Writer envy.
You don’t want to feel it. You’re happy for that other author. You know you are.
Yet you can’t help that little twinge that pinches your heart. You want to deny it, but you can’t.
And it feels lousy.
Envy is an uncomfortable emotion to begin with, and then it makes you feel that somehow, you’re not a good person if you experience it.
Don’t worry. Writer envy is a common thing. It’s also entirely possible to be very happy for other writers’ accomplishments and still feel a little envious at the same time.
Still, it’s not something you want to feel for long. What can you do when this unwelcome emotion hits you?
What is Writer Envy?
Writer envy occurs whenever you hear about another writer’s abilities, achievements, or successes, and you feel discontent because you lack those things, or have a longing to possess the same.
Another writer posts that he placed in a contest, and you feel a negative reaction because you didn’t. Or a writing colleague reaches the bestseller’s list, and you have that icky feeling wishing it was your book that had made the list instead.
“Like most writers,” says Harriet Levin Millan, “I suffer from a horrific case of writer envy. Sometimes my envy is so extreme that it absorbs everything positive about my success as a writer and leaves me feeling alone and inept.”
“My name is Robin,” says writer Robin Black, “and I am jealous of other writers daily, including – and this is an icky part – some of my very closest friends. It’s a tough admission to make, for many reasons.”
It doesn’t matter how successful you are, envy can still get the better of you.
“If you write,” says Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press, “you’ve….probably looked at another writer’s success and wished something like that would happen to you. Maybe you’ve found yourself stewing over the success of another writer whose work is like yours.”
“As you develop your writer network,” says K. L. Wightman, “you are introduced to writers who you believe write better than you and faster than you. This is where the green-eyed writer’s envy monster creeps in.”
“You’re scrolling through Instagram,” says Karen Beattie, “and see an announcement from a friend that she just got a book deal from a major publisher. You get a pit in your stomach and think, ‘Wait, why her and not me?’ You’ve just been struck by writer envy.”
I could include a bazillion more quotes just like these to show you that most likely, there’s nothing wrong with you, because most writers have these feelings at some point in their careers. They become problematic only if you allow them to become destructive.
Unfortunately, that’s a possibility.
When Writer Envy Becomes Destructive
Writer envy is usually harmless, but on occasion it can become destructive to you, your relationships, and ultimately, your writing career.
“Envy is corrosive and ugly, and it can ruin your life,” said Richard H. Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.
“When you’re obsessed with someone else’s success,” say professors Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson, “your self-respect suffers, and you may neglect or even sabotage your own performance and possibly your career.”
Indeed, it’s when envy becomes something more than a temporary icky feeling that writers are in trouble. It’s common and normal to feel a passing negative reaction to news of another writer’s success—particularly if you see that other writer as your peer. But if those feelings become chronic and start interfering with your work, sleep, or daily activities, they turn into something more insidious.
“Envy is a vocational hazard for most writers,” says Bonita Friedman. “It festers in one’s mind, distracting one from one’s own work, at its most virulent even capable of rousing the sufferer from sleep to brood over another’s triumph.”
The sad thing about this type of envy is that it hurts only the person feeling it. It has nothing to do with the other writer. It’s all about the sufferer’s feelings of inadequacy, and her inability to see the joy in her own progress.
Writers can be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of envy because of the nature of our profession. Most writers are ambitious, and want to succeed, but that ambition often comes with a tendency to compare our achievements with others’, and we may feel we come up short.
There’s hardly a writer alive who hasn’t suffered the blows of a negative review or a book that didn’t sell well. All of these are forms of rejection, and can contribute to feelings of inadequacy. Then you look on social media and see other writers happy about their successes, and those feelings of inadequacy are multiplied.
“For some,” says former Hollywood screenwriter, author, and psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo, “hearing of another’s success can be a spur to greater efforts. For others, the result can be a crippling paralysis.”
The question becomes: “How can I use envy to motivate, rather than paralyze, myself?”
5 Ways to Use Writer Envy to Your Advantage
The next time you feel envious of another writer’s success, try these five tips for creating a more positive outcome for yourself.
1. Find out what you’re really envious of.
One of the reasons envy feels so awful is that we focus on the fact that we “shouldn’t” feel this way, that it’s “bad,” and that we’re awful people because of it. Instead, use the feelings as an excuse to find out what you’re really longing for.
If your friend just placed in a contest, for example, and you’re feeling envious, ask yourself what it is you’d like to have. Is it as simple as placing in a contest yourself? Or is it more a recognition of your writing on any level? Or could it be that you feel you have to prove yourself to someone in your life who believes you’re “wasting your time” writing?
“If you can find a quiet place to answer these questions truthfully,” says Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D., “you may be able to use the emotions as information to help you make choices.”
Once you find out just what it is that’s bothering you, try to use that information wisely. If your answers show you want some outside recognition for your book, realize that this is largely out of your control, as you can’t make others respond how you’d like. You can, however, take steps to increase the odds that your work will be recognized. You can hire an editor to help you, enter more contests, and submit more of your work for publication.
If you find, on the other hand, that the real source of your pain is that person in your life who hasn’t yet recognized how important writing is to you, the solution may be to let go of your need for that person’s approval. This is your life, and it’s up to you what you spend your time on.
If there’s one thing I know after 20 years writing and many years helping other writers, it’s this: If you’ve been called or compelled to write, there’s a reason for it. You may not reach the bestseller’s list, but if you allow your dream to lead you, you will grow as a person, and often that is the best outcome of all. So trust in your own heart, and move forward with your goals no matter what others think.
2. Force yourself to respond graciously.
One of the worst things about writer envy is that it makes a writer feel like a bad person. You don’t want to feel this way. You want to be that gracious, confident writer who can be genuinely pleased for your writer colleagues.
Know what? You can still be that person. Send the writer a congratulatory note. Post her success on social media. Feature her book on your blog. Even if you don’t really feel like doing these things, actually doing them will help you feel better.
Forcing yourself to be gracious can be a cleansing sort of process. Action often precedes emotion, so acting like a dignified, confident, and caring person who rises above his own feelings for the good of another can help you leave envy in the rear view mirror.
Give it a try. In fact, make it a habit to counteract feelings of envy with gracious, kind responses. You may find that each time you act this way, your feelings of envy recede.
3. Let your writer envy inspire you to work harder.
When you feel envious, it’s time to get serious with yourself. Obviously you want what this other writer has. But have you worked as hard as you should to achieve that sort of success?
Let’s say the other writer just reached the New York Times bestseller’s list. You’re envious, as you were hoping your book would do the same. But maybe this book is the other author’s tenth one, and you have written and published only one or two. Is it fair, then, to compare yourself to that author? Should you expect that sort of success so soon?
Or let’s say you have a writing colleague who just landed a short story in a reputable journal. You think that your short story deserves the same. Review what you’ve done to achieve that goal.
How many journals have you submitted your story to? When have you gotten professional feedback on your work? How many short stories have you written?
Often when you review your own feelings of envy, you may find that what you’re really feeling is frustrated or even angry at yourself for not taking the steps you know you need to take to reach your goals.
Even if you find that you have worked just as hard or harder as that other author for your success, realize that the truth of the matter is that you haven’t yet achieved something that’s very important to you. Allow yourself to be inspired to work even harder toward your goal. Promise yourself that you won’t give up, no matter what, if only because you don’t want to feel like you cheated yourself later on.
Sometimes we have to work harder than others to get where we want to be. That’s okay. In fact, in many cases, it’s good. It makes the taste of success even sweeter, and it provides you with experiences you can use down the road to help others going through the same challenges.
4. Realize you may not be focusing on your strengths.
If you’re feeling writer envy, you’re probably not honoring your own unique strengths enough. You’re wishing for something another writer has, while neglecting your own gifts.
If I were to ask you to name your top three strengths were as a writer, what would you say? Most writers struggle with this question. They can tell you what their weaknesses are at the drop of a hat, but their strengths? That’s another story.
When writer envy hits, use it as an excuse to go back and review the good things people said about your writing. In fact, I’d suggest you gather them together in one place, look them over carefully, and try to find patterns.
What is it about your writing that affects people? Are they commenting on similar sections? What do editors point out that is positive?
We so often focus on the negative comments that we can overlook the positive ones. That’s a tragedy, because your true potential lies in your strengths. Start finding out what you’re good at as a writer and a person in general, and focus on how you can build those strengths to create a more successful writing career. Your path, if you focus in on your uniqueness, will be different from anyone else’s. The more you tune into that, the less envy will bother you, because you’ll realize that we all have something to contribute.
5. Return to the joy of creating.
Whenever you feel writer envy, it’s because you’re feeling a “lack” in your life somewhere. You’re comparing yourself to someone else, and finding yourself lacking, or you’re wishing you could feel the feeling that you imagine the other writer is feeling.
Use this as a sign that you need to find new ways to fill yourself up. If it’s a feeling you’re missing, ask yourself why, and then find ways that you can give yourself that feeling. When you hear about another writer’s success, you may feel a lack of confirmation for your creative efforts. You’re working hard, but no one is noticing.
That means you need to notice more, yourself. What are you accomplishing? Where have you progressed? What have you learned over the past year? Where have you improved?
Sit down and journal about these things, and let your writing bring them fully into your awareness. Fill yourself with your own recognition for what you’re doing, then ask yourself one important question: Am I still enjoying it?
Usually we start writing for writing’s sake. We like it. It’s fun. Then somewhere along the way, things like sales, reviews, awards, and the like take on too much importance in our minds.
Use writer envy as an excuse to return to the simple joy of creating. All you have to do is ask yourself, “If nothing ever comes of this, would I still be glad that I did it?”
I’ve wrestled with this question in the past, and it was a tough wrestling. It’s romantic to believe that we would write even if our writing was never published or even seen by others, but it’s unrealistic to imagine that we won’t want to share our writing. It’s natural to want to do so, and we tend to advance more quickly when we are publishing and gaining feedback.
But during the tough times you have to ask and answer this question to see if you can continue, because the truth is that we don’t know where our art will take us. It’s a different path for each of us, and we have to be prepared for the fact that the future may look different from what we had planned.
The good news is that I have yet to talk to any writer (and I’ve talked to hundreds) who, once they made the decision to keep going, didn’t eventually experience some form of success in terms of publication, recognition, and the simple joy of having readers enjoy their work. But you have to say “yes” to writing no matter the outcome, so that you’re not pinning your efforts on a result—you’re creating because you must create, and that’s that.
Once you do this, even writer envy won’t deter you, because your commitment to writing is deep and abiding, and can’t be shaken by outside rewards or the lack of.
“Our present education is rotten,” said spiritual teacher Krishnamurti in a book entitled Think on These Things, “because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing. The result has become more important than the action.”
The solution to writer envy? It may be as simple as returning to your work, and discovering anew the joy that keeps you coming back again and again.
How do you deal with writer envy?
Sources
Angier, N. (2009, February 16). In Pain and Joy of Envy, the Brain May Play a Role. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/science/17angi.html
Beattie, K. (2018, April 3). What To Do When Writer Envy Holds You Back – Winning Edits. Retrieved from https://winningedits.com/writer-envy/
Black, R. (n.d.). The Green-Eyed Writer: On Literary Envy | The Review Review. Retrieved from http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/green-eyed-writer-literary-envy
Eby, D. (2011, December 28). Envy and Your Creative Life. Retrieved from https://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2011/12/envy-and-your-creative-life/
Friedman, B. (1989, November 26). Envy, the Writer’s Disease. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/books/envy-the-writer-s-disease.html
Menon, T., & Thompson, L. (2010, April 1). Envy at Work. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2010/04/envy-at-work
Van Cleave, R. G. (2018, April 2). Little green monsters: How to handle writer envy – The Writer. Retrieved from https://www.writermag.com/2018/04/02/writer-envy/
Warner, B. (2017, April 21). What Writers Need to Know About Envy. Retrieved from https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/73403-what-writers-need-to-know-about-envy.html
Wightman, K. L. (2018, February 24). Writer’s Envy & How to Get Past It. Retrieved from https://klwightman.com/2018/02/26/writers-envy-how-to-get-past-it/
My writer envy is usually focused on an author’s super-charged promo efforts. I envy others’ drive and commitment to getting out there with public appearances to market their work. I deal with that by realizing it’s a choice I make to relax and take better care of myself, which means no long days spent sitting at a book event or hours driving to out of town locations. I feel better doing it my way.
Great comment, Pat. We have to do things in ways that work for us.