Poking the Eyes Out (At Least One) of the Green-Eyed Writing Monster

'Jealousy' photo (c) 2011, William Shannon - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

 Yes, I know—it’s his face that’s green.  But go with it.

I occasionally guest-post over at Writer Unboxed, the fine writer’s site that has daily posts on all aspects of writing craft, the publishing world, and the business of fiction. Its regular roster includes many traditionally and self-published authors, premier agents and book doctors, and writers who haven’t experienced a lot of commercial success, but who are working religiously on their skills.

I was slotted for another post in early 2014, and my topic was going to be writing jealousy. Specifically, jealousy at the success of other writers. More specifically, MY jealousy of other writers’ successes. If you’ve read a sampling of my posts, you might have noticed that I can be a wise guy on my topics, throwing in a joke here and jibe there. I intended that for the green-eyed writing monster post (and will be guilty of it here), but since I can speak for pretty much every one of the 143,345,981 writers in the world, trust me—it can be a problem.

But some other treacherous writer at Unboxed just wrote a post on jealousy, that underhanded fiend, so I’ll roll with the topic here.

It All Started in Catholic School

For me, I think the problem started in Catholic school. (When in doubt, blame the nuns.) You see, they had us learning the 10 Commandments in first or second grade, glazed-eyed reciting by gathered tykes on an almost daily basis. Consider: If you were a seven-year-old, and you were told not to covet your neighbor’s wife, what would you think? I hadn’t even known if I had any talent at this coveting thing, and now I was being told not to do it. I immediately went back home and checked out the local wives to see if they were up to some covert coveting. But I wasn’t so busy with that that I couldn’t covet my neighbor’s house as well. Covet, covet, covet.

I am only an amateur psychologist (though I will accept money for my analyses), but I got the sense that my Catholic brethren were priming the pump for us on the sin thing. You know, telling us what not to do, so its fascination impelled us into that forbidden, coveted quest. But back then, I had the mercy of confession to hose off my juvenile sins. However, since I am a lapsed Catholic, I suppose this blog post is my confession.

Pathetic Wastes of Time and Other Jolly Pursuits

This I know: being jealous of your fellow writers’ triumphs is a mighty pathetic waste of time. As Carrie Fisher said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ” Too often I’ve squirmed and twitched when I’ve read about the incredible contracts given to contemporary authors, soaring sales figures, critical acclaim, while I’m still grubbing about trying to get an agent to spend 15 minutes with my manuscript. As I commented on the Writer Unboxed post, “It’s not that I want successful writers to die; perhaps just have gangrene. Still working on it.”

So I am working on it. It’s my pre-New Year’s resolution. It might sound like pabulum, but I am going to remind myself to congratulate those who do well, and to try and work all the harder on my own writing. So somebody can be jealous of me. No, I don’t mean that. Well, not all that much.

Is it OK if I still covet my neighbor’s iPad mini, though?

Copyblogger Essay Contest Deadline

I guess the first thing I’ll do that other writers will be jealous of is win Copyblogger’s essay contest. Who cares if a zillion other socially climbing copywriters have entered? Anyway, Copyblogger is one of the best sites on the Interwebz for useful advice on copywriting and content marketing. These guys and gals are so damn smart it smarts. (That doesn’t have any trace of jealousy, does it?) Those smarty-pantsers have an essay contest happening now, with great prizes, and the deadline is December 4 at 5pm PST. Click below to get the details. Take your shot!

Copyblogger Essay Contest Participant

Enter the contest or get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.