Similar Books (required):
If you ever query a literary agent/publisher, you’re bound to see this field come up at some point. It feels like you’re treading on the toes of giants as a new author. To try and compare your book to the ones you’ve read seems like a childish game, one fraught with the dangers of comparison.
It feels like you’re saying you look like Megan Fox in a blind dating show. (I know, it’s weird that I have that example right off the top of my head.)
The temptation is there, since the form is typically using the “short answer” field, to just type the names of the books you initially think of, and then add an asterisk, or a parenthetical, to say *(just so you know, dear agent, I realize how incredibly ambitious it is of me to write this name here, and I feel like I am doing myself a disservice in drawing a line between this masterwork and my budding doodle).
I heard a quote the other day, and I’m not going to say who said it, because if I do, then everyone reading this who has heard me talk in the last year/two will immediately roll their eyes, and start to discount what is said based on who said it. Just so you know, I wasn’t looking for this quote, I found it secondhand from a third-party source.
“Everything that you call life, was put in place by people who were no smarter than you.”
And this is probably true. What draws the line between the elite authors and us fledgling, flightless birds who have only just finished eating the regurgitated worms our mothers fed us?
The answer is nothing, except the idea that they have something inherent that we can’t see.
I’m not saying that I’m a young Shakespeare, or that anyone who picks up a paintbrush is inherently Van Gogh in training. Stephen King puts it well, in his book On Writing; “while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.”
There are, of course, the Great, out there in the world. The Shakespeares, the Van Goghs, the Lennons. But most of what we read, see, hear, out there in our daily lives, fall into the category of the good; those dedicated few who had a decent knack, and worked and shaped that from mere competence to good.
Now, we can split hairs and go back and forth all day, about what we are calling great vs good, and how dare I try to define what either means, but we can all agree that there are the superlatives in all mediums, and then the next step down. That next step down are not once-in-a-millennium gifted, they are normal people like you.
To complete the metaphor, the “books” you have read and feel unworthy to compare yours to, were written by people no smarter than you. Fill in the field, have confidence, and remember that they probably felt the exact same way, back when they were you.
Thanks for reading.