Writer's Self-Esteem

I've come to realise, (more through personal experience than anything) that it's really easy to have your confidence as a writer completely shattered. Becoming a writer involves the whole big ordeal of actually collecting ideas, producing work, trying to get it out there in the public eye (published) and then being willing to recieve critisism from readers/critics. For me though, the latter is something I've become pretty much adapted to. I've never had anyone tell me that they don't like my poem (so that's a good sign), but I've had people point out a particular part of a piece of writing and tell me what they did or did not like about it. I can accept critisism, which I'm actualy really glad I can. But the people who can't, will feel hurt that that critic or whatever, doesn't like their work, thus shattering their esteem. If I was a writer who couldn't have their work disliked, well, I wouldn't really be a good writer in the end.

But that's not really what I wanted to focus on in this blog post. I wanted to talk about how writers self-esteem's can get bruised when they compare themselves to other writers. Of course, this can have its benefits, but on the whole, I think it's wrong to do. I myself have performed this action umpteen times and can say that 90% of the times I do, I feel completely deflated. That other 10% result? Well, that's the positive side to things. I usually will feel inspired, empowered and generally positive. It's almost as if I get this huge boost to become as good as the writer I'm comparing myself to.

We always seem to compare ourselves to writers that we think are fantastic, and usually when we're at the amateur level of writing. How come we never compare ourselves to writers that we think are rubbish? Might that help us? Might it boost of self-esteem as a writer because we could say that we're better than that writer? I'm not sure. I don't really like looking down on any writer. Just because you don't like their style or whatever, it might not mean they're a bad writer. But still, maybe it can be used as a confidence boosting tool. I don't know...I guess we'll have to try it.