Jessica Wildfire's Blog, page 421

And happy new year! Thanks for reading. :)

And happy new year! Thanks for reading. :)

Now, that’s pithy! ;)

Now, that’s pithy! ;)

Indeed! I’ve learned it’s fine to set *new* goals based on what you see someone else accomplish…

Indeed! I’ve learned it’s fine to set *new* goals based on what you see someone else accomplish, but it shouldn’t detract from something you just achieved for yourself.

Don’t quit!

Don’t quit! I tried to write every day in November and started to get burned out. So I dropped back to 2–3 posts per week. It made a big difference. Some people can keep it up everyday, but I have to write other things for my teaching job, etc. Plus I’ve found taking a couple of days to find something I genuinely need to say dramatically improves the quality. Someone on here recently said that maybe you should write daily, but you don’t need to publish daily. You can also write “in your head,” which includes thinking through ideas and looking for inspiration.

Conquer your jealousy

Source: Jacky Brown

Jealousy will poison your art if you let it. And that’s not all. Your career. Relationships. Everything. Almost nothing poses a greater threat to your happiness than this one wicked vice.

I’ve tried to decide on the best metaphor for jealousy. Maybe it’s a weed. Or a demon. But it’s also a drug. Who hasn’t caught themselves getting high off jealousy? We can spend hours hating people who’ve earned money, awards, or promotions that we thought belonged to us.

It’s easy to feel like the world has fucked you over. In some ways, it probably has. Sure, some writers or artists didn’t truly earn their success. They started with connections and advantages. Or they lucked into the right place and time. Meanwhile, you didn’t.

That sucks, and it feels good to vent.

Jealousy even offers a powerful contact high. More than once, I’ve listened to my friends bitch about the unfairness of it all.

Oh, woe is me.

I’m so talented. Why won’t anyone recognize my talent?

I’m so much more talented than that person, or that person. And yet they get these huge book deals and I’m stuck in a shitty studio apartment that doesn’t even have a washer-drier unit.

So I think I’m going with weed for my metaphor. Jealousy is a weed in the sense that it infests your mind and strangles your creativity. It’s also weed in the sense that smoking it makes you feel great.

It also makes you really hungry.

Ever notice how jealousy makes you crave potato chips?

I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, that was a long time ago now. Since my 20s, I’ve learned how to see inspiration in other people’s success, to feel my own disappointments, and to move on. I’m not talking about some fake, lithium-induced persona who pretends to smile all the time. Fuck that, too.

Just do the best work you can. Read. Write. Paint. Photograph. Submit. Publish. When things don’t go your way, allow some time to process the bad news. An ounce of self-pity goes a long way.

Stop obsessively reading other people’s bios.

Stop daydreaming about how one day you’ll snub that one critic.

Stop stabbing safety pins into that voodoo doll you made of that one editor or literary agent who embarrassed you. Or maybe that’s TMI on my part. What voodoo doll? I didn’t say anything about voodoo.

When you finally succeed despite the doubt and mockery of others, trust me. You won’t feel like rubbing it in their faces. Jealousy never leads to success. And success never satisfies jealousy.

This one guy in grad school spent half his waking hours shitting on other writers. Especially ones who published in small literary journals and won little awards. He would always ask to read the story or poem in question, and always returned it with extensive “feedback,” which always ended with something like, “I’m glad they’re giving this story a chance.”

Pretty soon, people stopped exchanging work with him.

This guy paid for his jealousy in countless ways. In workshops, he almost smiled when ripping apart stories he didn’t like. His written critiques bristled with gloomy predictions about our careers.

This guy wrote shit like, “You’ve obviously never read Hemingway.”

Imagine our surprise when a professor gutted a chapter of this guy’s novel in front of us. The first 30 seconds made me smirk. But after ten minutes, I felt like I was watching torture porn. His manuscript lay hogtied and beaten dead, still bleeding from internal trauma.

Sick to our stomachs, we left early that day. The guy stayed in his seat. I imagine he was too dizzy from shame to stand up.

That weekend, the guy crashed our pub crawl. The first bar we went to, he was already there. About six drinks under.

The guy walked up and berated us all, claiming to have more talent in his pinky than all five or six of us combined.

Then he stumbled off to the bathroom to puke.

We couldn’t help but grimace.

The guy was such a bad writer, he couldn’t even think up original insults. Some other drunk loser was doing the exact same thing in bars all across America. He was living a cliche.

But here’s the thing. We were all bad writers. We were all a little bit of a cliche. Or at least we weren’t good yet. Not that good. But we were learning and becoming better. This guy’s writing would never improve. Jealousy had poisoned him.

Karma revisits jealous people tenfold. Nobody wanted to serve on this poor guy’s thesis committee because he was such an ass. Nobody wanted to read his work. Or give him advice. Or even spend time with him. A few times, I ran into him at coffee shops and tried to chat. He wouldn’t shut up about the unfairness of the publishing industry, plans to start his own journal, people he didn’t like or didn’t find “that talented” compared to him.

So eventually I joined everyone else and began avoiding him on sight. A year later, he finally dropped out of the program.

Everyone feels jealous sometimes. What you do with that feeling matters. If you constantly attack others, then your creativity will wither. You’ve got to master your jealousy.

I’m prone to envy myself. Success in grad school left me unprepared for the whirlwind of marketing and promotion. My first book tour didn’t exactly go according to plan. Book festivals brimmed with writers who sold more copies than I did. Almost every weekend found me at an empty signing table, watching readers line up for someone else.

Sometimes I’d skim the opening passages of another “up and coming author” like me and wonder why their book was selling so well.

I’d lie in hotel beds and ask why my book hadn’t been featured on such and such website.

My whole life, I’d managed to keep jealousy at bay.

But then I began to invite it in.

So jealousy is also kind of like a vampire. Yeah, it’s a drug. A poison. A weed. A vampire.

At my last book festival, I met another first-time novelist who’d already enjoyed features in a dozen major newspapers. Hundreds of people showed up for her reading and signing.

The worst part? She wasn’t a bitch at all. One night, we had a beer at one of those author parties. She was likable.

The aftermath of my book tour sucked hard. For weeks, I couldn’t go a day without hearing this girl’s name on the radio, or seeing her photo on some website where I’d been hoping to publish.

Envy never swells, just festers. Some nights I couldn’t even write, just sat and read Publishers Weekly and glared at the names of other newbie writers. When I could write, my characters turned out sarcastic and snarky.

Rejection emails piled up in my inbox.

Sometimes I wrote hateful replies and then wisely deleted them. I swore at myself and threw things at my furniture.

I wandered Barnes & Noble like a ghost, keeping mental lists of how many new authors were showing up on display tables. I’d float past the section where I thought my novel belonged, and sigh.

Finally, I decided it was time for a break. At least from creative writing. It had become a painful, infuriating chore. All I could think about was my failure compared to everyone else’s success.

So I focused on academia. Health. Relationships. I had to purge the jealousy, and it took a long time.

Years later, here I am. Doing pretty well. The main thing that changed was my outlook. Sure, sometimes I still feel a little twinge of jealousy. But then I remember a few key things. First, someone else will always seem more successful. Second, you can’t measure your success by comparing yourself to others. You measure it by setting and accomplishing your own goals.

Finally, jealousy never goes away. Everyone feels a little jealousy. You can either expel that jealousy, or you can nurture it.

Don’t nurture your jealousy.

Pull it out by the root, the second you see it.

Sure, I did let jealousy win once. But at least I turned myself around before becoming a total embarrassment.

Take some people, though. They let their jealousy take over their entire lives, until they become toxic. They drive away their friends and peers with their constant complaining. After that, they stalk the Internet looking for new ways to stamp their ugliness onto the world. Instead of focusing on their craft, they cruise Medium, Amazon, or Goodreads challenging themselves to write evermore spiteful commentary. Their so-called reviews begin with lines like, “I don’t understand why everyone loves this book…”

If you’re struggling through a lull, then take a break. Don’t become a jealous troll who digs themselves deeper into failure with every hateful word aimed at another artist, photographer, musician, or writer.

Nobody’s life has room for jealousy. Neither does anyone’s career. People can spot envy from a mile away. It taints everything you do, and it drives away other professionals. But if you can manage your jealousy, then your craft will flourish. Finally, I apologize for the metaphors.

Medium is the best thing to ever happen to writers.

Medium is the best thing to ever happen to writers. For the past three months I’ve paid my mortgage just with my partner program cash! Seriously needed, too.

You sound bitter and angry that your own posts aren’t getting more attention.

You sound bitter and angry that your own posts aren’t getting more attention. I’ve seen this a hundred times. I’ve also felt jealous when I don’t understand why someone else is doing better than me. But lashing out at other writers will only drive away traffic and isolate you from this blogging community. But in closing, thanks for helping me prove my point.

OMG, it’s like you looked into my soul and saw me.

OMG, it’s like you looked into my soul and saw me.

Home Alone — couch eater.

Glad to hear you’ve embraced it. Sad to say I’ve never tried a washing machine. :)

Glad to hear you’ve embraced it. Sad to say I’ve never tried a washing machine. :)

Medium’s my favorite website now. :)

Medium’s my favorite website now. :)