The antidote to jealousy

Do you ever just have enough of reading about other writers' successes?  I know I do.  If I read about someone else's success on a vulnerable day I start thinking "Why her?  She doesn't even write well." 

Sometimes we're jealous of what other people have achieved because we don't have the courage to do that ourselves. It's no use us complaining about the state of the market if we're not putting our work out there.  Jealousy masks fear in this case, fear of doing something close to our hearts and possibly failing.

We think that the market is too crowded for another writer in that genre, she's grabbed the slot I wanted in my genre, what I'm writing is unfashionable.  Sometimes we do need to take a good, hard look at the marketability of our work, but sometimes we need to keep the faith and believe in what we're doing.

Julia Cameron's classic book The Artist's Way has lots of suggestions for tackling our jealousy.  One I particularly like is using a mantra: "treating myself like a precious object will make me strong."  So often we get caught up in what's wrong with our writing rather than looking at what's special and unique about it.

There'd never be a next big thing if somebody didn't have the courage to present it to the world.  The antidote to jealousy is courage, the courage to believe in your work even when nobody else does,the courage to keep working, honing your skills as a writer, keeping the faith in the genre you love.