Battling Author Envy

This week at the SFF Seven we're talking about ENVY. We're asking if things have ever gotten weird between you and another author after publishing?

Yeah, they have. And it's awful and heartbreaking.

You know what else is awful and heartbreaking? Feeling that envy for other authors who seem to be more successful than we are. None of us wants to be that person, and yet none of us is immune from those green crawly fingers of professional jealousy.

So, what happened to me? It's happened a few times, with different people. The most startling cases were authors who were published before I was. I admired their books. They became friends. They were lovely and generous and helpful to me. A couple of the people I'm thinking of were ones I counted as very close friends. Women I loved. 

In every case, after I did get published and enjoyed some moderate success, they ended up just... not being my friends anymore. They essentially ghosted me on social media. One emailed me after we roomed at a convention, told me she wasn't going the next year and so I should find another roommate - then she did go, didn't tell me, and roomed with someone else. 

Did it hurt? Oh, yes, it really hurt. It still hurts to write this.

Did I wonder what I'd done to lose those friendships? Obsessively. I still think about it sometimes.

Do I know it was envy? No. It could be I said or did something. Sometimes we never know why someone stops loving us. Even if we can figure it out, there's no changing the past. 

The point of all this is that I can't control those relationships. They didn't want to be my friends anymore and I couldn't change that. I've found only one way to combat that ongoing pain, and that is to control what I can: changing myself.

I do my very best to be a good friend to others. I try to help and support other authors. I counter professional jealousy in myself any time it pricks me with its poisonous thorns. 

The best way to counter that? Flow out the opposite energy!

Read a book that you don't think is as good as yours but seems to have done better? Find something to love about it!

See an author with more followers than you have? Follow them too!

Someone is nominated for an award that you aren't? Celebrate it!

Another author is making way more money than you are? Take some of theirs!

Oh, wait...

Okay, so, it's not a perfect method. But it really does work. If you feel the pinch of professional jealousy, the most effective way to combat it is to be the opposite of that. You don't have to feel it, just act accordingly. Trust me - the feeling will follow. 

And know you're not alone. 

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Dark Wizard comes out Thursday!!

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Navigating Professional Jealousy

When you hear about the new bar that doesn't do wimpy little dart boards - they have axe throwing lanes - you don't just go wandering around the city hoping to stumble across the bar. You get directions.

When you're engaged in a profession that matters to you and jealousy sweeps you, you're being given directions. You can ignore them and wallow in the deep unfairness of life, the universe, and everything, or you can collect the directions and alter your course.

I have this theory that jealousy gets a bad rap. You know the lists. Emotions get labeled positive and negative. We all know anger, jealousy, fear, blah, blah, Dark Side, right? Bull, says I. Nothing is negative until you do something that makes it so. I've climbed on this soapbox before, so I'll spare you the sermon. Instead, story:

I was working at a large Seattle-area software company. I made more money than I'd ever dreamed I could make. Sure, there were pagers that went off at 2AM and there were long nights spent trying to work out why some piece of code had gone sideways, but I had a boss I gladly worked hard for. If I had any inkling that something wasn't quite right, I choked it down. This was what success meant, right? Stable work, good people, and a great paycheck? Then the amazing boss was gone. In the space of a day, the landscape shifted. A dysfunctional mad man took his place. I swear this is not political allegory. This really happened. The new guy so messed up the team that the entire technical staff walked into the managing director's office one day to quit en masse. We didn't end up quitting - the managing director removed that boss. The thing about it was that the work drama made stark how miserable I was. And had been for longer than I'd allowed myself to admit. This was not how I wanted to spend my life. Didn't know what I did want - but I knew what I didn't.

So I undertook a process of figuring out where I belonged. The advice? Look to your jealousy. Every pang of envy, every twist of jealousy, every mental wail of 'why not me?' was to be noted down over the space of a month. More if need be. Then the data were compiled and mined for a common thread. It took weeks of looking at the data over and over and wondering why I couldn't work out what it had to say - but you can likely guess. The thread was there, waiting for me to pick it up: Story telling. Every single item on my list was, at its core, about telling stories. So here I am, driven to writing by the sign posts of jealousy turned to a purpose.

Occasionally, I have days where I'm envious of that paycheck I left behind. And there are days I see someone else get the accolade I imagine I want. But there's no stewing in that. No wallowing in the bitter dregs of wishing I had what someone else has earned. When the envy grabs you by the ribs and squeezes, it's time to look the monster dead in the eye and see what it has to tell you. No. Not the 'you're not good enough, smart enough, brave enough, whatever enough.' Those are lies. Stare it in the eye and find out exactly what it signifies. Are you really envious of the attention author A is receiving? Or are you awed by this person's productivity? (There are no wrong answers - there's only the right for you answer.) Once you know, you can begin shaping your work so it comes into line with what you want. Productivity, attention, a fancy car, whatever the object of your envy.

It's work. Both to pay strict attention to the signposts and to then steer by them. But when jealousy bites hard and deep, it's because it has a message for you. Do you listen?