Comparanoia
that green eyed demon weeping softly on your shoulder
Comparanoia (n) – the haunting ache of comparing your writing journey to others and being consumed by paranoia that you are a) missing out/falling behind, b) an untalented hack, or c) the victim of a conspiracy bent on supressing your genius.
I was introduced to the word ‘comparanoia’ by a friend who’d picked it up somewhere else, so I don’t know who to thank for this worthy contribution to the English language, but I owe them at the very least a big slab of cake. Because the writing community needs this word, let’s be honest.
The horrible truth about publishing is that however successful you are, there will always be rejection and failure and people getting some marker of success that you are not currently getting. Signing an agent leads to submission hell, getting a publishing deal leads to ‘rejections’ from bookshops, reviewers, awards judges, movie scouts, etc.
Even the Margaret Atwoods of the world don’t make every award shortlist their books are submitted to, and I’m pretty sure she’s not getting the seven figure, twelve book deals that Leigh Bardugo signed. But Leigh Bardugo has won very few prizes considering the sales figures, the Netflix deal etc. While I doubt neither Leigh nor Margaret are too worried about their career trajectories, I’ll bet even they occasionally watch an award ceremony or an adapted movie, or just have a really crappy buffle-headed writing day and feel the faintest echo of the comparanoia that us mortals are so familiar with.
I’ve been wrestling with this green eyed beastie a bit recently so figured I’d talk to you about it & in telling you how normal and pointless it is, remind myself!
It is an entirely unavoidable aspect of publishing partly because as I say above, there’s an endless supply of metrics of ‘success’ so we will always be lower down on some ladders than others. Which is kind of true of life in general, of course, but I think writers are particularly susceptible to it for three reasons:
1. We care very, very deeply about our books. We want them to do as well for themselves as possible, but the publishing experience is crowded with things that knock our belief in our books or ourselves so we search for markers of success to latch onto. To say – it’s okay, my book has achieved X therefore it’s not crap. Or the other side of that coin – if only my book achieves Y then I can relax.
We also know our career stability, our ability to keep publishing books, depends on the success of the current one. I read (and now can’t find) that something like 2/3rd of writers only ever publish 1-3 books, only 10% of writers publish 6 or more. Longevity is rare in publishing and our future contracts hinge on sales figures &/or awards nominations, so sadly hitting some markers of success does kinda matter for more than just our fragile egos!
2. Every book is different. That sounds obvious doesn’t it, but it matters. Every book is a unique product, with a unique readership and therefore unique marketing needs and markers of success. Even two superficially very similar books – two spy thrillers say – will differ slightly in how they can be best marketed and how they’re likely to be received based on a multitude of factors like the track record of the author, the publisher’s reach, the prose style … the gender of the author, their ‘fame’, their racial identity, their position on their publisher’s list etc.
I’m not saying it’s always fair btw – publishing is not a meritocracy and marketing decisions centre what’s best for the publisher, which won’t always overlap with what would be optimal for the book/you. That can suck, but there’s not a lot we as authors can do to change it. Just make sure you are going into contracts fully informed, so that the publisher’s intentions for your book don’t hit you out of left field.
But because each book is a unique product with a unique publishing trajectory, everyone can look at anyone else’s experience and see something that they themselves are not getting. Even someone in the middle of a big splashy debut bestseller high might hear about the close involvement, transparency and friendship an author gets with a small indie press and feel a wee pang.
3. Publishing can be slooooooooww. Writing itself is a solitary occupation (aka too much time in our own heads!) but add to that the waiting for news whilst watching others celebrating their successes on social media = perfect recipe for doubts to creep in. Is my book even getting read by editors/agents, is everyone getting signed faster than me, what if my sales figures are too low (what were they even forecast to be), what if arc readers hate it, what if my book doesn’t become The Book Of The Fair at London/Frankfurt - is my life over? Lol.
The comparanoia has been hitting me hard recently because I am waiting on edits for my next-next book (We Are All Ghosts In The Forest) (see reason 3 above) and have been at the ‘ugh I hate it’ stage of edits with another book (All The Birds Will Be Hostile) (see reason 1 above) and in this fairly rubbish phase, I’ve watched with joy and excitement as amazing things have happened for talented friends (reason 2! The hat-trick!).
We contain multitudes, right? So while most of my multitudes lovelovelove seeing good things happen for friends, there has been a softly weeping wallflower at the edge of the crowd wallowing in comparanoia, convinced that I’m not good enough and will never make it (whatever either of those things mean).
I think it’s important to not inflict your comparanoia on the friends who need to be able to celebrate their wins, and it’s seldom useful to vent your bitterness in public either. What’s that going to do other than make you look small? BUT I also think it’s healthy to talk about how comparanoia can undermine your self-belief and eat away at your creative energy.
Publishing is long and weird and uncertain, it is entirely natural to look at your peers for evidence of how your experience compares. And vital to maintain perspective on the messiness & unreliability of those comparisons!
It's also important to be our own best advocates, though. Which will sometimes mean asking for more than we are being handed, whether that’s frequency of comms from your agent, or a push to get your book into supermarkets.
But we need to be realistic here – there is no point signing with a small press expecting big5 marketing spend, or signing with a big5 with a pensive literary novel and assuming you’ll get identical marketing to your list sibling writing Booktok-friendly on-trend commercial fic. (You wouldn’t want identical marketing btw. Booktok is not where your readership is). We need to be able to parse the comparanoia from the fair treatment and investment suited to our book that we are entitled to expect, and then go have a conversation with our agent or editor about our concerns OR give ourselves a hug, a cathartic whine at a friend and some extra chocolate.
So a reminder (to myself), comparanoia is natural but it is also comparing apples to … not oranges, they’re too similar … langoustines. It’s okay to feel all the feels, but don’t lose perspective or let the green eyed softly weeping demon on your shoulder sap you of your creative joy. Your books will find their way, and so will you.
