The Better Writer

For better or worse, I am a competitive person. In this digital world where we have so many stats, it’s easy to constantly compare your achievements to others. I acknowledge it’s a weakness, but I can’t help it.

I include this preface to say it is not easy for me to concede that I am not always on top. Not so much on top of the writing world. I’m not dead and yet still get my name on books like Tom Clancy. That’s a mountaintop few of us will ever reach.

But I’ve always felt a competitive spirit with another up-and-coming writer who I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for a decade now. That we run in many of the same circles, both in writing and real life as a dear friend, only magnified the challenge for me. After all, we started on similar footings: each unknown but hungry to make something of this hobby turned passion.

So let me tear the band aid off here and now. I unequivocally state:

She is the better writer.

Across prose, poetry, and plays, she has racked up success upon success. Some of the most recent being winning Outstanding Production in a regional festival for her play Funeral for the Cat and winning runner up in a contest. She launched her first solo-author offering last year with The Wailings and is on track to publish her first poetry manuscript later this year .

A poetry manuscript with handmade graphics to complement the subject of each poem no less, creating a vivid reading experience for the eye. You read that right: handmade.

It’s not like I wasn’t competitive in all these categories. One of the favorite messages I ever wrote to our shared group of friends happened to be when I entered a play into a festival that she had entered the year prior. Her play was accepted and performed, and the year after I followed suit.

On the poetry front, I had poems published. But I never sold any. She’s sold poetry, and let’s not forget that manuscript.

For a while, I could at least placate myself that I was “ahead” in the prose department. I had always considered poetry and plays to be the second and third horse in the race. I claimed short stories as my own. Certainly this was one hill I could defend.

Slowly, she chipped away at that last bastion. She placed a horror story in a contest we both entered. Me? Nothing. And horror was my thing. It was my Roman Empire.

The writing was on the wall when she then published The Wailings, a horror novella that she hired me to edit and proofread. And it was good. Damn good. Vivid, gnawing, and so well executed despite the incredible technical challenge that is presenting a story out of chronological order.

Once again, it’s not like I’m not competitive in this category. But I’m not putting time and energy into plays and poetry on top of killing it in the prose department. She really does it all.

And if that all weren’t enough, she somehow managed to pull off many of the achievements mentioned above in the wake of a horrific tragedy. I didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of this pivot point in her life until very recently when she wrote a personal reflection on it.

It’s raw. It’s painful. It’s captivating.

And, in the strange way that grief can be, it’s beautiful. Like the first breath after the storm has passed. The moment of calm when you know it’s time to start picking up the pieces.

And it’s right here on Vocal:

Because (surprise!) she’s a fellow Vocal creator.

I have known pain. I have known loss. But I have never known that which Bri describes, and I can only hope that I carry myself the way she has should I ever find myself in her place.

Not only has she inspired me with such incredible resilience, but her writing successes have inspired me to reach my own humble milestones.

The Wailings finally spurred me to convert my Vocal series into a full-blown book, and A Bloody Business is coming out in just a few short weeks. Funeral for the Cat inspired me to revisit my previous plays and ask if I can get these pieces back onto the stage.

And I even returned to poetry for the first in at least a year to work through some dark feelings recently. The resulting piece is some of the most beautiful verse I’ve ever written, and it actually helped me escape a bad headspace. Words have power.

So I happily cede the hill to you, Bri. You have more than earned it. Go forth and conquer, Queen Writer.