green like an old coke bottle

Hi friends 🍵💚

Today we’re gonna talk about a topic that already kinda has me wincing in nope: professional jealousy. Yeah. I don’t know that there’s a graceful way of tackling it, but I’d like to describe my experience of it, reasons why I know it’s BS, and what I do to cope.

I’ve heard that some people don’t suffer from it—which, if that’s you, awesome! I absolutely struggle with it; I’ve given up pretending I don’t. Facing it head-on has actually helped me get much better about dealing with it.

And I have to deal with it—otherwise I’d stop writing completely. Writing’s just too hard. When I’m in a bad state, it feels pretty thankless. There’s a lot of toiling alone in the dark where no one ever sees your pain. When it gets real bad you think, “What’s the point, when there is already so much great writing in the world?” Today is not the newsletter where I tell you your writing is for someone (spoiler: it’s for someone), but like James Baldwin said:

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

Part of that effort is learning to cope with jealousy, which (if you’re like me, anyway) will hound you through most of your career—so let’s get into it.

🎒

why i know it’s stupid

I spent most of my childhood in an girls’ private school in Manila. It had an alternative education model, which meant a weird grading system (it was Excellent through Unsatisfactory, instead of the typical A through F), and a program called Individual Work (“IW”) where we had to make comics and poems for every subject, managing our own time. Years later my friends and I still discuss how the main takeaway from IW is to procrastinate then cram your ass off when a deadline is near—but I digress.

My school also wasn’t explicit about who the “top students” in our batch (that’s the equivalent of “class” in US schools, ie the people in your same grade level) ever were. There was no valedictorian or salutatorian. There was no “Star Section” or “AP Section.” If you got Very Good or Excellent in every subject, and Highly Satisfactory in your conduct (yes we were graded on conduct in great detail), then at the end of the school year you were recognized as an Outstanding Student.

I only realized late in high school how different this was from other schools. I went to nerd camp one summer and realized nearly everyone was acutely aware of their “ranking” in their batch. It made me grateful for how my school made it clear that there was room for everyone to be outstanding. There were no limits on how many students could win honors; if you met the requirements, you got it. I think this made us less competitive overall—certainly when it came to academics, the only person I wanted to beat was myself. (Intramurals was a different matter. We were utterly savage during intrams.)

Another space where I encountered surprisingly little jealousy was fandom. Sure, I was envious over the sheer talent some authors displayed—but I was also overjoyed when they wrote for my specific fandom, my specific ship, utilizing the exact tropes I wanted to read. It was hard for me to feel territorial about good writing when I wanted to read more of it. If there was a good fic author writing my favorite pairing, not only did I want them to write twenty more stories for my personal consumption; I also wished there were fifty other authors that good, just so I’d have more delightful reading material.

Did great writing in a fandom ever dissuade me from writing my own fic? Not really. I can only think of one instance when I ever thought, “Okay, maybe I don’t need to add to this.” Even then I had ideas—I didn’t end up writing them mostly from lack of time and laziness. (I still have all my feelings for that OTP, though. I even know the exact original story it’ll feed into once I get my shit together.)

All this is to say: I know, bonedeep, from fourteen years of schooling and more than two decades in fandom that there’s room enough for everyone. The more the better! I’ve known this all my life! Yet I still get jealous.

This was taken at an art museum in Pittsburgh. A secret camera recorded you in one room, then you moved to the next room and watched yourself moving through the previous room. Trippy and creepy! My point in choosing this photo, though, is the completely unsubtle jealousy-feels-like-a-green-claustrophobic-room thing.

😫

this emoji is called the distraught face

I don’t have an explanation for jealousy besides…I’m human? It’s emotions? Logically, I know all the reasons why jealousy is counter-productive and unnecessary. I feel it anyway.

The thing that annoys me most about professional jealousy is I’m often envious of things that I can’t control or even influence. It’s often the milestones people are hitting—external factors.

Like awards, which I wasn’t prepared for when I got into the SFF community. It feels like such a privilege to mention awards because it takes so much to even remotely be up for consideration, but it still surprised me how legitimately stressful it can be. This isn’t to knock awards (or nominees, or winners) in any way—as I mentioned, writing often feels thankless, so I think it’s great when people are recognized in any capacity. But awards season does take up like half the year, and it can have this inescapable echo feeling. Even after six cycles of it, I’m surprised by the emotional rollercoaster it can provoke, even when I’m just spectating.

Publication news is another. People’s book deals, advances, print runs, suggestive tweets about cool stuff coming down the line. When they get an agent, or a great review. Being on social media lets you stay in-the-know…which also means being constantly bombarded by (what feels like) the entire world’s exciting wins. When you’re in a tough spot with your own writing or publishing journey, it’s hard not to witness that and not get super self-critical.

It’s no fun to read an essay that’s entirely caveats but this is warranted: I’m not saying you shouldn’t share your good news on social media. You absolutely should! Celebrate it! You deserve it! And the thing is, you for sure went through some pretty hellish things to get to this point. Any sort of publishing win is a feat. Plus, sharing your wins can be inspiring; it might give people hope.

The flipside of this is we don’t hear about the tough stuff as often. I question whether it should be, because it’s your right to keep that journey and pain private. Even if you do share the challenges, it’s the happy awesome news that gets the most likes and retweets, so that’s what we see on our feed (algorithms!). Also: I think some part of us doesn’t like a narrative that’s all struggle with no triumph, so on some level people only feel empowered to talk about the challenges…once they have a win to show for it. Which is an impulse I get!

None of that stuff has any bearing on me or my work, except to create more pressure that I ought to be achieving more. Which can be a good thing…but a lot of the times it’s stifling and awful.

I learned to grapple with with my jealousy out of necessity, because I want to keep writing. If I did not learn how to address my jealousy I would explode, because too many folks are out here crushing it. Over the years, I had to practice, experiment, and find ways to manage these feelings and move forward.

👣

coping mechanisms

Okay great, you say. Actually—not great! I feel awful! I admit jealousy munches my innards too, and more often than I’d like. What do you do?!

I do…a few simple things, which are often very hard.

(1) I write it down. I spell it out for myself. I go to my journal and scribble: “I am jealous of X because of Y.” This shows me the thing for what it is.

Am I jealous because they have a book deal? Well, what does that mean for me? (It means: I should be writing a book.)

Am I jealous because they won an award? But I know that awards aren’t something I control. (It means: maybe I should be less grumpy? All I can do is try to get better?)

Simply writing down who and what I’m jealous of often reveals to me that I’m being really emotional and unfair about the situation. It also gives me space to say things like, this is completely ridiculous because I haven’t even read their work, but I’m jealous!!! That self-forgiveness is meaningful, too.

(2) I shift my attention from being jealous about external things to being jealous about their craft. When my jealousy is anchored on external stuff, there’s not a lot I can do to fix it, so I let it fester for a day or two then move on to coping mechanisms 3-5. But if I’m jealous about something this writer does really well, I go into student mode. Curiosity is a much better feeling than jealousy, and I can learn from it.

Do I love how this person does characterization? Am I blown away by their prose? Did they pull off something structurally ridiculous? Those are all incredibly worth being jealous about. So now my pettiness feels validated, and I’m filled with a desire to learn: how do they do it?

I study their work. I think critically about how it achieves those effects. Sometimes I straight-up copy my favorite lines by hand, to understand their texture.

Speaking from experience: there were three instances in my teens when I can trace writing level-ups to specific fanfic writers, because their stories opened little gates in my brain that improved my writing. I turned my jealousy into awe and interest, and let that carry me forward, to try and mimic their narrative style. If my writing has any kind of voice—it’s largely due to them.

(3) I focus on being a good friend. Again, writing is a weird place where your friends are also your colleagues, and sometimes feel like competitors. In my experience, though, it’s hard to be jealous of someone…when I love them a lot. Their triumphs are my triumphs. I often like their writing and want more of it in the world. And they’ve been such balms for me too, along this journey. They shore me up when I’m roiling in the sea of doubt. How can I let their good news hurt me—when they definitely don’t want that? When I know, if and when I have my own good news, they’d be thrilled for me?

It’s this, a lot of the times, that pulls me out of the jealous zone fastest. When it’s the good news of someone I care about deeply, that’s my good news too—and it’s such an amazing pleasure, to celebrate it with them. (So make good friends!)

(Also this is not a subtweet. Friends, you can share your good news with me. I want to hear it. I can take it. 98% of the time, anyway.)

(4) I like my own work. Gaining and maintaining confidence in my work isn’t easy. It ebbs and flows. But it has been extremely helpful for me to say: I like my own stuff. I like how I write. I have my own stories I want to tell, that I believe only I can tell.

You wouldn’t be writing unless you had some essential faith in your work. And if you’re not willing to be your own cheerleader, why should you expect that of others? (There’s a longer discussion here about how this isn’t always possible, but in general.)

When you have a baseline confidence in your own stuff, when you can appreciate your strengths and unique perspective, you’ll be less inclined to get jealous when other people are doing well. You’re you. They can’t do what you do.

(5) Most importantly: I work. Nothing is a better antidote to jealousy than getting better. Nothing will move the needle for you more than simply doing the work.

There’s no guarantee you’ll get what you want—that you’ll get what they have—even if you do the work. But if you don’t do the work, there’s simply no chance.

When I’m feeling jealous, I try to be honest about what I need to do to achieve the same thing. In some instances it’s mostly luck and I can’t do much.

A lot of the time, however, it’s clear that writer put in work of some kind that I haven’t done—like finishing a manuscript, or being more skilled at plotting, or tackling revisions. The work is not rocket science. It’s putting one word down, then the next; it’s being thoughtful and pushing past everything that makes the task nearly impossible. Doing the work doesn’t betray you.

One of my MBA professors, Karen Mills, once shared this career advice with my section: “When someone around me succeeds, I think: good for them, irrelevant to me.” It’s a prettier way of saying eyes on your own paper. In the end you have to write your stories. Everything else you’re dreaming of stems from that.

Reccs and things

I love this interview between Ursula Le Guin and Alexander Chee, where she touches on awards and necessary arrogance, among other things:

It’s probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could “match” what I had done, never choked off my writing by competing with myself, or with anybody else for that matter. My ambition was absolutely centered on the work itself, never on what it would bring me, or “who” it would make me.

News and things

Two of my stories are available on audio for the first time at Serial Box Publishing:

• A Cup of Salt Tears: grieving woman meets a kappa in the onsen; things get steamy.
• Hurricane Heels (We Go Down Dancing): mid-twenties magical girls get attacked by the agents of evil while at a bachelorette party.

If you’ve never read them…now you can give them a listen! :)

Thanks as always for reading! This post marks this newsletter crossing 100 subscribers! 🎉 If you enjoyed it or found it valuable, feel free to share it with others, or sign up if you haven’t yet. If you have other ideas for how to cope with jealousy, please share them in the comments!