I talk a lot in writing about figuring out your best pace. That writing communally can be fun, because having people around you doing the thing is fun, not because matching their pace is always the best idea for you.
The sports coverage may be better where you are, but USian Olympic coverage always refers to being a silver medalist like it is a massive disappointment. And when it comes to writing, done is done. First draft, edited draft, polished draft, they mostly just need to get done. Sure, sometimes there are deadlines. But no one who reads a book they picked up in a bookstore thinks, hmm, I hope this was written more speedily than the book over there.
Are there limits? Sure. I've met people who have been changing the commas in their draft for about two years, and that doesn't feel productive to me. Sometimes you have to quit a story, or say your going to quit a story. And sometimes a story has a fundamental flaw and you have to decide to rewrite it from the ground up or just write something else.
But that first draft, that first attempt to tell the story, it just needs to get done. And done can honestly be in the eye often beholder. Done can mean having "insert fight scene here" in part.
Speed to the end of the draft is only one measure of it, and I enjoy watching my little graph line go up as I draft.
And if it bums you out to see other's finishing faster, perhaps it helps to think of yourself as one of the other gymnasts. Imagine being the gymnast who is not Simone Biles or sub in your fave athlete here. All these other gymnasts showed up to compete. And they still did their routines after Biles did hers, already knowing that no matter how perfect they were, they could not beat a person who has actual moves named after her. But they still did it. And some of them had their best days ever.
You don't have to be the Simone Biles of writing. There is only one of those. But there are so many books. And have you met readers? They love books. They are waiting for your story too. Because even the fastest writer doesn't write enough to keep a reader happy for a whole year.
