Professional jealousy is a topic that has been brought up several times on our blog in reference to some of the bullies. These are the bullies in our lists who are not just readers, but also authors who seek out other authors to harass, threaten, bully, and otherwise destroy their careers. Namely, these are authors like LH, AH, AS, etc. They are the ones who’ve bullied other, more successful authors like Jamie McGuire, Jessica Park, Amanda Hocking, EL James, Anne Rice, etc. More than once, our blog readers have made the comment that professional jealousy plays a HUGE role in this bullying and we at STGRB have to agree. However, we’ve never shown you actual proof of this fact until today.
Now, ever since Jenny Trout was banned from Anne Rice’s blog a few weeks ago, we’ve been keeping a close eye on her blog. If you all don’t remember that wonderful episode, we covered it in Anne Rice Bans the Bullies. Basically, Anne left a link on her Facebook page to our blog post covering Carpet Bomber #9, Nenia Campbell. Upon hearing of this, Jenny Trout, along with several other of her bully friends, hopped on over to Anne’s Facebook page, harassed her, and tried to get her to believe lies about about our website in order to discourage her from supporting us. Anne, being the intelligent woman that she is, saw through their nonsense and did what all victims should do when they are under a bully attack. She deleted their comments and banned them all from her page, including Jenny.
Now, in Jenny’s recent blog rant on author Anna Todd and Anna’s immensely successful book, After, Jenny Trout not only harshly criticizes Anna’s book (or more appropriately, her manuscript) for very minor, very fixable problems, she insults Anna personally, coming very close to calling her a plagiarist. Then, Jenny admits to being jealous and tells her readers why.
Hmm… okay. Here’s a secret that one of our oldest and wisest blog readers shared with us: you don’t have to write like Shakespeare to tell a compelling story. Because that’s what readers care about. THE STORY. It doesn’t really matter if there are a few punctuation or grammatical errors in the manuscript, readers want a good story. And there are authors out there who tell compelling stories and their voices resonate with large audiences. No one really knows how or why. It just happens like that sometimes.
In Anna’s case, she wrote a compelling story she loved and she shared it with her friends on Wattpad. It resonated with A LOT of people. She did it ON HER OWN and built HER OWN author platform. That’s the kind of thing publishers like to see and capitalize on and they do. Does it matter that Anna’s story was similar to another that we know? No. There’s a phrase that comes to mind — there’s nothing new under the sun. Ideas and story elements get recycled. It happens. Sometimes when it does, the story catches on and acquires a large readership. And this is what happened with Anna’s book.
It also helps that Anna Todd is a really cool person. She has a lot of online friends and followers. She’s not a bully or a condescending grandmother type who pats people on the head and murmurs, “Oh, my sweet, summer child.” She doesn’t write jealous, disgruntled blog posts bitching about other people’s success. And we’re pretty sure she’s never been banned from Anne Rice’s Facebook page, or anyone’s Facebook page for that matter.
So, Jenny, here’s our advice: GET OVER IT. STOP comparing yourself to other people and their career success. Down that path lies madness. If you go down that road, the ugly green monster of envy will consume you. START focusing on yourself, your writing, and your career successes no matter how small they are. Whether it’s an email from a favorite fan or the sale of a new book, any success you have should be celebrated. Because really, it doesn’t matter how successful you end up being, there will always be someone who is more successful than you and who’s chosen a path to success that you, in all your wisdom *rolls eyes*, don’t approve of.
So, what are you going to do? Constantly bitch and moan about other people’s success and sit in your corner of the room with your arms crossed and a scowl on your face? OR are you going to be an adult and choose to be happy with yourself and your life and your own success regardless of others who are doing better than you?
It’s your life, your happiness, and your decision.
Make it a good one.
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P.S. If you think Jenny’s post was bad, the comments on her post are even worse. The professional jealousy in all of them is VERY apparent:
