{"id":934,"date":"2012-06-06T15:00:28","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/?p=934"},"modified":"2012-06-05T22:39:47","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T03:39:47","slug":"writer-envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/06\/writer-envy\/","title":{"rendered":"Writer Envy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Buchheit<\/a> linked to Catherine Schaff-Stump’s summary<\/a> of a Wiscon panel about rejections, which included this tidbit.<\/p>\n

\n

A very important piece of advice is keep your eyes on your own page. Don’t compare your career to that of others. There are a variety of variables in a writing career.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would like to second, third, and fourth that. And I agree with Steve’s comment that it’s easy to say and hard to do.<\/p>\n

But even though wallowing in envy isn’t useful and doesn’t make one pleasant to be around, that initial twinge of envy can be motivating. Someone sells a story to a market I’d love to crack? Maybe they put three times as much time into their writing than I do, and therefore get a lot more practice. Maybe they’ve worked harder to learn techniques that I’m struggling with. The solutions to both those problems are pretty obvious. (Maybe they’re just more talented than I am, but there’s no point in thinking about that.)<\/p>\n

So, while envy is hard to avoid, it does have its upside. Acknowledge it, use it, and move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Buchheit linked to Catherine Schaff-Stump’s summary of a Wiscon panel about rejections, which included this tidbit. A very important piece of advice is keep your eyes on your own page. Don’t compare your career to that of others. There … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}