My Mean, Rich, Hot Ex-Friend is a Mediocre Literary Darling and I Hate It

It’s Thursday and you know what that means! Time for another magical installment of Am I the Literary Asshole?, the drunken advice column that asks you to put your question down, flip it, and reverse it. I’m your host, Kristen Arnett, and I’m chomping at the bit over here, ready to get this party started. Nothing gets me amped like literary drama! Except maybe too much caffeine and an energy drink?

So what do you say we mix this redbull with some vodka and rip into our first question of the day? Ready, set, drink:

1) Dear Kristen, am I the literary asshole if I hate talking about my books? I’ve been fortunate enough to have a couple of books published in the last few years, but I hate having to make conversation about them. When new people ask what I do, I tell them I am in marketing (true), but often my friends will feel the need to follow this up with the fact that I am also a writer, as they think I am being modest. I am not trying to be modest; I think it’s very nice that people are interested in my work and that my friends want me to celebrate it, but I just find it so boring to deliver little elevator pitches about my books at a party or a bar and would rather talk about anything else. I’ve raised this gently with my friends before, but they don’t seem to understand that these conversations are unpleasant for me, and that it almost feels like I’m being forced to try to sell something I have no interest in selling at that moment. What do you think?

This is a really interesting question! I’m not sure we’ve ever had anyone write in to say that they wish people would STOP asking about their work; it’s usually the other way around!

I think it’s perfectly fine to want to keep your writing life private. However, I’ll tell you right now that I think it’s going to be hard to keep people from asking you about it at parties, especially if you’re publishing multiple books over multiple years. Publishing with that kind of frequency leads me to believe that your writing career has not only been satisfying artistically, it has also likely been successful. That means people know about you, they know about your work, and they want to celebrate you for it—and yes, that means they will want to talk about it and ask questions.

I don’t think you can get people to permanently stop asking you about your books, that’s just not going to happen. However, I do think there are tactics you can employ to lessen the questions or possibly cut them off at the start.

One thing you can do is continue to remind your friends that you don’t really like talking about your work at social events. Friends love you! They like that you are making art and they naturally want to talk to you about your craft, so it’s going to take more than one gentle reminder for this to likely sink in for them. Just keep reminding them. It’s fine.

The second thing you can do is steer the conversation in different directions. When the topic of your work inevitably comes up (which it definitely will), simply answer whatever question has been asked as briefly as possible and then move the topic to something else entirely. I usually find that the best way to combat a question aimed your way to is ask the other person a question. When you’re the one steering the conversation, you very likely won’t end up having to answer too many unwanted questions yourself.

But at the end of the day, you might just need to resign yourself to the fact that people are excited that you’ve done something incredibly cool (publish multiple novels, no easy feat). Accept this praise and interest with gratitude and move on. It’s a cool thing, but you get to decide how much you’d like to discuss it over drinks at a party.

My blood is pumping! Let’s chug the next one and keep thing moving!

2) I’m a writer (no MFA, no prospects, no money) with a conundrum. A former friend (poor little rich girl, parents bought her an elite degree but no empathy or style) who I know to be a fucking monster just sold a very mediocre book. Because she’s rich, hot, and skinny, I anticipate this book getting the A24 treatment and everyone in the world trying to convince me that my ex-friend is a brilliant writer, rather than if Regina George was a goth-lite wannabe-influencer. I did so many unthanked reads on this thing and I know it’s still gonna be mid. I don’t think anyone else who sees her picture before they read it will agree. I know I’m a hater. I’m in therapy.

She was awful to me and some people I love, over almost 20 years, and got pass after pass for being hot, rich, and “brilliant.” Getting over what she did to me and our community and getting over her book getting lauded by people because she’s a rich hottie are two different problems, and I have no idea how to do the second one. Do I just hope her readers are smarter than I think they are? In a just world, she and her book would get rejected by the world as the moral and creative voids they are, but the world loves mean rich hotties, and as a broke uggo, I am going insane. Thanks, Jacob Have I Unfollowed

Wow, we got a wild bunch today!

There is a lot to unpack here, so I’m going to put my library skills to work. Generally, I’ve used my time on the reference desk as a tool for interrogating the world around me and today is no exception. Librarians are looking for questions under the questions; the truth that can’t be verbalized. Let’s take a deeper look at your letter and the language you’ve used:

First off, you start your letter with a whole bunch of demeaning information about yourself. “No MFA, no prospects, no money,” you say. You end the letter calling yourself a “broke uggo.” That’s how you’ve described yourself. It’s rough. It tells me a lot about your situation. Friend, this isn’t really a letter about the other person, though of course they factor into your feelings. It’s really a letter about how you feel about yourself and your writing career.

It’s always a losing battle to try and compare ourselves to other people. That is exactly what you’re doing with this other writer. They have money, you don’t. They are “skinny” and “hot” and you feel this has furthered their career and made it so you cannot succeed. You feel that they have been unjustly awarded acceptance and love and you feel that this treatment is unearned. I don’t know this other person, and you say that you are in therapy to talk about it, which I think is very good. But what they have received in this life and how you feel about yourself are two very different things.

What I’d like you to focus on here are the things that you CAN control. You cannot control how this person looks, how much money they have, or what other people have given them. You cannot control how other readers will receive their work. To think that you will be able to manage everyone’s expectations—and control how people will react to this person’s inevitable book publication—is a foolish game. You can only control yourself here, and that will be a difficult task, because it seems as though this person’s successes and rewards—no matter how unjustly gained—have impacted how you feel about yourself and your own place in the writing world.

I urge you to sever yourself from this line of thinking. Moving forward, focus on what you can control, which is your writing and your relationship to your work. You do not have to have money or an MFA to make a writing career happen. Take it from me, a person who had neither and is currently moving though this world as a full-time novelist. Focusing so pointedly on this person and how they affected you in the past has left you miserable and hurt. The more you can divorce yourself from thinking about them, the better of you’re going to be. Try not to talk about them with friends. Delete them from your social media. Tell people you’re trying to turn over a new leaf and would rather not hear any new information about what’s happening with this person or their upcoming book or their writing career.

When you inevitably do run into information about this person in the wild, take that as your cue to turn inward and reflect on your own work. Don’t get stuck on their career trajectory. Don’t pull yourself back into the mess. You are the important person here. Your work. Your self-esteem. Your value in yourself. Focus on that and you’re going to start feeling a lot better about everything. It will get easier to navigate, with time, as long as you do these things. I promise.

I don’t know about you, but I need a drink after that! Let’s have another vodka red bull and hope our brains don’t leak through our ears while we take a look at our last question of the day:

3) Don’t you get bored answering all these questions?

This is an easy one to answer, and it’s short! No, I do not get bored! Did you read these questions today? WILD! It fuels me creatively. Answering your questions reminds me how good it is to be alive and to be a human being, messy flaws and all. I love people, I love your questions, I love being a writer. There’s nothing better.

And that’s all we have time for today, folks! Remember to send me your questions, I truly do love them and I love all of you! I have had so much caffeine I am about to rocket to the sun!

Blasting off,
Dad

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