Being creative, crafting something out of imagination and thin air, is a wonderful and magical thing. From your own mind and skills, something awesome is created- a painting, a doodle, that perfect photo of your friend, a poem or short story that blazed its way across your mind. But in all things, we are not in isolation when we create. Inevitably, we compare ourselves to others. If we’re just starting our creative journey, we look to those who went before us for inspiration. If we’re some time into the creative process, we look around ourselves at the peers in our field of endeavour, we look at what others are doing. More often than not, when we compare ourselves to others, we believe we’re not as good, that what we’re doing is of poor quality.
This is wrong, of course, and a lie we tell ourselves.
This is where the theory of two cakes comes into the picture, and how this theory slots in nicely with rule two of Written Off Writing – You’re not allowed to say anything negative about your work.
The Two Cakes meme originated in 2014 from a Tumblr user by the name of stuffman. They now go by the username stuffman-art. It shows someone who has made a cake, as it sits next to a cake they feel is better, and they are angry. The second panel shows someone else excited because there are two cakes! And so they should be excited. I don’t care how the cake looks, it’s still delicious cake!
As I said before, creativity and art does not happen in isolation, in a vacuum. While we may shut ourselves away and be artistic and poetic, and it can sometimes be lonely, what we produce is more often than not influenced by what we’ve fed our imaginations over our life time. Reading books, visiting art galleries, watching tv shows and movies, all of that sits in your mind and we use that kaleidoscope of awesome to create art. We also keep doing this while we’re being creative, and this can harm us.
I am the perfect example of this. I used to, still do, or want to, paint miniatures. Heck, it’s difficult finding the right tense to describe this. During lockdown, a bunch of us got online to paint minis. I played wargames back in the 90’s, and I do love me some action figures, so we hung out and painted online. Most of those involved played actual wargames, so they had units and armies to paint, with regulated colours. Me? I had to be different.
I want to find miniatures, or create some, that look like characters in the stories I write, and paint them. I’ve used a few online 3D sculpting tools and made some awesome examples. I would also like a 3D printer to print them off, but that is way down the track.
Anyway, I am not a great painter. One of the people in the painting group is an awesome painter and you can find him on Instagram here- @mountain_man_games. I was browsing Pinterest looking for inspiration, and having these other people online who were casually painting their minis, and being awesome at it. Soon, I became very disheartened and stopped. What I was producing was nowhere near as good as what I was finding online, and I sucked. I was great at writing, but this other venture? No, not so great.
My wife saw some of the minis I painted, as rough as they were, and told me they were pretty good. She acknowledged where I was on the painting skill tree, we’re honest with our feedback like that, but she said, for my skill, and my eyesight, they were pretty good.
She saw two cakes.
I have come to accept that yes- I am not that good at painting minis, but also it is a process of becoming better by doing. It is something you can learn. It may be a slow process, but I will eventually get better than I am now. I have written about this here, in my 2025 Creative Life Bingo.
The idea of the Two Cakes theory also starts to raise its head when looking at what is already out there. Romantasy is a growing genre combining overt romance tropes set in a fantasy setting. I claim ignorance here, in that I am sure it is already huge, and that there is already bookshops devoted to Romantasy. Now there are a whole feast of authors writing in this genre, and readers are comparing them to each other – does this author do it better than that one?
When there is a boom in something, people flock there to either consume or to provide.
The providers in this scenario are writers trying to get their stories published. They may be wracking their brains trying to find new and different ways to combine the fantasy elements with romance elements, and coming up against comparisons and thinking themselves not as good.
The consumers are those who are devouring the books in this genre like they’re sugary treats. From what I have heard and read online, people love the idea of fantasy and romance, and want to devour as much of it as they can, and they are not always concerned with unique and different takes about it. Give them more raunchy elves and hi-flying dragon romance stories, yes sir!
I like tiramisu. There are many different varieties of tiramisu out there, but they all have that basic coffee-based cakeiness about them. You don’t need to totally reinvent the concept of tiramisu for me. I will happily snack on the same tiramisu each day. In my world, the two cakes are tiramisu cakes.
Not only is comparing yourself to others bad for you, especially when you’re first starting out, it’s often wasted energy because the people who care- people who consume your art, will love what you give them, enjoy your work, and often aren’t comparing you to others anyway. Well, marketing may have you say- this book is a combination of Lord of the Rings and Beverly Hills Cop. But that is marketing talk.
Sigmund Freud said- The only person with whom you have to compare yourself is you in the past. Have you made strides forward? Have you learned something, or improved your craft since yesterday? If so, then congratulations! That is awesome!
This concept of the two cakes aligns very well with rule two of Written Off Writing– You’re not allowed to say anything negative about your creation. When your cake doesn’t look as nice as the cake sitting next to yours, or you wrote a poem which doesn’t stack up against Poe, Shakespeare or more, you don’t say that you’re not good enough. Be brave and let someone read it, someone you trust and feel will be honest with you, and nine times out of ten they will tell you that what you created, is awesome.
That is the feedback you listen to.
Look at who you were a year ago, and see all the progress you have made. Be INSPIRED by people who are awesome, but understand that they too, started somewhere. They too looked at other people and felt they weren’t as good.
Being creative, just for the sake of making cool stuff, is good for you and good for your world. Don’t stop yourself because other people are doing it, allegedly better than you. Your creativity is worth it. It counts towards the betterment of the world.
- Be creative for your own sake. You are not in competition with people who have won awards.
- Know that what gets posted online is always the final product, and those artists went through the exact same struggles as you, before producing that quality.
- Also know that they didn’t post their trials and tribulations, only the best stuff.
- Plus, often those photos have awesome lighting setups, or filters.
Enjoy your art. Take joy in the creation, the imagination and the execution.
Now find your tribe, create some cool art, and make the world more colourful.
Written Off Writing is a community, a movement to help those people who’d love to write something, but don’t know what, or struggle to come up with ideas. It is a whimsical experience, a place to experiment with crafting ideas, knowing that if you don’t like something, just try again.
