Sometimes, in my youth, I imagined that one day, all of my
dreams would come true, and I would get a sort of ticker tape parade where
everyone honored me and my accomplishments. As I got older, the confetti parade
morphed into the book deal and the signing with an agent and all the trappings
of success in publishing. Obviously, this is all some sort of dream. It’s not
like confetti launches when you sign a contract (how cool would that be?).
To make things somewhat worse, right after signing, not only
is there no confetti parade, there are no great lights blinking over your head
to let everyone around you suddenly know that you’re a signed writer and your
really, real book will be out in the world (soon—okay, soon by some very
lengthy scales). There’s nothing to see, and for many writers, there won’t be a
thing to even hold in your hand for a year, so it doesn’t feel real.
And then, to make it worse, all around people are having
what looks like the Confetti parade. They have the Signed With AWESOME AGENT
posts; the I SIGNED A 6Figure Contract; The MY BOOK LANDED ON THE NYT
Bestseller list. Oh, it’s exhausting sometimes to hold your little candle of
success up in the world so noisy and filled with blowtorches of success—and wishing
your little candle was more like a Hollywood special effect. But it isn’t
(well, not yet you tell yourself, but there’s this feeling that it might never
come true). And then after being inundated by all this noise, all this bluster
threatening to blow out your little candle of success, there comes One More
Person with GREAT News.
Oh, dear folks, I will tell you jealousy is an emotion you
are not supposed to have. It’s not supposed to exist. I’m supposed to be a
gracious and magnanimous person. And I am—most of the time. Right after I signed,
I suffered from this emotion I’m not supposed to feel. I’d been taught that
jealousy is bad. I’m supposed to ignore it. I’m supposed to be able to “just
get over it.” So there it is, jealousy in all its hideous—shameful—presence.
And the book that lands on the bestseller list is a fan fic of a fan fic,
widely panned by critics as the worst stinking pile of poo ever, and it’s
selling 100,000 copies a day.
UGH.
And I’m jealous of that pile of poo, an unenviable position
to begin with, but the very act of being jealous is also shameful. AAAAGH!!!
There is only one response: grin and bear it. If I can’t
manage that, then I’ve got to find a way to at least make sure that there is no
evidence I ever suffered from that shameful emotion. So it’s time to crawl into
a hole, or become a smiling automaton.
This is what society has dictated, and, if you’ve been
watching social media, any other responses are absolutely skewered in the
public view. So writers with contracts drop out of the race. They hide. They
take the shameful emotion and hide the fact that they ever had it. Because we
aren’t supposed to be jealous—we’re supposed to be happy.
I know, it’s not very original, but it’s the truth,
sometimes, the emotions are hard to deal with. And if you're wondering, this might be among the reasons a writer drops off the radar.
I hear you. For me it's all a question of focus. I look at the positive reviews, the love and support, the way my kids all want to be writers because of my books, and that's enough. If we don't find a focus, it's never enough. There's always someone better, more successful, more beautiful, stronger... Thanks for being honest with your feelings. I think we all deal with that to a degree.
ReplyDeleteI have tried so hard to just stay focused on the love of writing. Forget the contracts, the confetti. I tell myself the true greats wrote like no one was reading. And they would have kept writing no matter what...didn't Poe write from the gutter?
ReplyDeleteBut it's hard. We're human.
For every person better off, there is smoeone worse off. Like me. Not that I'm jealous of you. ;)
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the contract and drink the jealousy away. After all, they are nowhere near as good as you are are they.
Keep with it.
I get that little jealous devil sitting on my shoulder every so often. I have to beat him off with a stick, and think wildly positive thoughts. He's still lurking in the corner, but I think I've tamed him, for now.
ReplyDeleteI do my best not to be jealous of others' success, I really do. But I very much hear you on this. >_< Especially when it's someone's third or fourth book getting published and becoming a huge success (or, ye gods, their first...), and I'm sitting here with fifteen books under my belt. Grr. Arg.
ReplyDelete