Anne Lamott is the only writer I know who addresses envy in a writing book. Yet it’s present in almost every fictional treatment of writers. And then there is the famous verse, The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered, although I suppose that’s more properly filed under schadenfreude.
Here’s what I think about envy. Envy is corrosive. Envy fills you with little holes. When you are envious, no matter how much success and love and money you have, it will all seep out of you. To be envious is to choose to be miserable.
And yet it is so easy to envy. Natural, too, I suppose. Perhaps even Darwinian. The world’s resources are finite. If someone’s getting something — a big contract, a great review, an award — then it is logical to conclude that is one less contract, review, award for you. But I don’t think anyone can afford to think that way.
In the spirit of honesty, however, I will admit that I have wrestled with envy. For me, it’s interesting to see people whose success seems to come swiftly, especially at a young age. I wonder what it would be like to be someone who’s hailed as a brilliant writer from the start (or, really, at all). I hate to write “I can’t imagine” — shouldn’t a novelist be able to imagine just about anything? — but it definitely takes effort for me to imagine what it’s like to write a book like THE HELP. Or even to write a short story as wise and lovely as “Goodbye, Columbus,” published when Roth was in his 20s.
My solution? Transform your envy into admiration. It is surprisingly easy. After all, if you don’t admire someone, why would you envy them in the first place?
In the summer of 2008, I sat down with a manuscript by a young writer I admire. I planned to read only a few chapters that evening — blurbing, no matter how good the book, usually feels like homework — but it was literally a book I could not put down. When I finished it, I was giddy with how good it was. I knew I could not write a book like the one in my hands. There was a sophistication of style I did not think I could ever emulate. It also was a historical novel, steeped in research, something that doesn’t come naturally to me.
That book, Megan Abbott’s BURY ME DEEP, has now been nominated for the Edgar, the Hammett and the LA Times Book Award. It may be the first novel ever to be nominated for all three, but I am too lazy to do the research. (And I will note that Val McDermid, also nominated for the LA Times award this year, was nominated for the Edgar and won the first-ever LA Times mystery-thriller award in 2001, but she can’t be nominated for the Hammett because it’s limited to North American writers.) My hunch is that other nominations will follow. It was one of two books that I expected to see on short lists this year.*
What would I gain by envying Megan? I mean, other than an ulcer? And think of all I would lose — the pure pleasure of watching someone deserving do well. Well, what about the undeserving folks? I can’t think of anyone less worthy of envy. You can’t envy someone you don’t admire because IMHO to envy is to want to be someone.
Something else I really have trouble imagining? That anyone could envy me. Oh, I know I’m lucky, that I have the tremendous good fortune to make my living as a novelist. I accept that such a thing is enviable, but it’s impossible to imagine my life as enviable. And that’s another way to deal with envy: If you cannot imagine someone envying you, then you immediately see why it’s futile to envy someone else. Not only futile. But hurtful. To you.
By the way, the title of today’s entry is a riff on a novel by a writer who excites a lot of envy because of his age.
*Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places
I had to compose this on the plane because I’m rushing off to training in 10 minutes. Will fix typos later.
(Yes, training! Per a previous entry.)
Laura — great post. My wife and I are thinking about dropping $100 each to hear you speak (and to support the local library) in the Harrisburg, PA, area on April 17. Will it be worth it?
Laura, surely you’re aware that many writers envy you. Hey, I envy you! And yes, that’s a compliment because it means I think you’re a wonderful writer and I would love to be able to do some of the things you do with words. I envy Megan Abbott too. I envy lots of writers. But there are certain hugely successful bestselling authors I don’t envy at all, simply because I wouldn’t want my name on the stuff they write, regardless of how much money is involved. Is that arrogant? If so, okay, I’m arrogant, but a bad book is a bad book, even if it sells a zillion copies. There’s a big, big market for bad books.
Awards season usually upsets me, not because MY books aren’t on the short lists but because books I love have been overlooked in favor of some mediocre stuff. Terrific novels share short list space with books that simply don’t belong in that company, while marvelous books are not nominated.
oh but you get it so right, don’t you? (not enviously, but honestly, said).
Hard to do but really really worth it. Thanks for this post. Nancy
Right up there with procrastination and putting my work out too soon, one of my great career weaknesses in envy. I succumb to it way to easily, but, in realizing this, I have been able to use this to propel me to exceeding my own expectations for myself. Unfortuntaley, I also compensate for this by finding work I think is inferior and using it to massage my ego. Luckily, so many of the writers I envy are great people and it’s easy to like them so I don’t cross over into being a dick. Often. Especially that young writer you mentioned who now is getting old enough to be envied purely for his @$#%&*! natural talent not the mix of age and talent.
I don’t envy you Laura but I certainly do admire you. One of the things about you as a writer for me is that you breathe new life into any subject you choose to write about. To me that is doing good work.
I’m not a writer and I know that having your job be in the imagine field isn’t always a nice walk in the park but it also has it’s stratospheric moments which you can savor as you look over the selection of cheese when you have five or six minutes to see to your needs.
don’t think there is a problem with a momentary bit of dictionary-style envy. but if it crosses over past one-heartbeat of recognition, and it isn’t something that propels one to work harder, better, truer, whatever–it is corrosive.
because i like to be efficient, instead of confining my envy to a single individual, i prefer an entire category of people, such as, “Damn those Yale Younger Poets!” or “A pox on all Macarthur Fellows!” as i stick another pin into the doll and prepare the mortar and pestle for a round of eye of newt.
//karen
Wow, that was sloppy. My apologies for all the typos. I’m moving way too fast today.
I like Karen’s solution, although I’ll have to find my own category. (Those Yale Younger Poets include Lizzie Skurnick!) And other people’s success can be a constructive spur, an inspiration. When your tennis partner raises his or her game, it’s exciting to keep up.
I am aware, almost every day, that I have a very nice life. I’d almost envy me today, given that my day included waking up in St. Simons Island, seeing the amazing view from the bridge across the Frederica River, having an uneventful flight home, working on the plane, going almost straight to training and now planning on a quiet dinner in the neighborhood wine bar with a good book (Peter Robinson’s next one) to keep me company.
Will $100 be worth it? Let’s just say that I’ll do my best.
About a year ago I wrote on my blog that I was going to make a wish list like they do on Amazon. I can’t remember all of them but I know that one wish was “Laura Lippman’s career.” It may sound like envy but it wasn’t. It isn’t.
Turbo Tom, it won’t be dull going to an LL reading.
Sandra,
I get that and totally understand it. But I hope you get and understand that there is no “Laura Lippman’s career” without Sandra Scoppetone. This isn’t an attempt to turn the blog into a big group hug, although I rather like the image of all of us moving toward the door as a hugging blog, a la the final episode of Mary Tyler Moore. It’s just an admission that we, as writers, absorb certain books. TO THE POWER OF THREE is impossible to imagine without TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU. That book was such a revelation to me because it centered on a group of friends that were much more recognizable to me than the traditional cliques in other YA literature. There is no Tess Monaghan without Lauren Laurano. I was already trying to write when I began reading that series, but it was much more centered in domestic life than Paretsky or Grafton. The thing that stood out about Lauren was that she had a life, a very full one.
Plus, Megan’s a total sweetheart, so you can’t hate her for being so damn talented.
i’d add a quick note. we only know a fragment of the person’s life. what you may envy may in fact have cost them everything else in the world that you find important, and/or it may be the only shiny object in their life’s slough of despond. not laura, of course, b/c we kindasorta ‘know’ her. those other people.
and i was kidding abt the YYPs. was trying to find two categories that were likely to not offend anyone. the only bit i envy is the ‘younger’ part.
//karen
Karen,
I think everyone got the joke. I just thought it was a wonderful coincidence that you had managed to create a comic category that actually encompasses someone who posts here.
Dusty,
I can’t hate anyone for being talented.
I know, right?
Laura, great post …. Ah, envy – one of the great pleasure-filled sins of all times. An equal opportunity if useless energy drain.I wonder if any other species envies?
“I wonder if any other species envies?”
I think those herding animals wherein the leader is always subject to head-butting and horn-locking from the next hotshot who figures the leader ain’t really any better nor worthy of social status know ALL ABOUT the headaches that envy entails (so to speak).
As a dweller in the cheap seats, I view talented writers in much the same way I view talented race car drivers (especially Michael Schumacher but we digress!) or talented quarterbacks or talented singers: with admiration. Reading blogs like this one (or Nancy Nall’s) can help me to increase my grasp of the ‘known unknowns’ (to paraphrase former SecDef Rumsfeld) when it comes to the black magic of compelling writing.
I drive a car; Schuey drives a car; and I realize that his F1 machine would simply kill me. I write at work all the time (for an ‘audience’ of one or two) – and certainly understand that producing a sustained narrative that anyone would ever want to read is not what I’m on Earth to do.
Never mind writing; I seriously envy people who are fast readers.
I’ve thought about this topic a lot — someone I know well has pretty much destroyed herself through jealousy over the last forty years.
But what is the difference between envy and jealousy? I’ve always drawn the line between wishing for someone else’s something (talent, wealth, …) (envy?) and wishing that you had it and that that someone else did not (jealousy). You can burn yourself up with the former if it reaches the point of resentment, but the latter is positively poisonous.
A ‘go and dig your own grave first’ poisonous.
laura,
i agree. it is funny. i can’t believe i tried to pick something that’d be ‘safe’ and still hit a category spot on.
i now return to pondering the AP-reported pending donation of OJ’s “innocence suit” to the smithsonian.
Yes, by definition, envy is directed toward what others have, while jealousy centers on what we have and don’t want to share.
Jealousy can be a problem, too, for writers. Some are incredibly possessive toward editors and agents, for example, need to feel they always come first, ahead of all other writers.
I don’t envy Laura, but I did idealize the imagined work life. Creating Tess, working at a wonderful newspaper, transitioning into full-time writer, it all seemed perfect. Then I came upon a book of short stories and found that powerful pricks had targeted you for years, challenged you to fail or react and I can only imagine what was left out. It brought me up short and reminded me that no one escapes struggle and pain in the human experience.
I do believe that the ability to discuss envy and jealousy indicates self-knowledge and eliminates those traits by default. I could be off-base to believe that but envy and jealousy are petty and not found in an enlightened spirit, are they?
Oh, but I think there is a pure kind of envy/admiration that isn’t begrudgery and is not corrosive at all. We who comment there decided recently on Sue O’Doherty’s weekly column (on MJ Rose’s blog) that this should be called “zenvy.” This is sincerely wishing you had something too, while being simultaneously happy about someone else’s success or good fortune. The example I gave was seeing a friend’s new book get a fabulously praising and insightful review in the daily NY Times. I, too, wish my new novel had gotten a fabulously praising and insightful review in the daily NY Times, but I do not begrudge in any sense at all my friend’s great review.