The hazel-eyed monster

Gore Vidal had it pegged when he said: “Every time a friend succeeds a piece of me dies.” At the moment a large part of my ego is circling the drain, thanks to the glorious success of a friend.

Said compadre is DW Wilson, who recently became the youngest winner of the BBC’s National Short Story Award, helping himself to some critical acclaim and a very tidy cash prize. While I’m here I’ll plug his book Once You Break A Knuckle, which is available on Amazon.com and will see a UK publication soon.

DW is certainly deserving of his award. His short story, The Dead Roads, is a perfectly crafted tale of love and youth and adventure with a smidgen of betrayal thrown in, all set in the richly painted and somewhat bizarre backwoods landscape of DW’s native Canada. It’s about as good a short story as you’ll read; it’s a proper tale, full of big things and ass-kicking, none of the navel-gazing nonsense that clogs up my Granta subscription. Although seriously, go read Granta. There’s some good shit in there.

So I suspect I’d be jealous of DW even if he hadn’t won a big slice of pie, because he’s written a short story I could only dream of penning. The success of The Dead Roads ought to be measured on how good it is, not how much it is worth. And it’s plenty good enough to get jealous over.

I pondered briefly why DW’s success would cut me so close. I mean, plenty of other people I know are successful, and most of them are young. Some people I don’t know have levels of success I can only goggle over, and they hardly keep me awake at night. It could be the cash DW has deservedly won, but lottery winners have all the money they could dream of and I don’t mind. If I did I’d be out there egging their mansions, the lucky buggers.

Partly it’s because DW is successful in what I might petulantly call my field: he’s a writer, and I want to be a writer (anyone who tells you just writing things is enough to make you one is sadly deluded, and probably as broke as I am). He’s doing the thing that I want to be doing, and doing it well; better, probably, than I ever will.

But there are thousands of successful writers, and I manage to keep my jealousy in check. If I met, say, Pat Barker I’d probably gush over her work, rather than seethe and plot her downfall (that’s right DW, watch every shadow from now on). I know plenty of writers personally and many (most) are as talented or more talented than I, and I have perfectly cordial relations with them. What is it about this piece of news that makes me boil with envy? (apart from the money thing, that’s obvious).

The answer is because DW earned it. Straight up. His work ethic is something I should seek to emulate, and he put a lot of labour into that story. It shows. It shows in the silky sharp cadence of every sentence. It shows in his indiscriminate verbing, that makes it sound as if the narrator were sat in the next seat to you. It shows in his funny, sweet dialogue, that makes me nostalgic for a place I’ve never been and experiences I never had. It’s a work of art, of craft, and it damn well got that way because DW spends hours staring at his laptop every day, making sure it turns out like that.

That’s the problem, that’s where the jealousy comes from. I ought to be doing it that way, and I’m not. The work ethic, the dedication, the sheer toil that leads to success is on display in front of me and I’m not taking the hint because I’m lazy, or bolshy, or unsure, or whatever feeble adjective I feel like justifying it with.

That’s why I’m not really jealous of lottery winners. They didn’t do anything to earn their prize. And if they won it by chance, then so can I, maybe. It could be you. It won’t, but it could. I don’t have to do anything to be in with a shot.

So I’m not really jealous of DW’s prize, the recognition or the money. I’m not even really jealous of the story, I’m just grateful I had the chance to read it. It’s the reward, not the prize, that’s ripping me wide open. The reward for diligence and hard work and talent. The reward that I might deserve if I could only show those same qualities. I’m jealous of what he’s doing, not what he’s done.

Now I just need to make myself do the same.