excellentia

Once upon a time, I wrote an essay for an English class.  I was a sophomore in high school, but I had taken sophomore English the year previous with a bunch of other freshmen, and as such I was in put in a class full of juniors when I changed schools.  This wasn't a huge deal (although in high school, it can't just be ignored, so all the juniors were well aware of the five or so sophomores in that class) but it was interesting.

This is how my essay writing attack plan went during that year of high school:

1) Read (most of) the book
2) Participate in class discussion of the book
3) Think about the book and my essay
4) The day the rough draft is due, show up about ten minutes early to class and write down some stuff about the book and what it means.  Usually this overlapped into the starter that we wrote every day, so I'd write the rough draft instead and write the starter later, since the rough draft was due more immediately.
5) Trade rough drafts with another student and edit theirs while they edit mine
6) Go home and forget about the book
7) The day the essay is due, wake up early in the morning
8) Completely disregard anything written in the rough draft and any of the peer feedback written on it.
9) Write the entire essay in one actual draft, one sitting, just over one hour.
10) Success!

I followed this plan of attack quite closely.  I went to school that day, armed with my last-minute essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter entitled "Hester Prynne as a Protein Shake".  I was quite fond of it.

When the essays were handed back, I received mine and began flipping through it, reading the comments written in.  I got to the end and flipped it over to see my score.  Next to my "A" was a note that read something along the lines of, "This is quite possibly one of the best essays written by a high schooler that I have ever read".  This was high praise indeed, and I was pleased.  Some of the juniors were slightly less pleased, however, when they heard that a sophomore had written the best essay in the class.

Well, the semester continued and it came time to write another essay, this time on The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite literature classics.  But when it came time to write the essay, I was unusually nervous.  It's very unlikely that I would write another essay that was just as good if not better than one entitled "Hester Prynne as a Protein Shake".  You can't compare everyone to protein shakes, after all.  I was afraid that my Gatsby essay would be compared to the Hester essay and would be a disappointment.  My essays were always good, but it's intimidating when you have a standard to live up to...

I followed my usual attack plan and wrote the essay and turned it in.  I received high marks and everything was fine.

I still get intimidated by my writing, though.  Sometimes, I write something fantastic, and people love it, and happiness reigns.  And every time I write something after that, I'm afraid that people won't like it as much as the fantastic one.  It's like I'm Daisy Buchanan, and whoever reads my writing is Jay Gatsby, and yes, sometimes Daisy is fantastic and beautiful and just like Gatsby remembers/imagines her, but more often, Daisy can't possibly live up to that unrealistic expectation that Gatsby has envisioned and hoped for, and so she becomes disenchanting despite the fact that she's a remarkable person.

The only solution to this is for Gatsby to die.
Which means you, dear readers.

...I would actually prefer that you not die, though.  I have come to enjoy having people read the things that I put on the internet, and if you die, that might become more difficult for you to do.

Really, the best solution I can think of is for me to continue writing, and you to continue reading, and sometimes things will be fantastic (which I attribute chiefly to the topic of the writing...some things are easier to be fantastic with) and happiness will reign,  and the rest of the time, I'll be practicing writing (and you can be practicing reading!) and ideally getting better, to the point where fantastic stuff is produced more regularly. :)