So, last Wednesday was crazy. Shortly after waking up I found myself dealing with something and someone — Shaun Usher — I didn’t think I’d need to.
LET’S REWIND.
In early February I wrote a humble little blog post to adorn my new personal site. It was about content aggregators and how they’re not creating anything new and/or, in my opinion, anything of value. I expressed my frustration that many writers can’t get jobs writing but that they could probably get jobs working as and for aggregators.
When SMWTO was happening, I was asked by Hugh Elliott (@wheniwas19) if I’d like to participate in a project of sorts. I have never met Hugh in real life, but we had gone back and forth a few times while I was working at my former agency. His tweets often made me smile or laugh. I said sure.
Over the last few weeks I’ve learned more about what I’ve gotten myself into. Turns out that we’re doing a little thing at this month’s FlashinTo event, which will be held this Wednesday, February 29. The topic we’ll be engaging with is collaboration.
Writing.
Writing is so many things, but most of all it’s difficult. I don’t know any writer I admire who says or thinks that it’s easy. On principle, I don’t respect or even consider those who don’t think it’s a real job or vocation. Writing’s hard, man.
One of the reasons writing is so hard is because so many of us compare ourselves to other writers, and, in many cases, the great figures that we admire — the ones whose shadows loom over us and intimidate us, in turn making some of us shiver, and cower, and rip into ourselves: I suck because I’m not Hemingway or David Foster Wallace. I know I suffer from this. I know that I compare myself to my peers and contemporaries and, more often than not, find myself trashing my work afterwards.