Career envy

[pegkerr]

Minicon was tremendous fun, as I've said, but I've noticed another reaction, one that I recognize, which often hits me several days after a good con.

Career envy.

I've thought a lot about this over the years and kijjohnson and I, thank god, have discussed this often and carefully, which really helps. I love the chance to hobnob with other writers, to catch up with them and get their news. But sometimes, yes, I do feel wistful, when I hear of someone else's success.

I am very thankful for a piece of excellent advice I received from Tim Powers, one of my teachers at Clarion, at the very beginning of my career. "Try to learn to become a writer without also becoming a jerk. It's natural to be ambitious, but don't associate with people only on the basis of how they can 'help your career.' This field is small, so don't bad mouth people. It will inevitably get back to them, and it will make you look small--and you will become small and petty, if you let yourself think that way."

It was very good advice, and it made me think a lot about being ambitious as a writer, and how that would play out in my interactions with others. Over the years, I've seen other writers who didn't have the benefit of such good advice, who let their lust for advancement and envy of others grow so large that they inevitably treated people badly.

I remember an old saying: "You can't keep birds from flying around your head, but you can keep them from building nests in your hair." I try to feel happy for my writing friends when they achieve success, but I realize it's natural for me to want those successes, too. I've also thought about the fact that success at writing isn't a zero-sum game. Just because you have had success at writing doesn't mean that I can't--as if there's a finite amount of success in the world, and you're hogging it all.

I also realize that making a writing career means balancing a lot of considerations: the quality of your work, time, family, other jobs, speed of production, etc. You may be doing really well at one thing, but you can't manage another. You may envy one aspect of another's career, and not realize that they are envying a totally different aspect of your career that you are managing well. pameladean told me a story at Minicon, when we were talking about juggling conflicting desires. She said that Steve Brust had called her and asked her, "Tell me again why I don't want to take a full-time day job." She told him that if he was really wavering, he could call me and I would remind him.

I have to fight the tendency in myself to see the glass as half empty, to focus on what I haven't got. I find that I can be really happy for a friend's professional success or personal arrangement and at the same time keenly desire to have that success for myself. So when I get together with other people at a con, I see what other writers have achieved, or how they run their life differently from mine, and I think to myself, "Ooooohhhh. I want that toooooo!" I tell myself that this is not quite envy, because envy buys into zero-sum thinking. Envy means wishing others ill, and the desire to exchanges places with someone who is successful: "I want to get that award--and for you to not get it."

kijjohnson have been neck-and-neck through much of our careers, but naturally, someone will sell first, and someone will be nominated for an award first. It has helped us a lot to be honest with each other about our mixed feelings. Our reward is that we really can celebrate each other's successes. We trust that we each mean it when we say to each other, "Great! Fantastic! Um . . . I can't wait until I reach that milestone, too!"

I have to fight against envy when considering these writers:

I wish I could skip the day job and stay home and write like any number of full-time professional writers, like pameladean or gaimanblog.

I want to go on a book tour like blackholly.

I wish I could finish the lettergame book that kijjohnson and I had planned, and it could be as good as the one 1crowdedhour did.

I wish I could produce words faster, like truepenny or papersky, who seem to churn pages out at an amazing rate. (truepenny mentioned she'd gotten 2591 words written while at Minicon.)

I want a cool laptop that I can take to hang out all day at coffee shops like Laurie Winter. And, um, there's that McKnight Foundation grant . . .

I wish I could write poetry, like elisem or papersky or any number of others.

I wish that I had the ability to write humor and the confidence with characterization and dialogue that epicyclical has.

I wish I could write about sex with the sure touch, honesty and delicacy that kijjohnson has.

I wish I had pameladean's command of the English language and ability to come up with the perfect simile and metaphor.

I admire monkeycrackmary for her deft use of everyday detail, pacing and dialogue.

I wish I could travel, like minnehaha B and K. I wish I throw great parties like they do.

I wish I had the sort of self-confidence that minnehaha B has--not offensive cockiness at all, but the real understanding that he has found his niche, and he's really good at it, and people need to learn what he is in the position to teach them.

I wish I lived in a country that was SENSIBLE enough to provide HEALTH INSURANCE like papersky, so I didn't have to do a day job that eats up my time to get it.

Why some other writers might envy me

I've had two books published, by a respected publisher. The first was pretty good, and the second was really good (I won't say great. But really good).

I have a house. A lot of writers I know live in cramped apartments.

I have a husband and two lovely children. I know writers who have gotten divorced because their spouses didn't support them, and others who always felt too poor to have children--and now regret it.

I have a job that pays me quite well and provides benefits for my family. I've talked with writers who live in fear that they will fall ill or have an accident because they have no health insurance.

I have a new book that's well underway. And it's looking like it's going to be pretty cool.

And . . . I may envy truepenny's 2000+ words at Minicon, but I wrote 354 words this morning. msscribe already told me she envied me because she wrote only 115 words last night!

One final thought to leave you with: Someone remarked to me sometime during Minicon this past weekend that Envy is the only one of 7 deadly sins that provides no pleasure whatsoever.

Cheers,
Peg

Comments

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I understand what you mean. Boy, do I ever.

I am terribly competitive myself--thus The Madly Savage Mink Which Is My Competitiveness--and I do have a lot of trouble with the part of myself that wants to crouch in a corner with its hackles raised and just snarl at anyone else's good news. It helps me, at least a little, to let go of things that aren't my game. I would love to be able to write poetry, but I know that I can't, and I'm at peace with that. So I can admire other people's amazing poetry without TMSMWIMC making that low-level chainsaw noise in the back of my head. Laurie's grant is fantastic; I don't--and don't want to--write YA fiction, so I can let that go, too. So I'm not a complete festering ball of resentment. Most days.

At least I'm to the point where I can laugh at myself about it. And that helps a lot.