the enchanted 15: the writer's curse

Envy (also called invidiousness) may be defined as an emotion that "occurs when a person lacks another’s (perceived) superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it."[1] It can also derive from a sense of low self-esteem that results from an upward social comparison threatening a person's self image: another person has something that the envier considers to be important to have. If the other person is perceived to be similar to the envier, the aroused envy will be particularly intense, because it signals to the envier that it just as well could have been he or she who had the desired object. -Wikipedia

Envy and malediction.  Wikipedia gives a very good description of envy above--and malediction, quite simply, is a curse.  Evil speech.  We tend to shrink from the idea of a curse as a superstition.  We don't believe in wizards and curses, right?  At least, not anymore.  Or maybe they are metaphors, we think.  But the fact that words and actions have psychological effects is not a metaphor.  It is literal.  So the curse is just another way of describing a reality we acknowledge to be real using other terms.  Freud changed the curse to "complex" and so on.  

So curses are real and I want to talk about the way we are cursed and cursing as writers.  It is always that way.  Once cursed you will also curse--it is a socially embedded action.  

How often, honestly, do you look at other writing, and feel a loathing for it? Do you ever look at the best-sellers list and think of all the "trash" or "tripe" that goes out into the world and resent that you are in obscurity and haven't received the same attention?  Have you spoken mean-spirited words about other writers?  Do you focus on how bad other work is?  Do you leave a play thinking about how terrible it was?  How about a movie?  Yes, plays and movies can be bad, simply bad.  But do you DWELL and curse that movie and its makers?  

Envy and then a consequent malediction seems like something innocuous at first--it's normal to feel inadequate next to people who are prolific and/or highly published, people who make a living at writing, people who receive public accolades and attention.  It is also normal to occasionally "vent" about others who frustrate, anger, or annoy you.  It makes you feel better (you think) and who does it hurt really?  It's just venting.  If you find yourself excusing your speech by saying you are venting--I will alert you that you are already in trouble.  

Like anything to do with human experience, it is a socially embedded phenomenon.  It works both ways between the giver and the receiver.  It is likely that someone who envies and then gives malediction has once been the recipient of that same negative thing, a negative thing that is not so much a thing but a NOthing.  Which is to say, it stops the positive flow of creativity, and instead of creation there is just blockage.  And by saying it's socially embedded, I mean that it is truly a curse and a curse is nothing more than psychological contagion.  Where the will of one person is imposed upon the other and the intention of that will is catching.  

So when someone envies you to the point of malediction, they actually wish for you not to have an ability or to achieve a certain success.  And that desire, even unspoken in your presence, affects you deeply. The problem is, you get stopped up and then you are even more vulnerable to experiencing envy and committing malediction the next time you encounter positive creative actions and inspiration.  It's not only contagious.  It's epidemic.  If you envy you create envy.  If you are envied you will envy.  And so on. It's a cancer.  And can only exist if there is a good, positive host for it to feed on.  You only experience the ill  result of envy if there is good in you to be envied.  And you can only envy someone else if there is good in you on which the envy feeds.  

I have recently been on the receiving end of an intense sort of envy that led to malediction.  The reason I was aware of it was that it affected me profoundly, interfered with my work, and led to me feeling a similar envy and misery, and tempted me toward extreme malediction.  I felt a bubbling need to SWEAR. I confess, I grew up in Queens the daughter of a man very much of that world and I have a colorful way of expressing myself.  Swearing by itself is not bad--it is vulgar, perhaps, but vulgarity is part of the richness of experience, and there is a reason comedians swear.  It's because it's funny.  Swearing is fun.  

But sometimes the urge to swear is the urge to curse--to name call, and to actually block another person from receiving goodness, and the only reason a person does this is because the person envies.    

Let me tell you a little anecdote.  It is true, but I have altered some details to protect the innocent as they say.  My friend Lydia is constantly talking about "creative" people--"I'm not creative, like Mary is."  "You know, she is one of those creative people."  She is actually married to someone who works professionally as a "creative".  Her mini-obsession with creative people and creativity is really because Lydia is very creative herself, but can't bring herself to create.  I know there was a powerful person in her life that envied her.  I'll withhold details for protecting identities, but I know this is true.  And this person cursed her through that spite and envy.  As a result, she is blocked.  

She sees me as a "creative" person, and she wrongly believes that I have talent at everything and that everything I do is just so "creative".  She'll talk to me about how she wants to be creative but she doesn't know what she is good at.  She continually spews bad talk about herself.  One day, we decided that we were going to do a "creative" activity together so we decided to paint.  We went to the craft store.  She hemmed and hawed about what to buy.  I bought a few containers of paint and a couple of brushes and a canvas.  She bought easily 10 times what I bought, some of them paint by numbers sets and some sophisticated tools that we weren't even sure what they were.  She was irrational in her purchases. 

I should tell you I have no innate skill as a visual artist. I almost have a developmental delay when it comes to drawing I so lack the natural skill set for it.  I am not very good at arts and crafts in general. I DO arts and crafts because it's fun, its therapeutic, and I consider it "cross-training" for writing.  It is good for me to do things I am not naturally good at and the skills I learn in the process of struggling with something I have no talent for translates into writing for me, something for which I do have a natural talent.  And I say both of those things--that I lack innate skill as a visual artist but I have talent for writing with no sense of blame for the former or credit for the latter.  It just is.  

We sat down to paint together and she decided, cursing herself, to do the paint-by-number, even though it was "lame".  She asked me what I was going to do and I said, I'm going to do the only thing I can do--I'm going to paint a flower.  We began working and I sat chatting to her, and she was watching me do it--she was not getting much done on her paint-by-number, because she kept stopping to watch what I was doing.  Her eyes burned holes into my hands.  I literally felt it.  And she kept saying, "How are you doing that?  See?  I want to do something like that.  I should stop this.  I'm not going to do this.  This is lame. It's childish. I just want to paint something like that."  

I tried to steer the conversation toward other things, until eventually, I was tempted into talking about how bad my flower was.  Just so I could relieve some of the pressure she was putting on herself.  Trust me, this was no great flower, it was just a blue sky background, and then a flower.  Cartoon-y and two-dimensional.  But it was a flower that I tried to love into existence.  A flower that I used to relax myself and to appreciate the exquisite beauty in all flowers.  I should not have been talking badly about my little flower.  It deserved neither censure nor praise.  It just was.  It's the "wasness" of it that was good.  She kept going on an on about how beautiful my flower was.  And not in a way that you would believe that she really took any pleasure in it.  It was about how bad her paint-by-numbers was. 

I slowly felt like I could not breathe in the room.  Eventually, disgusted with herself, she gave up, and she was mean to me for the rest of our time together.  Short-tempered.  Hostile.  She, in short, hated me.  Eventually, we got over that patch and we are still friends, but for a period of a couple of years occasionally I felt inexplicably hostile toward her and  cursed her to other people.  I know it was a hangover from that event.  I felt that she hated me, wanted me stopped, because making that little flower in her presence, when she felt she could not, hurt her.  I was disgusted by it: I can't just be myself without you taking offense?  And this led to a number of situations in which I "vented" about her to other people.  

I have repaired that relationship and that action, but that absorbed an enormous amount of psychic energy.  Really ridiculous amounts.  And the gravity of that situation has stuck with me, because I realize the problem for Lydia is that she has hundreds upon hundreds of flowers inside of her that simply aren't allowed to come into being.  

May Sarton has written beautifully about this:  

The gift, turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes, a kind of a poison.  It is as though the flow of life were backed up.

When a person--or yourself--starts spewing negative bile about herself or another they are suffering.  And the problem with envy and malediction is that it spreads the poison around.  Yes, you don't know how permanently you may be hurting another when you give action and voice to such feelings.  Even a person, who is not in the room when you say it.  

But that's not the biggest problem.  The biggest problem is that it is narcissistic. Even if a person seems to be saying negative things about themselves, when it involves comparison to another, it is a deep, sick self-love that inspires it, because it means even good in another person just sinks you into your own ego.  Narcissism is a mirror and mirrors reflect back.  

When you send it out there it always comes back on you.  And it will block.  It will be a burden. It will poison.  Pay attention to envy and malediction.  Note in others.  Note it in yourself. 

And be very, very cautious about it.  Like you would be if you believed in wizards and curses.  Because the thing about wizards and curses is not that they are metaphor.  It's that they are real.  And we can measure their effects empirically. It's just not in fashion to use terms like that any more.  It didn't go away because it was false. It's just another way of describing reality.   

And occasionally its extremely useful to bring things from the past back into the present, because they tend to shed a little light. 

Except for stirrup pants.  Those are just ill-advised.  ;)

Comments

[Kristi]

I get this completely! Provocative. I'm going to be thinking about it all day. I can relate to both you and your creative-envy friend.

[Blog Nerd]

I relate to both of us, too. LOL. That is the point when I say it is socially embedded and contagious. It spreads itself and moves both ways and is passed on the way a person with ebola goes into a seizure in the hemorrhagic stage of the fever. (Bear with me.) When they are in the hemorrhagic stage of the fever, they bleed from every orifice. Then, just before death, they seize, and it flings the tainted blood all over the place, like a Jackson Pollack painting, giving the virus an insanely supernatural power to survive and jump to the next host before the last host dies.

You dig?

It's tempting to point out the people who do it to US more than our participation in it. But then you will fall into it again.

Examine yourself for it--and when you start finding it there consistently, it will humble you, and you'll be more compassionate toward others when they put it on you.

And compassion is the only thing that works to stop it before it spreads.

[Charli]

I think this is very true, and so embedded that in general we don't even notice it until it's pointed out to us.

[Blog Nerd]

Thanks Charli. It was pointed out to me overnight. In a very profound way. I'm grateful to have realized it.

[Kate P]

Oh, no question--creative envy is toxic. I constantly have to tell myself to "end the compare-athon." With respect to creative, professional, and personal aspects of my life. It's a tough thing to turn off.

[Claire]

Great, thought-provoking post. I honestly never thought of envy and the tendency toward making critical comparisons as narcissistic. You're right, it's definitely something to guard against.

[Jacqui]

I've been lurking and just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this series. Thanks!

[Blog Nerd]

Thanks for de-Lurking Jaqui! Nice to meet you--I'll check out your blog as soon as I can.

[Rosemary]

I love this post. It is so helpful to think about vices and sin and how they work and how they change lives for the worse. . .

But does this apply to hating Dan Brown's success too? ;)

[Rosemary]

also, what a truly AWFUL story about the hated little flower!

I feel so sad for "Lydia" - her heart needs unlocking.

You should have been a therapist the way you talk about the encounter and all its nuances.

What is your myers brigg personality type btw?

[Blog Nerd]

Ro: I just saw this. I'm an ENFP but I'm like an F/T. I could go either way on that one but knowing myself I say I'm more F.