THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE

As I said in my ode to RBP, one of the most important things I’ve learned through all of this is that THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE. Of everything. Creativity, talent, attention, success, money, ideas, time, love. Everything.

As you know by now, I eat books. Reading only one author for nine months was like sustaining my vampire existence on animal blood instead of human blood. (HA!!) It was hard to go hungry. I would try to pick up some other author, thinking it couldn’t possibly be as dramatic as all that, but it was always true, right up until the very end. Apparently, I couldn’t read while I was in that new territory, writing my first draft of my first novel.

As I also mentioned, there were two reasons for this. First, especially in the beginning, the voice I found was fragile, susceptible. I didn’t want it to be unduly influenced by someone else’s voice. Chances are, if you’re a published author (one that I’m reading anyway) you have a strong voice. I wanted my characters to remain purely mine, as purely mine as they could be. I didn’t want to start trying to mimic John Irving.

The other reason was jealousy. It worked one of two ways. Either I became enraged that whoever I was reading had managed to get published and took up some of the finite amount of pages available in the Universe.

Or.

My heart sunk, my self-esteem plummeted to new lows, I became certain that I would never be able to compete professionally in a world where Cormac McCarthy existed. More often the latter.

I didn’t know then what I know now. And that is: THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE.

I read something a while ago that talked about how when I’m thinking about my goals, focusing on being a “being a famous writer” doesn’t serve me as well as having a desire to touch people’s lives. That makes sense to me. Sure, I want to be on Oprah’s couch, but only part of that is my ego. The better part (hopefully the bigger part) wants to leave Oprah’s studio and head right for some high school auditorium where I can talk to hundreds of girls who have torn off pieces of their soul bit by bit by their own actions, so that we can talk about how my book shows that nothing is irreparable.

Yes.

That’s the thing. When I’m offering myself up to be the transcriber, I am hearing things only I can hear and saying things only I can say. My stories are told through the filter of MY life, MY brain, MY heart. No one else has that perspective. THERE IS ENOUGH room in the world for both me and Cormac. That guy can write the crap out of anything, but he can’t write about a woman’s transformation or a sustained, touching, intricate female relationship or motherhood and marriage in quite the way that I do.

I am blessedly aware that I tell stories that have been told a million times. I’m cool with that. I don’t need to have an original thought. But I am telling them in a way that only I can, seeing things through eyes that belong solely to me.

And I don’t have to worry about not getting published because of the finite amount of pages available in the Universe. Or that I’ll never get another worthy idea again or that someone else will write it better than me. Those are falsehoods, lies my mind tells itself when it wants to feel badly or have an excuse to quit.

THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE.

And I don’t have to stop myself from encouraging someone in my life who also has the desire to write because what if they grasp onto success before me or what if they write it better or what if they surpass me on the road to our dreams. That is my pathetic, wimpy, sniveling little ego trying to sustain itself on the worthless premise of lack.

THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE.

I am surrounded – and I mean surrounded – by other artists. Some of these people are farther ahead on the path than I, already published, already successful, and some of them are trudging along, not yet seeing the worldly fruits of their labors, still struggling to gather up enough guts to stop listening to the terrible voices and forge ahead.

Before I knew that THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE, I had a tendency to believe somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of me that these people and I were somehow in competition. Instead of being grateful that I was surrounded by an ego-bolstering, supportive, inspiring, ass-saving community of creative geniuses, I actually looked at them as the enemy.

Thoughts like that can make your life very, very tiny.

I am my very best self when I am encouraging others, when I take every opportunity to hold them and their work up to the sun, and say, “HEY, LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!!!” or “You’re so good at telling the beautiful truth!!!” or even better “I’m so happy for you!”

THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE!