I’m Jealous of My Friend’s Writing Success: Am I the Literary Asshole?

It’s an honor and a pleasure to join you again for another exciting installment of Am I the Literary Asshole?, a column that seeks all the knowledge that one can glean after slamming an entire six-pack of beer. I’m Kristen Arnett and when I’m not pounding Miller Lite, I’m out pounding the pavement, seeking the greatest advice questions the internet has to offer. Hey, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Today, I thought we’d get intimate. Have a friendly get together, assemble a tray of fancy charcuterie (and by that I mean I’ve dumped a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos into a mixing bowl and I’ve poured in a side of Bagel Bites), and procured a bottle of very fine rosé. Did you know that you can’t make rosé by simply mixing red and white wine together? People know the difference! Just ask my wife.

So let’s clink our glasses, enjoy the simple yet elegant flavors of our snacks, and slip right into our first question:

1) Hello there! I am trying to manage some jealousy over a friend’s writing. I have been working on a novel for a few years and mentioned it to a friend about a year ago. The next time we got together, she let me know that I had inspired her to start a book and already had written most of it, but obviously it was just for fun. She sent me some to read, it was great, and I enjoyed having a new writing buddy. Since then, her approach has evolved from “yeah I’ll never show this to anyone” to “well, maybe I could publish it someday” to “I’ll watch you get an agent so you can show me how to do it.” All fine, I’m a little jealous she’s written so much faster than me, but we’re trying different genres, everyone’s process is different, fine. It’s fine!

Then she tells me that she got together with a friend who is a novelist, and this friend suggested she share one of her (now multiple) manuscripts with his friend who has published in her genre. All great! Very cool! I am now wildly envious! I have been trying to write a book for real for a few years, and I hope to get it into shape to pitch agents this spring, and maybe it’ll work out. And I like having this friend as a writer buddy! We have a great time sending comments back and forth on each other’s work. So how do I deal with the knee-jerk feeling that she’s leaping past me on something she sort of started as a lark? I realize I am the problem here and would like to not be an asshole about it. Thank you for reading this and I hope you have something delicious to drink!

The thing about this column that is an honest-to-goodness blessing is that for the most part, I would say the majority of people who write in are NOT assholes. You, friend, seem like a completely lovely person who has encountered a series of very specific events that have made you realize that you’re having unprecedented—and very unwanted—negative emotional reactions.

You’re a writer and you wanted to share that love of work and of creating with a dear friend. They heard the love that was obviously apparent in your voice, got excited about the way you talked about a thing that you very much care about, and thought that it sounded like a great next step for them. All of that is delightful, and I think you realize that, too. It’s a special, incredible thing to be able to share the act of writing with others, especially others who also enjoy writing.

We can get so much from those conversations! Some of the greatest moments of my life come from shared talks with friends about the act of writing. I just got back from a weeklong trip with a great writer friend, and now that I’m home again, I’m approaching my work with a special freshness and zeal that can only come from indulging in those kinds of conversations. They are life-changing.

But something else has happened here, hence your reason for writing in: you have found yourself inexplicably jealous of this friend and their new connection to writing.

Many people experience this over the course of their writing career. Generally, I would say it has almost nothing to do with the other writer at all. This is all internal junk that gums up the works of our brains. This is your friend and you appreciate their writing. You like talking to them about work. You have a relationship outside of writing. You care for them.

This isn’t about your friend, this is about your feelings. You’re worried you’ll be left behind, and that’s because your friend is moving at what you perceive as a faster, more enviable speed. Buddy, you’ve put a ticking clock on your own writing experience.

The easiest way to shift this line of thinking—and to take the negative feelings away from your relationship to your friend—is to realize that there isn’t a clock involved when it comes to writing. There is no deadline involved other than the one your brain just decided to make for you. Once you realize that you’re truly only in competition with yourself, it becomes easier not to compare yourself to other people. It’s something we have to remind ourselves, over and over again, when it comes to making work. Because it can be very easy to forget that fact. We see someone else “succeeding” in a way that hasn’t happened to us yet, and we feel bereft. But I promise, you’re not behind! You’re moving at your own pace and making something that’s entirely yours own. Remembering that (and reminding yourself of it again when it inevitably happens in the future) will make your life a lot easier. I promise.

The pepperoni on these bagel bites really brings out the flavor of the wine, wouldn’t you say? Let’s pour another glass and help ourselves to the next question:

2) An editor reached out to me early this year and asked if I’d provide a blurb for their writer. I didn’t know the author, but the book sounded promising, so I agreed to take a look. Long story short, I loved it, so I sent over a glowing blurb. Now the book is about to be published. Well, I guess a lot of authors liked this book, because there are a ton of fancy blurbs from famous writers attached to it, but guess what? Mine isn’t there. I am kind of mad about it and have been steaming for weeks. Who is the asshole here?

If a blurb falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to read it, was it even written at all?

Friend, I understand your frustration here. We’ve talked about blurbs in this advice column quite a few times and there is always some drama attached. Blurbs are repetitive, blurbs illuminate something special, blurbs are necessary, blurbs aren’t necessary, blurbs are a form of unpaid labor, blurbs are a love letter we gift a book that we find we can’t live without: all these things can be true at once.

In this particular situation, it seems that the person who has done you a disservice is in fact the editor who reached out to you. But again, I say this without knowing the entirety of the backstory—I wasn’t on the publishing side of things and I don’t know the specifics of their particular position. Is it possible that they received the blurb too late in the game from you to put it on the book? Sure. Is it also possible that they reached out to as many authors as they could find in their rolodex in the hopes that they’d get a sufficient number of blurbs and then wound up receiving way more than they could actually use for copy? That’s also possible.

Judging solely on the situation as you’ve written it here, I think it’s fair to say that the other person did wrong here. I don’t think it was with malicious intent, so I don’t necessarily wanna call them an asshole, but what I would do if I were in your position is bookmark it in your brain for future occurrences. If this particular person reaches out to you again for a blurb for a different book—and they might do just that—maybe consider whether you want to put in time on something that maybe won’t ever see the light of day. Just saying.

The wine’s running low, but we’ve got one last whopper left in the chamber, locked and loaded, so let’s pour out the last of our rosé and give a toast to our final question of the day:

3) Very basic question that has been thrown around a lot in the past couple of years: is it possible to separate a writer from their work? She-who-must-not-be-named, Cassandra Claire, all the gross old men of the past… is it okay to enjoy their work anymore? What does it say about you as a reader if you like their stories? Does it mean anything at all? Can I align myself as a good, moral person and still enjoy prose written by someone whose morals differ from my own?

You can ask me this question different days of the week and I’ll probably have a different answer for you every time. This is a prickly one, friend.

What I can say with assurance is that many other writers have written about this more eloquently than I will here (and with far less alcohol in their system). One person who has done so recently is Brandon Taylor, who wrote quite beautifully and with great nuance in Sweater Weather about his relationship to Alice Munro and her books. Right now, I would say that I am very taken with the careful way that he considered this issue.

For myself, I think quite often of the way T Kira Māhealani Madden talks about work that she wrote in the past that feels disconnected to her now. She says she honors the person she was when she wrote the work. I am going to take her generous and thoughtful words here and apply them to my own book-loving life: I honor the person I was when I read it.

And I think I’ll leave it at that.

We’re out of wine, friends, and we’re out of questions. Join me next time when I do a deep dive into a bottle of whiskey and somehow manage to swim the backstroke.

And send me your anonymous questions! I love them (and you).

Wine about it,

Dad

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Are you worried you’re the literary asshole? Ask Kristen via email at AskKristen@lithub.com, or anonymously here.