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edenfallingI read some Prince of Tennis fanfiction this past weekend (Go ahead and mock me. It's total crack, it's freaking tennis, the most boring sport on earth to watch -- yes, even more so than golf -- and yet I cannot stop reading it.) and I started thinking about how writing does and doesn't compare to sports.
It's obviously not a directly competitive activity the way tennis is. Nor is it a team sport. Nor is it even an indirect competition, like track or skiing. I suppose one could draw parallels to the more artistic sports, such as figure skating and gymnastics, but even those have winners, losers, and concrete scores.
Yes, there are occasional prizes for writing, and one could, in a sense, view publication as a prize in and of itself, but competition is not really the point.
However. There are similarities. You need a set of basic skills, which can be improved through practice. There is, often, an element of competition with oneself and a sense that there are goals to be reached and perhaps overcome. And I don't know any writers who haven't experienced the moment when they read somebody else's story and say, "I could do better than that."
However -- again -- writing is not a zero sum game. One person's victory -- the creation of a successful story -- does not require another writer's defeat. Competition in sports can drive people to new heights, in a bizarre sort of collaboration, but always and ultimately, one person or team wins, and the other (or others) loses. The loser's performance is subordinated to that of the winner.
This does not occur with writing.
I had the "I could do better than this" reaction when I was quite young. However, after a while I noticed that I had another reaction, a reaction to truly good stories. Instead of saying, "I'll never be able to write that well," I found myself saying, "I won't ever be able to write that... but I can write something just as good, even if it's different." It was a gradual realization that every person is different and will naturally tell different stories in different ways, but that a great story is an invitation to rise to the same level, a silent challenge to improve. Writers may not intend their stories that way, but that underlies all their words.
For a fundamentally solitary and inward-focused activity, writing is remarkably collaborative. Most obviously, writers collaborate with readers, without whom a story is pointless and stillborn. Secondarily, writers collaborate with all the people whose stories they've read, all the people whose voices they've heard, all the people whose actions they've watched, and so on. Nothing is written in a vacuum.
And there will always, always be new stories out there, silently raising the stakes.
It's obviously not a directly competitive activity the way tennis is. Nor is it a team sport. Nor is it even an indirect competition, like track or skiing. I suppose one could draw parallels to the more artistic sports, such as figure skating and gymnastics, but even those have winners, losers, and concrete scores.
Yes, there are occasional prizes for writing, and one could, in a sense, view publication as a prize in and of itself, but competition is not really the point.
However. There are similarities. You need a set of basic skills, which can be improved through practice. There is, often, an element of competition with oneself and a sense that there are goals to be reached and perhaps overcome. And I don't know any writers who haven't experienced the moment when they read somebody else's story and say, "I could do better than that."
However -- again -- writing is not a zero sum game. One person's victory -- the creation of a successful story -- does not require another writer's defeat. Competition in sports can drive people to new heights, in a bizarre sort of collaboration, but always and ultimately, one person or team wins, and the other (or others) loses. The loser's performance is subordinated to that of the winner.
This does not occur with writing.
I had the "I could do better than this" reaction when I was quite young. However, after a while I noticed that I had another reaction, a reaction to truly good stories. Instead of saying, "I'll never be able to write that well," I found myself saying, "I won't ever be able to write that... but I can write something just as good, even if it's different." It was a gradual realization that every person is different and will naturally tell different stories in different ways, but that a great story is an invitation to rise to the same level, a silent challenge to improve. Writers may not intend their stories that way, but that underlies all their words.
For a fundamentally solitary and inward-focused activity, writing is remarkably collaborative. Most obviously, writers collaborate with readers, without whom a story is pointless and stillborn. Secondarily, writers collaborate with all the people whose stories they've read, all the people whose voices they've heard, all the people whose actions they've watched, and so on. Nothing is written in a vacuum.
And there will always, always be new stories out there, silently raising the stakes.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 10:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 11:16 pm (UTC)But fun, and with enough serious undertones that there's a fair amount of good fic written for it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-03 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 11:27 pm (UTC)it seems we start writing form different reactiosn too. (I 'amcutally too tired t owrte all my thoguths up adn inthis mood i"M in everythign tends to get very mixed adn somethign wants me to yamer abouthe negative bits and started nitpickign at very small thigns ofwhat you said..an the ngo very muc hoff-topic(trust me, i've done that before tonight). mostly, I aparnelty odn't have an' i coudldo that ,or better' reaction to good stories .the most hat comes out is a'see?Its' not so difficulttto ahve it comeoutthe ay y ouwant to.' adn then I"ll go o nwith my o wn stuff. i onl yocne read astory wher i imemdiatle yfeltthe urge to write something aboutthe same characteri nthe same tone.
forhterest it eitehr gets mte backto writign or i feel iek packign in adn goig nwhat you mentioned at first, i stil tendt osoemtiems give peopel the whoel floro so to speak.