hurts so good

I was reading some work by a writer friend of mine last night and was just totally blown away by what she had done. Deep, complex characterizations that took third-person-deep-penetration to a whole new level. One character in particular exploded off that page for me, so fascinating, with this huge history, woven in cleanly, no sense of exposition, no info-dump, no telling. Action sequences that rocked me, conversations that were at times moving, at times hilarious. Plots that had no holes. I’m telling you, I was drinking it in like water.

Well, I mean, I was drinking it in like water in-between moments of eye-peeling shame at my own comparatively pathetic attempts. Ha! Oh, the self torture! Our work is similar enough that comparison is easy and inevitable–and strangely salutary. Yes, it’s deadly to compare one’s own work to some master at the height of their particular zenith. It’s dangerous, too, (though oh, so, tempting to the ego) to compare one’s stuff to those whose craft or talent or whateverthefuck is proving considerably less effective in producing the desired impact in the reader then one’s own. And it’s pointless to compare when it’s apples and oranges. BUT. When someone’s work is fairly evenly matched in various important criteria, and said someone’s work blows one’s own stuff out of the water in various ways…well. Learning happens. In between bashing my head against the desk and crawling under the bed in twitching embarrassment, that is.

All of which is to say, that, wow, I just read this really good stuff and I dreamed about it all night and now I’m rethinking whole sections of my current novel-in-progress and I LOVE it when this happens. Even though it kind of hurts.