Suffering From Writer Envy? There’s a Map Only You Can Make

map and pins

Any accomplished writer is also a reader—and usually a reader first. For the writer who is the least a bit humble, this sets up one of the most significant psychological barriers to pursuing a writing career: How could I ever produce something as wonderful as [admired writer / admired book]?

This is an area that Steven Pressfield is well known for covering (see The War of Art), and in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin, fiction writer Danielle Lazarin shares how she deals with the challenge:

I was only halfway through Stuart Dybek’s I Sailed with Magellan when I decided I should just give up on writing altogether…and I wanted to leave it to him, a far more lyric, braver writer than I would ever be.

At these humbling moments, I remember advice I received from Dan Chaon while studying fiction at Oberlin. At the end of a semester, he wrote to me: “There’s a very specific world that only you can write about, a map that only you can make…”

Read the rest of Danielle’s excellent piece.

Also in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:

Share on:
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

3 Comments
oldest
newest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
trackback

[…] view post at https://janefriedman.com/writer-envy/ […]

trackback

[…] Any accomplished writer is also a reader—and usually a reader first. For the writer who is the least a bit humble, this sets up one of the most significant psychological barriers to pursuing a writing career: How could I ever produce something as wonderful as [admired writer / admired book]? This is an area that Steven …  […]

trackback

[…] Morrill shares 5 things she learned when she switched genres, Jane Friedman discusses writer envy, Ruth Harris describes how resilience will help you reach your writing goals, and Ava Jae reflects […]