Writers: What’s Your Competitive Advantage?

Your writing career won’t look like mine.

My writing career won’t look like yours.

But we have different strengths as writers. Some of you are awesome at churning out 9,000 words in a day. Some of you want to write amazing fiction series.

I personally hate the typical fiction series. I’ve read a few literary ones, like by John Updike or Richard Ford. That makes me pretentious? I get it. Your interest is different than mine.

Use your strength to your competitive advantage.

You can write a series like nobody else. You can write copy for landing pages or something and hone it and hone it and hone it. Maybe you have a knack for short stories on Instagram. Yeah go for it.

Me on the other hand, if I wrote a standard thriller fiction series or something, it’d be disingenuous. That’s not the strength or competitive advantage I’d want to cultivate.

My competitive advantage as a writer? Well…

I don’t know. I know what I’m interested in — contemporary literary fiction with an underground bent, Jesus, punk rock, new creative endeavors, stuff on the margins.

Or maybe it’s not something I’m interested in genre-wise. Maybe it’s my observation. Or that I just keep writing. Or maybe that I can combine marketing copy with literary fiction. Or maybe it’s none of the above.

I’m still wrestling with this question. I’m still figuring it out.

What about you? Have you figured out your competitive advantage as a writer?

I’m Josh Spilker, a writer and author. I blog about the writing process at Create, Make, Write and write about everyday life at Vaguely Feel. For more like this, follow this publication:

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