I try not to. I end up doing so anyways.
Quality is subjective and won't always guarantee success. Sometimes things succeed specifically because they're bad, and everyone wants to watch the trainwreck. Or it's a work that's just mediocre, but because it doesn't require deep thought and is reasonably exciting, it takes off in popularity. Sometimes I compare myself to those authors, and assure myself that even if I'll never get as popular as them, I've written a better story than them by my own standards. When I'm down, it's a quick ego trip.
Other times I read stories that are both popular and very good, by my own standards. Yeah, sometimes I get envious. It's something that requires a lot of self-discipline to avoid ever becoming, I think. I feel like their characters are more engaging, their stories more exciting, their jokes funnier and more frequent, their worlds more consistent, their prose more poetic. Or maybe I'm just mildly terrified by how they can write three chapters a week of decent quality, somehow.
But I've been trying to be proud of what I CAN accomplish. I wrote twenty chapters. That's not nothing. I've stuck with an original story for maybe 200 pages, after struggling to stick to even a fanfic that long for several years. That's incredible. Someone told me they really enjoy my character voices. That makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
I knew going in my story wouldn't be very popular for a number of reasons, being a rather niche-y story. But maybe it can still find its niche.
