some news: i'm jealous

why didnt i get accepted into the writers conference i didnt apply for

today i flipped through my instagram stories and saw lots of good news from other people. a couple grad school announcements, a new job, a publication in an esteemed journal, and an acceptance into the sewanee writers’ conference. didn’t i see two other people post about their acceptances yesterday? i stare at my phone as some sort of premature rigor mortis sets into my half-dead body. is everybody getting successful without me??

i want to start off by telling you what this post is not going to be, and that’s bitter. or like if it is, that’s accidental and i need to up my self-awareness game, and that’s my bad. but it’s actually really important to me that bitterness isn’t the focus because i truly am happy for these people. these kinds of accomplishments happen as a result of discipline, motivation, sacrifice, and passion, and it’s genuinely nice to witness their culmination into a reward. what i am more curious about today is my jealousy.

the jealousy stiffens my limbs and swirls something thick and swampy in my stomach. it descends a puff of gray fog upon my brain, a collection of ambient thoughts like i suck, i need to go work on my novel NOW, why didn’t i apply, im so glad i didn’t apply, probably would have just gotten rejected, everyone’s going to have a book deal before me, i’m never going to get a book deal, i should quit, i should apply next year, everyone’s a better writer than me, what if i’m an amazing writer but like the world just doesn’t know it yet, and do i actually care about being successful or do i just want other people to think i’m successful?

i numb out by opening substack. this is what i do now that twitter is off my phone. i check the orange notification and see that someone new has liked a “note” (basically tweet) i posted on the app. this stupid thing has accumulated 50+ likes and has made me feel like a god. people?? amused by something i have to say?? i fantasize about rising to fame, catapulted by pithy psuedo-tweets that belong in 2014. i text peter a screenshot, along with an update on dear diary’s growing audience. wow, he responds earnestly. you’re blowing up!!! my subscriber count is 67. i text back, i want to be the helena of substack.

now imagine how desperate for success you need to be if you are secretly plotting a reign over substack notes. i could be writing my novel but instead i am workshopping sad half-jokes in 140 characters with the hopes that it will attract two new subscribers a day. the goal of attracting subscribers, of course, being to build a readership that would eventually support me in landing a book deal.

i keep forgetting that you have to write a book to get a book deal.

last week i stumbled upon a really excellent essay called Into the Ego Chamber in which Lennie talks about writing as performance:

When you share your writing on a platform that also functions as social media, the impulse to think is subsumed by the impulse to perform. Are we following a historical urge to document, or an egoistic urge to be perceived as the kind of person who makes insightful observations? Do you want to be the next Joan Didion, or do you just want your peers to think you are the next Joan Didion?

- vignetta.substack.com

writing for substack has had me thinking about writing for different end goals. substack has so far provided me with the largest and most interactive writing community i’ve experienced. time with my novel manuscript is intimate and personal, but with substack, we’re partying. it’s social. which means i am writing for immediate connection, but also, inherently, performing for it. part of the thrill of writing for substack is the opportunity to be seen; the chance to write something that really resonates with people, something that might “really blow up.” if i write something that does well, and i do that over and over, wouldn’t that make me, technically, successful? would it turn the jealousy swamp water clear inside my stomach, would it make me “good enough” like my friends with their announcements?

i reflect on the writers’ conference i am not going to. a truth reveals itself to me, one that is so honest that it is painful and deeply embarrassing. i am not jealous that these people are attending the writers’ conference. to be totally fucking honest with you, i don’t even know what the writers’ conference entails. is it a workshop? are there speakers? who’s leading this thing? i’m not jealous of the actual experience that these writers are going to have. im jealous that they will be able to tell people about the experience they had. i’m jealous they will be able to list a highbrow honor in their bio. i’m jealous that they have been validated as artists by a panel of judges, that they will meet other artists who look at them and think, “that’s an artist.” i’m jealous that they believed in themselves enough to try something hard and scary.

and guys, that’s on me!!! that means i’ve lost the plot a little. i do not want my writing and my writing goals to be so focused on others thinking something about me. in my heart, i know i write for me. i write to understand the feelings that are inside me but unknown to me. i do it to put words to personal truths that feel impossible to explain; to discover that, with great care and precision, it is not so impossible. i write because i like being inside my brain and i want to savor it, i want to timestamp it onto a printable piece of paper that i can look at in forty-five years and think, there she is. i write to play, i write to have fun, i write to admit the worst about myself and watch the world keep spinning. i write to evolve and transform, and i think when i am focused on just the writing it actually works, i think i actually become better. i become realer to myself, closer to her.

i’d be lying if i said i’m going to stop daydreaming about success. i’m not, because it’s fun. but i want to think of that part more like dessert. a little treat after i do the main thing. jealousy is a normal, human emotion that i am going to continue to experience, but like, i want to at least have it in response to other people’s talent, not their bragging rights. i wanna reconnect with my why. i wanna get so good at living in my own little writer world that i get jealous of myself. <3

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hi to those of you who are new to me and my work! each week, i’m going to share one of my previously published short stories (until i run out) and enthusiastically invite you to give it a read.

this week’s short story is called Baby Love, originally published by Hobart in June 2022. it’s about a not-pregnant thirty-something who meets a hot nineteen-year-old at a bar. this was my first published piece and is so special to me. out of everything i’ve published, this one most closely mirrors themes and vibes i’m exploring in the novel i’m working on. read it here!