Sunday, May 23, 2010

Good advice for anyone: Dealing with Jealousy

It's so easy to fall into bitterness when you see others succeeding and feel as if you are not. This blog post by Tayari Jones says it so well, I'm just going to link to her.

Two quotes from her blog entry to highlight and emphasize:

". . . there's is a problem when you become overly concerned with(and angry about)the success of others. This is a warning sign that you are headed down a slippery slope into paralysing bitterness."

and her conclusion:

"When I say get to work, I am not telling you to pick up a hammer and start breaking rocks. When I say get to work, I'm saying get back to you. Get back to where you started from when you said you wanted to be a writer, when you didn't know anything about the business."
(emphasis added)

Thank you Ms. Jones for so eloquently stating what I believe, and also what I need to be reminded of now and again.

(Hat tip, January Gill O'Neil)

2 comments:

  1. Dear Janice,
    Thanks for the link. About a year ago, I was getting NO WHERE with my novel. Because of this, i found myself rolling my eyes everytime I heard of anyone else getting a book deal or an award. Then, I took my savings and spend the summer all alone on Cape Cod and I wrote my little heart out.

    Over that summer, I finished that novel I had given up for dead. What a noticed when I came back to my real life is that I wasn't so obsessed with other people. With my new manuscript in hand, I felt like a writer again and I didn't feel the need to tear others down. It was such a lesson to learn.

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  2. Tayari--thank you so much for stopping by! Cape Cod--kind of in my back yard. :) Drop me a line the next time you're through the Boston area.

    I so resonate with what you say about envy and how destructive it is to one's own writing process. I work so hard to understand that the roots of jealousy are only my own fear and insecurity. The only way though that is forward.

    May the words flow.

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