>Facebooking the Enemy
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But when I picked up and read the first pages of her book Cold Tangerines, I went cold and clammy all over. All I could think of was….Shauna Niequist went and published MY book!
I’ve often had my writing style compared to hers.
She even used the same John Lennon quote.
I was positively GREEN. Lime, olive, sage, puce, and army. With envy.
I didn’t want to read another page. But I read the book anyway, and I was moved, and touched, and inspired. Like so many thousands of her readers have been. I even blogged about it.
I let go of my jealousy. Sort of.
Reading this hilarious post about one of my new writing inspirations/friends Kathi Lipp, brought Shauna back to mind.
So I’ve friended her on Facebook. Isn’t that big of me?
Ironically, as I neared the end of Cold Tangerines (you don’t read Shauna all at once. You read a bit and think about it for a while and ponder and muse and then read some more. She just writes like that.) I ran across this chapter in her book: Confession
She writes:
“On Monday night at housechurch, a very unfortunate thing happened. Before dinner, right at the beginning of the night, someone mention a friend of ours, and mentioned, offhandedly, casually, that this friend of ours is meeting with a publisher about writing a book. And then we talked about other things…While we talked, I was being absolutely consumed, eaten from the inside out with jealousy, like a million termites were eating out my bones and organs and I was about to turn to dust, hollow and dry. This was not a brief passing stab of jealously that slices for a moment and then fades back into all the other things you vaguely wish were different in the course of a day. this was jealousy like a house fire…”
So basically, this ISN’T just me. Maybe it happens to everyone – that point before you achieve your goals and the natural tendency to feel envy towards those who have.
What about you? Who wrote your book?
Adelle Gabrielson 