Looking Out for Number One

A long time ago, when I was pondering law school, I read a book which cautioned me that in some law schools, the competition to be the top-ranked student was so vicious that students were known to hoard books from the law library, or even rip out pages they knew other students would need.

We writers are much less direct about it, but I think there's an element of that in our circles as well. I've been cautioned to be very careful when looking at classes or masters' programs, because so many of them are full of instructors and fellow students who want to break down rather than build up.

And even out in the real world, those of us who are trying to produce something meaningful sometimes struggle to give credit to the meaningfulness of others' work, or give honest congratulations to someone who's produced something, especially if it bears any resemblance to that writer's own artistic vision.

When Curtis Sittenfeld gave a scathing review of Melissa Bank's new book in the New York Times, I think this might have been a little bit of what was going on. Not that I'm any big fan of Melissa Bank (personally, I do think Sittenfeld writes circles around her) but the castigation of Bank's work as "chick-lit" coming from someone whose book cover was pink and green does seem needlessly harsh. But I understand, if not condone, it. (Not that Curtis Sittenfeld needs me to condone anything she does, or that I'm any sort of authority on how writers should and shouldn't behave.) The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing managed to get good press from both the literary and the chick-lit camps. If you're a reader, Melissa Bank is a name you know - a proven entity. Curtis Sittenfeld is almost there. So what easier way to ascend to the pantheon than to demonstrate that your own literary mojo is more potent than the preexisting proven entity?

Speaking of chick-lit versus literary, as an aside, I've always been bothered by the fact that every book has to fall into a niche. Case in point: I recently finished Move Under Ground by my friend-via-blogging, the fabulous Nick Mamatas, whom I know has struggled a lot with the idea of having to be classified as a "genre" writer. Clearly, Nick's work has horror overtones, but objectively speaking, it's a good friggin' book by any standards, and there's as much Kerouac as Lovecraft in it. Still, it's like one drop of Lovecraft paints the entire work as horror fiction. Black cover, back-wall-of-the-bookstore horror fiction. Why is it that you have to have a touch of nerd in you to appreciate the literary merit of these sorts of things? You shouldn't. Good books is good books. Anyway.

There is no such thing as a free exchange of ideas. Even I'm not naive enough to believe that. Everyone's got an agenda, and more often than not, when surrounded by people with the same agenda, the tendency is to act out of a feeling of being threatened. We know there's a finite number of editorial energy, paper, shelf space, critical acclaim, what have you, and other people's work getting some of that takes away from what you could have, especially if what you write is similar in genre or tone.

It is human, and understandable, to be jealous. I've felt that way myself, and I'll freely admit it. (Needless to say, this is not very nicemodernist.) Whenever I'm talking to someone and they label themselves as a writer, rather than feeling kinship, I involuntarily feel my hackles raise. And hell, I'm not even really a writer, just some hack with a day job who occasionally does gratis work for various websites. Come to think of it, this is probably why I feel threatened, and probably why others do, too. We know we could always be doing more, and that someone out there is working harder than we are, or has more talent than we do. (And, most likely, someone out there has more raw talent than we do AND is working harder.) And if we're not ever vigilant and defensive, someone else will be more alert, and better able to reach out and grab our brass ring.

Despite this tendency, though, I've always held onto this ridiculous hope that if you're really good, and you're willing to do something about it, you can't hide it forever. And that's even if someone who writes almost exactly the way you do is doing well with it. So you have to keep your eyes on your own work, and your own prize. In those situations, the key is to focus the energy inward when these feelings come up, and let them work FOR us rather than AGAINST everyone else. I need to let myself be inspired by others rather than look for their flaws. We all should.

And in an ideal world, we wouldn't see the flaws in the first place, and we wouldn't compare our output to our neighbor's...we'd just love the great things in their work and celebrate them as much as we would our own. It's something to aspire to, anyway.