Because I am apparently a masochist who needed to come down from feeling pretty good about writing after a writing class, I am simultaneously reading I’m Just Happy to Be Here by Janelle Hanchett and Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. Both memoirs are about writers on slightly different topics, Hanchett’s subtitle is a memoir on renegade mothering while Caldwell’s is a memoir of friendship (cherishing a now deceased friend). But both authors are also addicts, and addiction factors enough into both books, their words so compelling, that I found myself looking up where the AA meetings gather in Berkeley.
But my self-torture stems from their ability to write – and well, their read-ability. I read these authors, and all I can do is compare myself. It goes something like,
- their addictions/despairs/life story are more dramatic
- they have been writing or blogging for years
- they have time to read and write
- they have no time to read, but still find time to write
- they have an MFA/PhD/some other accomplishment
- they are younger (or started when they were younger than me)
- they have more children and still write
- they have no children and can write
- they have better stories
- they have lessons
- they can do dialogue?!
- they are wittier
- they are more profound or insightful
- they wrote books
My envy discourages me.
Caldwell shares how her (also) writer friend and she “talked … about what a swampland this was: the world of envy and rivalry and self-doubt (between women, and writers, and women writers), about insecurity and power differentials.”
And they were both published.