October 18, 2021
When I’m shining everybody gonna shine
I don’t know if I smiled any wider last week than I did at the news that my friends’ new novel (The Holiday Swap, by Maggie Knox!) had made the Toronto Star bestseller list, and with this news came such overwhelming gratitude that other people’s good fortune could be fuel for my fire. And I’m writing this not to be smug, but just because I’m glad, and I’m still not 100% sure how I got to this place (though I wrote about it in a post a few years ago called “How to Get Over Literary Envy”).
I remember many years ago feeling so much more desperate, perceiving other people’s wins as a kind of violation, and no doubt some of the change has come about as I’ve grown older and settled into myself, achieving creative goals that I’m proud of (though I have yet to land on a bestseller list). This process too has taught me how much of success is usually a combination of painstaking work and glorious fluke anyway, which makes it harder to resent it when it lands on somebody else’s doorstep.
Though I will confess that there still exist more than a few people whose success makes me roll my eyes and grit my teeth—but these are mostly petty grievances, and the people in question are largely unknown to me (which, obviously, doesn’t mean that I’m barred from finding them annoying).
The people who matter to me though: I want them to win, and not just because of how I seem to win when they do—but yeah, that part also feels pretty good too.
