The Green-Eyed Monster: A Writer Roundtable
We’ve all seen the meme. It’s the standard visual for jealousy now, it seems. A man and a woman are walking and the guy looks back at another woman, an action that causes the woman he’s with to cast them both a sidelong glance (or glare). But what about jealousy in regard to our writing careers. Or maybe it’s just plain envy. I wanted to know, so I asked a few folks who have been in that life of words for a while what they thought.
Do you get jealous of the success of other writers you know? How do you deal with that? How do you avoid the comparison trap?
Elizabeth Donald: Another writer’s success does not diminish my success, my accomplishments, or my potential for either. There isn’t a finite quantity of success to go around; it’s not pie. When my writer friends have a great new contract, a stellar review, major sales, etc. I am happy for them. I know they have worked very hard to get where they are, as I do, and I have faith that one day my hard work will be rewarded as theirs was. I find it distasteful when I see a writer complaining about someone else’s success, or that they don’t understand why it hasn’t happened for them yet. Is it so hard to simply be happy for someone else’s good fortune?
I remember something Frank Fradella said once when we were holding a Literary Underworld panel: that when many authors support each other and provide an artistic community for each other, the work is inevitably better. I am mangling what he said, but he brought up the Lost Generation of writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald bashing around Paris together in the 1920s. And he wasn’t arguing that we were all incipient Hemingways and Fitzgeralds, but more that their natural talent was enhanced by being in community with others. (Not that Hemingway is a great example of lack of competitiveness, be that as it may.) It’s one of the reasons the Literary Underworld exists; to help authors support each other and help each other succeed. Jealousy, competitiveness, resentfulness… None of these things make any sense to me. They’re counterproductive to the goals of art, and they eat away at the soul.
Read the full article:
https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-green-eyed-monster-writer-roundtable.html
