A Little Creative Competition

As part of my Saturday Summary this past weekend, I posted that my latest acceptances marked "my 55th accepted handbell piece (though my 62nd accepted handbell title, if you count the individual parts of multi-piece sets)."  This prompted fellow handbell composer Matthew Prins to comment:

You're at 55? Crud, I'm only at 62 (~80 including parts of collections). Need to work harder to stay ahead of you... 

I'm not sure if Matthew intended it or not, but his comment got me thinking about the role a little creative competition can play in the life of a Creative.

Whether we Creatives like to admit it or not, we do compare ourselves with others in the same field.  We ask if their work is better than ours, more prolific, "greater" (whatever that means), or is selling better.  For the most part, this sort of pointless comparison does little more than make us feel woefully inadequate and cause us to start doubting our own creative output.  I know that when I first started composing, I spent quite a lot of time comparing myself to others and their works.  I would rejoice at my successes, take a sick sort of schadenfreude at any of their missteps, and get downright depressed when they had a huge success.

It was a miserable way to live.

In the past few years, however, I've realized (thankfully) that this is the wrong way to look at things.  Oh, I still compare my work to others, and count my pieces versus theirs, but now I use it as a catalyst, something to -- for want of a less graphic visual -- light a proverbial fire under my equally proverbial rear end.  I can look ahead to where other Creatives are and use their successes as a driving force to try to meet their accomplishments.  When I sit down at the computer and would rather just surf Facebook, having a goal of achieving what another Creative has already achieved can get me back to work, back on track, and help turn an otherwise unproductive span of time into something productive.

So when I saw Matthew's comment, I realized that it worked the other way, too -- even as he sees me with a number of published pieces growing closer to his, it will (I hope) inspire him to stay at work, to produce more and bigger and better, to try to stay several steps ahead of me.  That, in turn, will cause me to push myself to try to get ahead of him, and the cycle -- call it vicious if you wish, though I don't -- continues.

Here's the kicker, though -- I don't wish Matthew any ill will or bad luck.  Quite the contrary, I'm rooting for him and his composing almost as much as I'm rooting for mine (though for anyone other than me, it's on a mostly subconscious level).  The more success he (and every other handbell composer out there) has, the more it will drive me to work for my own successes.  The better the pieces he creates, the more I'll have to work to make mine equally good.  Instead of looking at fellow composers like Matthew as people I'm competing against, I now look at them as people I'm competing with, and the more success any of us has, the better we all become. 

So, thank you, Matthew, for your inadvertently-declared challenge.  Best of luck to you in all your composing, and may you soon reach 100 pieces!

Though not before I do....