writers are very competitive

by firsty

Posted to Utterances on 2004-02-26 07:21:00

Parent message is 609100
i think that you need to be a driven person in order to achieve anything on the page or on the canvas simply because, while it might not be, as my old boss put it, “rocket surgery,” it’s also a little more difficult than taking out the trash. and even tho i nearly killed myself the last time i took out the trash, taking out the trash is a relatively easy thing to accomplish.

so writers, inherently, are people who are driven (at least to write), and that same trait translates to competitiveness when around other people. they are determined, they are precise, they are conscious of quality. the same things that make a writer also make someone competitive.

plus you have jealousy. it’s not like rocket surgery in that if you go to college to be a rocket surgeon and get a job performing surgery on rockets (or science on brains, take your pick, altho “rocket surgery” is funnier), you’ll be making X amount of dollars and have X amount of social, um, social prestige (the metaphor weakens, but thats a value judgment on rocket surgeons, who, i would imagine, i suppose have some degree of at least incestual social prestige). but with writers, some of us are successful and make a living at it, and some of us, even tho we know we’re at least better than that eggers guy, have to slave away at low-paying, irrelevant jobs while we try to save up enough energy to create something of brilliance in our spare time. so that leads to competitiveness, too, because the last thing i want, even tho i think he’s a really great guy, is for that bastard inextremis to end up selling a book before i do.

hope this helps.