Nothing can put you in the maelstrom of fiendish thinking like comparisons. Few people can be objective when comparisons involve them and others. Some over-evaluate themselves and others devaluate themselves. If you care to engage in the losing wager of comparing your writing skills to those of others, pick someone to do it who neither knows you nor the other writers you suggest as comparable.
Between the heavenly and the hellish, the glorious experience and the crucifixion of self, there exists the earthly expenditure of being a committed writer. The effort made, the discipline required, the persistence explored, the encouragement received, the rejection guaranteed—all of these a potential reality in the process.
The expectations of us as writers probably vary as much as our writing itself. Who we perceive ourselves to be and who others assume we are can create a gap as vast as the Grand Canyon. We can have the proverbial illusions of grandeur or the assumptions of abject failure present in our creative concepts of ourselves. “Realistic” need only apply to the unemotional, indifferent, or the pessimistic. Manic/Depressive to use the old term for what is now referred to as Bipolar holds a closer than comfortably admitted description of the ups and downs of penning fiction. No insult intended toward those who truly suffer from the malady . . . of both.
And speaking from a pseudo-objective opinion, most stories dwell somewhere between the heavenly and the hellish—in subject matter and the written words. Few can elevate their writing to the sublime. And who decides that elevation has indeed been reached. The scaling of words is less definitive than the conquering of a mountain, planting a flag or marker, noting the ultimate achievement of reaching “the top”. Some “mountaintops” are mere hills. Certainly not Everest. Yet each speaks to the one who scrambled and fought to arrive there.
That perfection so many chase will not be caught here on earth. We’re flawed and although regenerated in Christ, our redemption for this cursed flesh draws near but remains illusive in an unpredictable timeframe. We write from our base of somewhere between the heavenly and the hellish and hope to God it matters.
God, only you know the value of our work—how much it matters to you. Thank you for the privilege of writing words. May they be pleasing to you above all else. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.