To accompany our spring 2024 issue (21.1), we have curated a folio on jealousy and envy. Reading Ravi Mangla’s story “Flavors of Tuscany” in particular inspired us to put together this feature. We initially called it just a “jealousy” feature, which describes what happens in Mangla’s story, but we then expanded it to cover the concept of envy. Though most dictionaries have accepted that jealousy and envy are used nearly synonymously in our culture, the Chicago Manual of Style says, “Jealousy connotes feelings of resentment toward another, particularly in matters relating to an intimate relationship {sexual jealousy}. Envy refers to coveting another’s advantages, possessions, or abilities {his transparent envy of others’ successes}.” For the most part, we follow that formulation of the terms.
Here is Colleen Rothman’s contribution to that folio:
Sitting Tight While Others Celebrate: Navigating Envy While on Submission
Earlier this year, I borrowed a novel from the public library and inhaled it in less than twenty-four hours. Its quirky voice and unpredictable narrative kept me turning pages even while I brushed my teeth, and I understood why so many critics named it a Best Book last year. The novel deserved the hype, I concluded upon reaching its final paragraph. Unfortunately, I kept reading.
Book acknowledgments can be rich texts themselves. Given all the people involved in one book’s creation, I’m fascinated by writers’ choices about who to thank and how. I appreciate the artful name-drop, the intimate nod to the partner listed last, the gratitude for the thankless labor of English teachers and childcare providers. In the past these pages prompted me to ponder who I might thank when I wrote a book, a personal goal since third grade. The coda to this novel I’d just devoured, however, name-checked an editor who’d recently rejected my book—not a bound volume but a Word document attached to an email. Seeing this name, I wanted to hurl the novel across my bedroom. Instead, I brought it back early, shoving this reminder of my failure into the book-return slot with more force than necessary.
* * *
Envy is a universal human emotion to which writers are predisposed, but until my manuscript went on submission, I didn’t often experience this feeling. My journey has been unconventional—I earned a graduate degree that wasn’t an MFA, then put off taking my creative writing seriously until I was home with a baby who took a solid nap every afternoon. I often felt like an outsider in literary spaces, but I was content with my chosen path, which now includes a flexible day job that affords time for writing. With support from workshops and my local writing group—and while parenting through a global pandemic—I completed a collection of short stories set in south Louisiana. I signed with an agent willing to represent this book despite the industry cliché that agents only want novels. Even as she reiterated the limited prospects for publishing short fiction with Big Five imprints and larger independent presses, I assumed this first hurdle I’d cleared would be the highest. Soon after we agreed the manuscript was ready for her to send to editors, along with an excerpt from a nascent novel-in-progress, I was on submission—the last step before a book deal.
For some authors, this moment is brief. Within days, acquisition editors read their work, quickly compile a profit-and-loss statement to sell it internally, perhaps even fight with other editors at auction or preempt such drama with a lucrative offer before an auction can occur. These success stories, repeated at readings and literary conferences, can create the misperception that such circumstances are typical. I suspect most audience members don’t want to hear about books that were shopped around but didn’t sell.
When I read the buzzy novel, my book had been on submission for months. I never expected a bidding war, having sat through countless conference panels restating the self-fulfilling prophecy that “story collections don’t sell.” But I wasn’t prepared for a period that, as it continued, vibrated with silent rejection. Eventually, my agent shared excerpts from the initial pass letters, including a kind no from the editor I’d soon spot in the novel’s acknowledgments. Until this point, I’d considered myself immune to rejection. I’d spent years submitting stories to literary magazines one at a time, logging responses in a spreadsheet with hundreds of rows. This time, however, twelve stories and my novel excerpt met the market simultaneously, with each individual story presenting a fresh opportunity to say no.
Editors talk about needing to “fall in love” with a manuscript, and the language of romance felt apt as I read those acknowledgments. It was like seeing a wedding announcement for an unrequited crush. So what if we were never together? I’d had hopes. At that moment, it was easy to channel my frustration and disappointment toward the jacket-flap headshot of a stranger who’d achieved what I could claim only almost. She’d convinced an imprint of a publishing conglomerate to transform her art into a product that, with ample marketing support, had found its way into my hands. While another writer might have elevated this author to the status of “literary nemesis” or, to borrow from a friend, “hate crush,” I couldn’t sustain a grudge against this person whose work had made me laugh out loud. What I could do was nurture a general resentment for anyone who’d ever published a book.
* * *
Dread crept into activities I’d previously enjoyed. Bookstores became shrines devoted to other writers’ professional success. I felt newly queasy seeing the effusive blurbs on every Tuesday’s fresh crop of hardcovers, the #BookTok display tables, the handwritten shelf-talkers praising local authors—members of a vibrant literary community to which I felt less sure I belonged. At events and readings, it became impossible to clap politely for the featured writers without comparing myself to them. I didn’t know how to respond when acquaintances wondered how the writing was going, or when one asked if I was still writing at all.
Being online was another source of anxiety. For years, I’d received a daily email recap of the latest book deals, a valuable resource for learning about the industry. After several weeks on submission, I began deleting these emails unread, no longer interested in the coy distinction between “very nice” and “significant” deals. Two announcements were for writers whose manuscripts I’d workshopped at a summer conference, both books deserving of a larger audience. To my surprise, I didn’t feel envious of these writers I knew personally, nor of another friend who’d won a university-press prize for her debut story collection. The bold names I didn’t recognize drove me to cancel my newsletter subscription.
Still, the deal announcements found me. Instagram’s algorithm began populating my Explore page with formatted screenshots on square-cropped backgrounds, a glow-up from earlier versions that had circulated on Lit Twitter (RIP). As I read more about these strangers, I deciphered irksome patterns. Youth, for starters—I’d turned forty while on submission—along with prestigious literary awards and MFAs earned while I wrote during naptime. People whose follower counts ended in a K, quantifiably more adept at the writing-adjacent skills now required to cultivate an audience. People who’d wisely gone on submission with novels—or even better, two or three to market as a brand. These traits reflected the industry advantages I believed these authors possessed, even if it felt gross to think of them as rivals. We were all artists, weren’t we?
I clung to this idea even as my process collapsed. People write bad books all the time; maybe mine was one of them. I started to question every step of my chosen path, which had led me to believe I had something to say, then to say it in a form few people read. I arrived empty-handed to my writing-group meetings. We talked about writer’s block, a state I’d deemed imaginary until this period of shredded confidence, and chatted about the necessity of taking breaks from the capitalist mandate to produce. It helped that my fellow group members are poets who put art into the world despite the disinterest of most literary agents. I also vented privately to friends who write fiction, including one whose novel had, as they say, died on submission. These well-meaning folks kept telling me, “Story collections are hard.” I felt naive for imagining otherwise.
* * *
In this period of between-ness, I’ve been unable to find an honest public account of how it feels to linger with this uncertainty. What’s plentiful are admissions of jealousy from prominent writers. Take, for example, Anne Lamott on the “thorn in my side,” Elisa Gabbert ruing “the writer who got there first,” Lynn Steger Strong measuring herself against Kevin Wilson, “a writer I’ve never spoken to.” It’s riskier for someone who hasn’t yet published a book—the so-called “emerging” writer—to acknowledge similar feelings for people the publishing industry wouldn’t consider their peers. In a rare example, Benjamin Schaefer admits feeling jealous of a friend’s success, though he reframes the emotion teased in the headline as “disappointment.”
I suspect my diffuse professional jealousy arose from the industry’s false binary of “established” and “emerging,” which distinguishes writers with books from those without. This stratification ignores the financial and creative precarity of the “established” writer while creating the illusion of linear progress. Although being on submission occupies one end of the “emerging” spectrum, this achievement doesn’t ensure advancement to the next stage. As with any creative pursuit, such external validation is never guaranteed; despite the gerund’s implied momentum, many writers remain forever “emerging.” At the core of my envy was anxiety over this fate.
* * *
As I write this, my manuscript remains on submission. Some might consider it premature to reveal how it’s going before it’s over, not to mention unwise to confess the desire to transcend “emergence” without being perceived as a try-hard. Despite the recent collapse of a leading small-press distributor, alternate paths to publication remain available, and I’m hopeful that my first book on submission won’t be my last. But the opacity of the process, the vague suspicion that I shouldn’t write about it, and the silence I’ve sat with for months have opened a space to write toward. With this attempt, I want to convey that it’s normal to feel many emotions, including envy, upon reaching this stage. You came close. The deal you’ve envisioned may not materialize. If it doesn’t, you’re still a writer. I’m reminding myself of these facts even as I share them with you.
If you have a manuscript on submission, please take care of yourself. Although you have no control over the outcome, you can choose how to spend your time while you wait. You have my permission to unsubscribe from emails that feel bad and to take a social media break without apology. Tap out of readings for a while. Be patient with yourself if you struggle to follow the standard advice to begin a new project. Find a hobby that’s completely unrelated to writing. Return when those jealous feelings burn less brightly, when you’re ready to show up for others and yourself again.
* * *
Fortunately, I’ve found my way back to literary events. Even if I never publish a book, I’m still a reader, as voracious as I was in third grade. The editor who rejected my manuscript gave me a gift through their work with that other writer, allowing me to detach from reality and dissolve into a story, to connect with another human through their words. Focusing on the industry’s business side obscured my earnest conviction that every published book is a miracle (yes, even the bad ones). They’re performed not by one person but by many, and in this record-breaking era of book banning, their existence is worth applauding. Being part of a community that elevates them feels better than sulking at home.
Recently, I attended Imani Perry’s discussion with Jesmyn Ward at the New Orleans Book Festival. Perry asked the two-time winner of the National Book Award what she’d learned from publishing her latest novel, Let Us Descend. Ward cringed, then gave an answer I didn’t expect: “I didn’t realize how much I had internalized this idea that this is a competition.” She’d realized her “confidence was based on the validation that I was getting” through reviews, nominations, and awards, noting “outliers” to her new book’s positive reception, which “shook me.”
It was refreshing to hear such an acclaimed author acknowledge these feelings while dismantling the warped logic of creative competition. While literary awards generate necessary attention, they also perpetuate the myth of the Best Book, some act of creative expression that is objectively superior. This system creates perceptions of scarcity and engenders rivalry, which can afflict even those who’ve benefited from their glow. “The only thing I can do,” Ward added, “is to keep doing the work that I feel called to do.”
Despite the hierarchy implicit in her position on the stage and mine in the audience, Ward’s advice struck me, writer to writer. Even if it might feel this way, writing is not a competition. We can’t let ourselves fixate on other people, the industry, or external markers of achievement. What matters is that internal drive to keep returning to the page, to feel the hours slip by as we try to get the words down and work to improve them, striving toward some larger truth. To that end, we must let ourselves feel every petty feeling and then learn how to let them go.
I’m still learning how to put this into practice, to accept my unusual path even if it has made my work harder to categorize, to push aside my envy instead of letting it propel me toward a mirage of another person’s career or some vague notion of what publishers want. That thinking seems destined to yield mediocre writing. Instead, I plan to keep making what I feel most compelled to create and, even in the face of failure, to persist.
Colleen Rothman’s essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Literary Hub, Ploughshares, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere, with short fiction published in Quarterly West, Maudlin House, Wigleaf, and Ecotone. She has attended Tin House Summer Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where she was a Tennessee Williams Scholar. She lives in New Orleans. Learn more at www.colleenrothman.com.
