I read another friend’s new novel. Its only flaw is that a hundred other novelists could have written it.
From Perfection by Sarah Manguso in The Paris Review
Jealousy is unavoidable when it comes to making art. You start out literally coveting a skill that you don’t yet possess but can see so clearly rendered elsewhere. You’re not born a great painter, or musician. You encounter these things, desire them for yourself, and get to work. You perhaps start to have a sense of what you wish to create, and the people you admire hold your attention and esteem precisely because they seem to have a handle on something you wish you too could access. Many of us start out with imitation - the sincerest form of flattery, right? - before we develop enough of our own skill set to match our aesthetic drive.
The quote above by Sarah Manguso from the Paris Review made me laugh precisely because it encapsulates the mean (but very real) thinking many of us have when we start comparing and contrasting with other artists. Is this a sentiment born from jealousy? And if this comes with the territory, what do we do with it?
Jealousy as a construction
Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world.
- Lisa Feldman Barrett
I want to start outside of myself, where I have observed jealousy in action. Here’s a story: Some years ago now, I was on a fairly prestigious/well-regarded writing course. Whilst on the course, I won a writing award which garnered me some agent attention. At the beginning of my next class, the teacher asked us all what was happening in our writing lives. I admitted that I had had this small success. For all those who know about writing novels, you’ll know that getting a bit of agent attention does not a novel publish (in fact, it can mean very little, it being such an initial step), but nevertheless, my teacher seemed to be livid about this development.
‘Come on then, Christina,’ she would say, ‘Since you’re so great, why don’t you tell us the answer to this next question?’ For the rest of that class, every time a new topic was raised, she’d turn and make some similar dig. Why did she react that way?
I didn’t know her all that well - and she didn’t know me - so it seemed very bizarre. The idea of the course was meant to be about getting us closer to our goal of becoming ‘real’ writers. So what was this about? Competition, jealousy, something else? There might be a thousand reasons for the reaction. But I felt so uncomfortable that I left the course. Perhaps, in that case, she won. I hope she felt better for it.
I suspect it might have been about jealousy, because I had the feeling she didn’t quite know how to process my news. But it made me notice something: What I think we get wrong about jealousy from others is that it is very rarely about you. As in, I don’t think this teacher had it in for me specifically - just the opposite. It seemed like something was going on there that had very little to do with me. How could it? I was just the vehicle for whatever particular pain she was unable to otherwise express. Needless to say, though, there is no obligation to navigate this on the other person’s behalf. Ultimately, we have to decide how much to respond to what feels like a reaction in someone else. And if it isn’t really about me, I don’t see why I should be the one to correct it. I might have made a point of it, but in that case, I decided it wasn’t worth my time. I’m okay with that decision.
More recently, with some good news coming in here and there, I have noticed some very interesting reactions indeed from other writers, that really run the gamut from supportive to out and out rude. What I have noted is that the people who really care and really love me, might still feel competitive but never downgrade me in the process. This has been an incredible learning for me, to take this example and enact it myself. It feels like a cliche until you live it, but the people who are really on your team show themselves early. The rest, you can do without. It isn’t up to you to correct their behaviour. Again, I am working to make peace with this. I’m not out here trying to make people feel bad about themselves. I consider myself fairly generous with my time and knowledge - I’m always willing to answer questions or help however I can.
But I have to also be able to draw a line somewhere: I want to avoid what Maggie Nelson refers to in an essay of hers as ‘idiot generosity’, namely the kind of ‘giving’ that makes you feel resentful and depleted. Because for a long time, I had thought that by being extra giving, I might avoid bearing the consequences of jealousy or competitiveness in others - I might be forgiven for being good at something, or for being brave in my work. As if bravery were the real problem - showing myself to want to be brave being a kind of shame-inducing act, a bad kind of ‘wanting to be recognised’. But joy in this work can be hard to come by, and I don’t want to be made to feel bad for taking a step forward, or for being brave, when I do finally manage it. I am genuinely willing to be a cheerleader to others. It’s a bind sometimes, but the feeling of support and encouragement, despite the potential for jealousy or competitiveness, has to go both ways.
Jealousy as an experience
Jealousy is such a direct attack on whatever measure of confidence you’ve been able to muster. But if you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with it, because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know - people who are, in other words, not you.
- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Here is the more common scenario, and as Lamott suggests, jealousy will come because the more of a community you foster (and foster it you must), the more likely it is you will encounter those who you feel are not as deserving of success. Or whose success you feel you, too, are owed. Having thought about what it feels like to be the recipient, perhaps we can build a semblance of empathy here, and compassion, which avoids putting that horrible scenario onto someone else. I feel lucky so far, that the success of those around me seems really justified - I haven’t been going at this for long enough yet perhaps to feel otherwise. Or perhaps I don’t keep much company that I don’t also really admire. Either way, I’m not immune. Comparing what you have done or achieved to others is pretty much the bread and butter of modern life. Every scroll reminds you what you don’t have and aren’t doing. Comparison is the thief of joy, Roosevelt said. But we are so set up to compare and to feel like we aren’t doing enough, it’s almost impossible not to fall into the trap.
Even if we are doing everything we can think to do, working as hard as we can or giving it our all, we still often have a need to feel ‘special’ somehow, in our work. This quote from Elisa Gabbert stood out to me on this score:
Reading writers I admire writing about things I want to write about, obsessions I’m protective of, makes me feel unspecial: a bratty thing to feel, or at least to admit.
- Elisa Gabbert in The Paris Review
This feels so true. We are brats. Our ego comes hand in hand with the urge to make things. And sometimes, that ego gets nasty. Still, it’s there and it’s not going anywhere. We want to make things because we believe in the singular perspective we have to offer - we believe it is singular. But while we might have a unique outlook, we’re not the only people creating. And there’s almost no subject on earth left untouched at this point. Feeling special or unique might well lead us into a competitive stance that is impossible to ‘win’ with. After all, it doesn’t negate your work, just because there is another creator out there tackling the same subject. And whatever ‘magic’ it is that you think they possess in their approach, which may bring out your inner brat, it makes no sense to covet it. I like this quote from my old favourite, Art & Fear:
Whatever they have is something needed to do their work - it wouldn't help you in your work even if you had it. Their magic is theirs. You don't lack it. You don't need it. It has nothing to do with you.
- Bayles and Orland in Art & Fear
It’s none of your business, basically. I like this attitude, because it suggests that while you are doing your own work in your own way (and that’s important), you can’t expect to be somehow owed whatever magic it is that you think another artist possesses. You’ve got to mine your own talent. What they’ve got wouldn’t help you with yours, anyway.
Further to this, owning your feelings will help indicate the path you most mean to travel down. Let me unpack this. In one of her essays from Like Love, Maggie Nelson talks of her relationship with Eve Sedgwick, who was at one stage, her teacher:
As often happens with a figure whom many treat as a guru, or with someone you perceive as 'having what you want,' the idolisation/idealisation produced a kind of melancholia: the melancholia of inferiority, of distance, of longing, of feared impossibility, of shame about where you are, or who you are, right now. The desire to move quickly into enlightenment, liberation, knowledge, sobriety, shamelessness - into a freer self, a happier self, a queerer self, or what have you - can be fierce and fiercely privatising.
The emotions she’s describing here are so on point. It is a melancholia that makes us behave strangely in the moment of realising our own gap, between where we are and where we wish to be. She goes on to describe the role of shame in Sedgwick’s work, and in particular talks about shame as an important signifier of caring about something - of finding it important:
Without positive affect, there can be no shame: only a scene that offers you enjoyment or engages your interest can make you blush.
In other words, as Nelson puts it, if you’re lucky, you care a lot. This is going to come with some degree of shame. Normalising the competitive feeling - the one that sparks that melancholia, and perhaps more pointedly, the jealousy - should be taken not as an excuse to strike out at the person who is inspiring those feelings. Rather, it should be taken as a sure sign that you have hit on something important. Something valuable to you. And that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a very lucky place to be. Rather than bored, disillusioned, numbed or disinterested, you have found something that sparks a true reaction. What more might be discovered, by leaning in to this feeling, rather than shying away from it?
Final thoughts for now…
We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun.
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
Art is not a competitive act. Other factors make it seem so - in particular, the business side of things. But the art itself is not a competition. To quote Joyce Carol Oates:
A work of art has never, to my knowledge, displaced another work of art. The living are no more in competition with the dead than they are with the living.
- Joyce Carol Oates
Your art will not displace other art. The idea that it does - or ever could - overplays the value of what you do in comparison with what others do. There is something else Lamott says in Bird by Bird that stands out here: while you don’t need to be happy for those whom you feel jealous of, you can certainly stop short of letting that feeling fuel any self-loathing.
I think this is a vital distinction: there’s no point pretending jealousy doesn’t exist. But it can fuel appreciation or something like the desire to improve and learn and create more, or indeed a feeling of humility in the face of greater skill/success/whatever. It might, through shame, highlight something you didn’t realise you value. Or it could fuel something far more negative. Equally, there’s no need to transform all jealousy into a positive alternative right out the gate. Sulk a bit. You’re allowed. Eventually, I get bored of a sulk. That’s the point at which my feelings might turn into something more helpful.
Something I hold dear (my anchor in the sulk-storm) is to recognise that my work can only be done by me, not anyone else, and whether or not I’m ‘successful’ at it will depend rather largely on what I define as success. On that score, the bar is yours to define. But I like the reminder that play is as essential a component in the creation process as anything else. Noticing what makes me feel shame - about my own skill level, about what I hope to achieve - tells me there is still worthwhile work that I wish to do. There is still room to play.
Through that tunnel, I leave my sulk and get back, at last, to the words. Those words are for me, first and foremost. I remain my most important critic, reader and friend.
Until next time,
Be well.
CCx