Writing Envy

[Gita]

A Canadian friend sent me an exquisite short story he’d written the other day, and a tide of envy roiled up in me like Floydian acid reflux, like hungry dogs gnawing at my guts.

You may have tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting whereas mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with leathers and colors and miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor and churlish fat guys who only ride Norton Commandos or Vincent Black Shadows and would as soon knife your mother as light her cigarette.

My envy is annoyingly eager, like Corgis answering the Queen’s whistle, and it’s ready to howl. It likes to recite the letters of the alphabet, as in, “D is for dilettante and derivative” (the worst) or “P is for piker, poseur, and pedant,” all the things I fear I am as a writer or will become when I cease to write flash and try to break into the Big Leagues with the novelists.

Whereas your envy may prick your ribs from time to time and give you mild discomfort, my envy is a plague of ass-boils, it is the AIDS of envy, it consumes like a fever and leaves me weak and hopeless about the future of wordcraft (mine) and the success of others (all of you).

And yet, counter-intuitively,  I fervently hope my friend gets published (because if he is not published, there is no ghost of a prayer of a hope of a chance that a piker and poseur like me will ever be.)

[Jeanette Cheezum]

Nothing like getting the old juices flowing. But, you're a teriffilicous writer.

[Toby Tucker Hecht]

Gita, are you sure you haven't already started writing your major opus????

[Wendy]

Soooo...what are you really saying? I believe that language is an instrument for expression and not for concealing or preventing thought. ;)

[Robert Crisman]

@ Gita: It's yours.

[Gita]

@ Crisman:  Only if I can steal peckerwood lard can.

 

[Robert Crisman]

Good lord! What did he write? War And Peace? A plague of ass-boils, the AIDS of envy... Can I steal these phrases?

[Kristine_ES]

personally, i think gita just wants to win scrabble...  ;) 
(but her brilliance is what's relevant here, so i'll hush now) 

[Dorothy Hoffman]

I'm jealous of anyone who can write so brilliantly about her envy of another writer. No fair - that kind of epic envy should be reserved for those of us who really lack such talent.

Also, couldn't agree with you more about that last sentence.

[Cita]

*dilettante

[Cita]

1.  Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is my FAVORITE book on writing.

2.  I have been reading from the bottom up and couldn't WAIT to get to this piece, Gita, because I skimmed through last night.

3.  This is amazing.  You brought it, and you didn't disappoint, not with ONE WORD. 

4.  Dillettant is one of my least favorite words.  Right up there with sophomoric! 

5.  I miss everyone.  Wish we could have all had coffee this morning.