Competition
You pick up a magazine—or even your alumni news—and somebody, somebody you know, has gone further, faster, toward your dream. Instead of saying, "That proves it can be done," your fear will say, "He or she will succeed instead of me."
Competition is another spiritual drug. When we focus on competition we poison our own well, impede our own progress. When we are ogling thc accomplishments of others, we take our eye away from our own through line. We ask ourselves the wrong questions, and those wrong questions give us thc wrong answers.
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•'Why do I havc such rottcn ll,ck? WhV did he get his v/articlc/play out before I got nunc out? |s it bccausc of mOVlC >„ ..W|13t's the use? What do I havc to offer?" Wc often
,sc questions as we try to talk ourselves out of creating Questions like these allow us to ignore more useful qucs--Pid I work on my play today? Did 1 make the deadline ti0IlS 1 it off where it needed to go? Have I done any network-
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Ulg These are the real questions, and focusing on them can be \ for us. No wonder it is tempting to take the first emo-al drink instead. No wonder so many of us read People tl0nazine (or the New York Times Book Review, or Lears, or yf^ella, or Esquire) and use them to wallow in a lot of un-
lKa\Vc make excuses for our avoidance, excuses focused on hers. "Somebody (else) has probably said it, done it, thought 0tl and better. . . . Besides, they had connections, a rich fUcr, they belong to a sought-after minority, they slept their way to the top . . "
Competition lies at the root of much creative blockage. As tists, we must go within. Wc must attend to what it is our inner guidance is nudging us toward. We cannot afford to worry about what is in or out. If it is too early or late for a piece of work, its time will come again.
As artists, wc cannot afford to think about who is getting ahead of us and how they don't deserve it. The desire to be better than can choke off the simple desire to be. As artists we cannot afford this thinking. It leads us away from our own voices and choices and into a defensive game that centers outside of ourselves and our sphere of influence. It asks us to define our own creativity in terms of someone elses.
This compare-and-contrast school of thinking may have its place for critics, but not for artists in the act of creation. Let the critics spot trends. Let reviewers concern themselves with what is in and what is not. Let us concern ourselves first and foremost with what it is within us that is struggling to be born.
When we compete with others, when wc focus our creative concerns on the marketplace, we are really jostling with other artists in a creative footrace. This is the sprint mentality.
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