Jealousy and Writers

Jealousy. This is kind of like those little icons on sites which ask “are you a human?” Check ‘yes’, please. Ergo (I’ve always wanted to use ‘ergo’), you’re likely to be jealous of other writers at one time or other. Somebody turns out a piece you don’t think you could have; another gets more praise than you think warranted i.e., more than you got.

Mostly writers deny or ignore the green-eyed monster. But pretending doesn’t help. Suppressed jealousy can make you feel inadequate. And people convinced they are lesser than aren’t the most open to learning and growing. So what can you do?

How to tell if you are jealous

This may have a kind of duh! feeling to it but like all emotions, jealousy can prompt you directly to action without being conscious of what lies beneath. A not-comprehensive list of how it might demonstrate itself:

• Nit-picking the envied person’s piece. You can usually tell you’re doing it if nobody else has the same problem.
• Pretending you don’t remember a fact/event which has been established to make The Other doubt how effectively she got it across.
• ‘Forgetting’ to read The Other’s piece.
• Making extremely critical remarks (e.g. this is junk) rather than a more nuanced and kinder comment (e.g. I got a bit confused by the plot).

Of course, sometimes these are legitimate—well, maybe not the last one. But if you find yourself doing these more than occasionally, that you need to pause and ask yourself, what’s going on?

How to deal with your jealousy

Naturally, you could just stop expressing your feelings. But while that might stop the behavior, it doesn’t stop the emotion. So I propose a more comprehensive way.

Okay, are you jealous of Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie or Charles Dickens? Of course not. Unless you’re writing with them (particularly challenging in Dickens’ case), you don’t envy them—you admire them. So why not turn what you are feeling into that? It all comes from the same source but admiring someone’s writing makes it a whole lot easier for you and on you.

So when you get that funny, uncomfortable feeling in your stomach, or heart, or throat, try to reframe it.

Reframing the feeling

This is an exercise best done with a glass of wine and a quiet house.

• Consult wherever in your body is telling you that you’re jealous. Don’t try to chase it away. Just be with it.
• Ask yourself What about The Other’s writing makes me feel this way?
• Some answers might be she makes it look so damn easy or how come he could come up with that great plot twist? or I wish I could write as lyrically—mine is so flat. Etc., etc.
• Having identified the source, add: and I admire that. That is, she makes it look so damn easy and I admire that. How come he came up with that great plot twist? I admire that. You get the drill.
• Hopefully, you can tap into the secret admiration which prompted the negative feeling to begin with.
• Use this understanding to benefit your writing by asking The Other, “God, you make it look so damned easy. How do you do it?” You not only flatter The Other but might even get some good tips out of the response.

So, you can use the twinges of jealousy into something productive which can not only help your writing but relax that stomach, heart or throat that has been tensing up.

But what do you do it the tables are turned. How do you deal with envy directed your way? Next post.