that good. But I write some pretty good sentences. And I write some pretty good stories. So I think that’ll do for now. That’ll do big. That’ll do.

Gina
22:55
Yeah. So flipping that script in your head about what you’re telling yourself? 

KimBoo
Yeah. For sure. And being aware of this response. Like, yeah, that’s, that’s an important part of it. For me, that’s how I’ve worked it out over the years.

Gina
23:09
Thank you. What about you, Melody?

Melody
23:12
Well, I like that, KimBoo, and I want to build on it a little bit, that self awareness is really important. We’ve talked about this in other podcasts. Being aware and grounded in yourself helps you become more aware and grounded in your writing. I know how it feels in my body when I receive criticism, whether through myself or someone else, that feels destructive or helpful. There is a marked difference I feel in my body. 

I will say no one has ever criticized me more harshly than myself. Ever. I will go on and on and on and on about it. So when I notice myself doing that, I do need to take a pause and become the observer, the non-judgmental observer and say, Well, look at you doing that. Isn’t that interesting? What’s going on with that? And maybe the thing that I do need to do is express some frustration, express some disappointment, whatever it is that’s coming up that makes me feel vulnerable, because when I’m feeling vulnerable is when I’m more susceptible to that type of behavior. 

As I’m feeling vulnerable, then what can I do for me? Calm reassurance helps, whether from myself or another person. I might call up a good buddy and say, I’m spiraling down with this stinking-thinking behaviors and thoughts, and help me remember what’s good.

KimBoo
25:20
The call for help. Yeah, that is so important, I think.

Melody
25:24
The other thing is, sometimes I need to go back and read some of my own writing, and I remember what’s good about it. A lot of times, I’ll go back even today and go back and read passages that I don’t even remember writing in my book. Holy shit. You wrote this. That’s pretty cool. Just kind of that self-reassurance. And that ties into what I think, Gina, is part of the one of the creativity points is to…creativity points on your chart…

Gina
26:09
The Creativity Quest.

Melody
26:12
Thank you, thank you for those words that I couldn’t seem to assemble. And that is trust and verify. And the person I need to trust in most often when I’m feeling really vulnerable or doing that really negative thinking is I need to trust myself and my own work. I know enough about myself to know that if it was all just mediocre, and just for fun, I would lose interest in it after a while. I’m like, Okay, that’s a nice, fun thing that you did there. But I am committed to writing and the writing I have done. And that reminds me why I write.

Gina
27:06
I identify so much with many, many of the things that you all said. The instructor that I had for my creativity coach training, Dr. Eric Maisel, taught me the principle of self coaching, which is related to mindfulness and related to objectively looking at your own behaviors and reactions. Because the next step after being willing to objectively, almost like you’re watching yourself play out in a movie, watching your behaviors, your reactions, the next step is being willing to ask yourself questions, really quality questions.

The curiosity that Melody mentioned is key to that, really being curious about why you have felt that way or said that or done that in response to that feeling of comparisonitis, or being an impostor, or having someone criticize your work. Oh, my gosh, it’s not perfect. And so having those quality questions that we ask ourselves then requires self-honesty, because we can tell ourselves all the lies in the world that we want to.

Melody
28:35
Become defensive. Defend, defend whatever it is, mistake or no. Just defend it to your death.

Gina
28:44
Justify it in whatever way we possibly can. And so really having, so there’s the element of self coaching, self questioning, and self honesty, that I think are all great progressions toward—I don’t think we ever overcome it, so I don’t want to use the word overcome comparisonitis—but how we navigate it, how we deal with it.

I don’t want to ignore what KimBoo brought up, which is the physical part of it, the body part of it. Really paying attention to, do you stress in a certain part of your body when you’re having that feeling? Or do you get a headache? Or do you get a stomach upset? And then finding ways to soothe yourself as Melody had mentioned. 

I think all of these are tremendous tips toward navigating this weird thing that we tend to all do to ourselves in comparing ourselves to others.

KimBoo
29:48
I’d like to throw in there as well, because this has been coming up recently in fandom and it’s come up a lot in genre writing circles as well. It’s tempting, I think, sometimes especially for newbies, but even for experienced authors to go out and look for criticism, thinking that that might help you. I know, one of the things that I really caution all writers against, fanfiction writers, professional authors, anybody, don’t go read your reviews on Goodreads. Just don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t do that to yourself, because it’s a platform for readers, and so the readers are giving criticism and critique and reviews based on how they read it as a reader. They’re not giving you reviews or criticism based on improving you as a writer, right. And they’re not your friends. When we get into comparisonitis, sometimes we fall into these habits of reading all the reviews, or reading all the feedback, reading all the critique on our work and thinking that there’s some magic elixir there that’s going to make the comparisonitis go away, either by being super hard on ourselves, or trying to incorporate every single criticism in our next writing and abandoning our own voice.

I just really wanted to stress that, because I think a lot of writers don’t realize how damaging that can be, going and reading those kinds of reviews. So if there’s a tip in here, don’t go on Goodreads. 

Gina
Good tip.

KimBoo
But I think that’s true for critique groups, as well. Like there’s good, those critiques, they’re there for themselves, as a writer. They’re not particularly there for you as a writer. You’re just part of their journey and their process. That’s an important part of critique groups a lot of people forget.

Melody
31:39
Yeah. And trusting the people you are entering into with this critique group. I actually like critique groups. I’m not super thin-skinned. I’m gonna have to watch now when I’m feeling vulnerable, I’m gonna be way more thin-skinned and less able to take criticism. Because I feel like I’m grounded in what I know about it, and if somebody goes off on a big thing, I’m like, Okay, there you go. Go. But that didn’t have a lot to do with what I wrote. But go with your bad self there. 

I also want to offer, don’t underestimate the kicking and stomping around the room thing we mentioned earlier. Because if it’s bringing up some feelings of frustration and irritation in you, you do need a physical expression for that. I personally like breaking things; it feels satisfying to me. Not everybody might do that. My grandsons like to kick cardboard boxes apart with great vigor. So yeah.

KimBoo
33:00
That sounds like a good idea. I have cardboard boxes in the living room.

Gina
33:05
Some of the things that we’ve talked about directly relate to some of the stages of The Creativity Quest. I want to point listeners to a couple of those. One of them is Assessing and Acknowledging. That is, especially for newer writers, that’s an earlier stage of where you’re just first starting to self-analyze. Where you’re first starting to venture into that idea of being objective about your own work and your own life, and being able to assess where you are and what you still have to learn. We talked about that in episode 25, and then later on in episode 34, we talked about Verifying and Testing. That, again, is a stage where you not only are looking at your own work and your own way of doing things and verifying whether that’s supporting you or not, but you’re also testing boundaries and getting clarity around who your supporters are and where you need to go with that. Those are two episodes—25 and what did I say? 34—that listeners might want to reference back to.

KimBoo
34:28
Yeah, and we’ll have those in the show notes on our website, you’ll be able to get to those. My question though is, Gina, are you now feeling ready for the retreat?

Gina
34:40
Well, just for clarity, it is a workshop not a retreat, a workshop. I found out this weekend, when I got an email from the instructor, I’m going to be in a group of 15, all of us working on novels. At this overall workshop, there’s different tracks for poetry and short story and novel writing and so forth. So I’m going to be in a group of 15. 

One of the things that I did in preparation for this was attempt to reach out to the women who are going to be my roommates, and also, this other woman that I assumed had been there that I found out is now going to be in the group. I made up all kinds of stories in my head about why I wasn’t hearing back from them. It had nothing to do with people are busy, they have lives, they have stuff to do. It all had to do with me, they don’t want to know me. My two roommates already know each other, and so I’m like, they’re already friends, and I’m going to be crashing their party. 

KimBoo
Oh, no.

Melody
Oh, baby.

Gina
I have processed all those and actually helping me write my article for Substack about all these feelings and thoughts around comparisonitis and impostor syndrome and perfectionism helped me get a lot of that stuff out. So, while I can’t say that I’m ready, I am ready. 

KimBoo
36:09
Awesome.

Gina
36:10
Our listeners are going to be hearing this, actually, after I’ve already attended. I think this is going to air, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, KimBoo, I think this is going to air at the beginning of August, maybe.

KimBoo
Yeah, August first.

Gina
Okay, so the workshop is the [July] 20th through the 26th. And so we’re talking about this before I’ve attended. So, at some future point in our episodes, you’re gonna get my And this is what happened.

KimBoo
36:48
I think it’s important to note that that future point will probably be August 15, because episode 47 is going to be me interviewing Gina. As we’ve talked about in the past, listeners, we’re alternating the format between these group chats and doing interviews. Melody has interviewed Karla, I get her name wrong all the time. What’s it, Karla?

Melody
Karla Refojo.

KimBoo
So that should be up by the time this goes live. And the next one is going to be me, and Gina’s previously interviewed Rhett DeVane. So those are two interviews that are already in the books that you can go back and listen to. The next interview I’m actually going to be interviewing Gina as an author, and by an author. I’m going to definitely be asking you about the workshop in that interview Gina, so you better be prepared.

Gina
37:44
Be kind. Please be kind.

KimBoo
37:47
But I love your book Dancing at The Orange Peel, so we’re definitely going to be talking about that some more, and historical fiction writing, and your challenges on that. I’m looking forward to that, got some great questions. You’re gonna really enjoy Gina, because that’s my goal when I do an interview is to make sure that the person I’m interviewing actually enjoys the interview as well. So I’m looking forward to that. So listeners, stay tuned. You’re gonna hear all about the workshop soon enough.

Gina
38:09
All right, well, thanks, listeners, for being here. We appreciate you listening over our shoulder at this conversation, which is so similar to the conversations that we have when we’re not attached to a microphone. Love being here. Thank you all for listening. And thank you, ladies, for being co-hosts here.

Melody
38:26
Take care. 

KimBoo
38:27
Thank you, Gina. Thank you, listeners. Bye.

Melody
Bye.

Gina’s Pop
38:33
Thanks for joining us around the writer’s table. Please feel free to suggest a topic or a guest by emailing info@aroundthewriterstable.com. Music provided with gracious permission by Langtry. A link to their music is on our homepage at AroundTheWritersTable.com. Everyone here around the writer’s table wishes you joy in your writing and everyday grace in your living. Take care, until next time.

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