The worst thing you can bring to a dinner party

Jealousy and rivals

Here’s how the universe works: it doesn’t just create people to admire from afar, it sends you a customised rival. The one person who will do exactly what you’re doing, only better, and right in front of you.

That’s what happened at a neighbours’ curry night recently. Everyone had to bring a curry and because of time, I got my ten-year-old son to make a butter chicken using a jar of Patak’s. Perfectly fine.

But of course, someone else walked in with butter chicken made from scratch. Theirs had all the proper spices, it was slow cooked, lovingly stirred. Ours sat beside it, sad and orange and largely untouched. I told my son his was my favourite, which was categorically untrue.

The thing about dinners like this is that it feels like you’re getting objective feedback on your food. And sometimes (probably, in this case) you are.

But other times, you can bring something decent and it just so happens that the best cook in the neighbourhood decided to make your exact dish.

Writing often feels like that curry night.

There’s always someone in your orbit who seems to have been invented just to be better than you, and not in a general way, but in the exact thing you most care about.

I remember working on my first novel, going in circles on the same three sentences, when a new colleague joined my team.

She was heartbreakingly good at writing (much better than I was) and, to add to the irritation, genuinely lovely.

She entered a short story competition on a whim, won, had it published in the newspaper, and then went on to write more stories, which also found homes.

Before long she was long-listed for a major manuscript prize and landed a book deal. Meanwhile, I was still tinkering with the same opening paragraph that another colleague had declined to read*.

At the curry night, the evidence was right there on the table: two versions of the same dish, one clearly better. My heightened awareness of this colleague felt like the same thing, an obvious comparison in which I wasn’t 'winning’.

The thing is, you can be genuinely happy for someone else, know perfectly well that what they get has no bearing on what’s possible for you, and still want all of it for yourself.

That doesn’t make you petty, it makes you human.

The trick, I think, is to do what my daughter did...

She made a cake, and because there were only two cakes on the table, hers was an instant hit.

The more you create your own thing (in writing, that means work that is unmistakably yours), the more chance you have of standing out.

Not because it’s perfect or the fanciest dish in the room, but because it’s so totally you, nobody else could bring it.

—> This is kinda what I teach in The Inner Game of Writing, i.e. how to stop obsessing over the other butter chickens and back yourself enough to bring the cake Check it out here

If you purchase it this week, I'll give you my 21 day creative reset for free (21 days of punchy pep talks! A walking meditation!)

Happy writing,

Katherine

*UGH most writing people know this stage... ie. the 'before-you’ve-found-your-people' stage where you're desperate enough to want to hand your work to whoever’s nearby, even if they have no interest in novels (melty face emoticon)

Second P.S. — Re cartoon caption — there’s a book with the title ‘The War of Art’ by Stephen Pressfield. I haven’t read it! But I love this idea, of the war of art