I’ve warned against Writer’s Block.

I’ve warned against the effects of rejection.

But now it’s time to warn against one of the most damaging traps a writer can fall into, no matter how seasoned he or she may be. It’s the killer. Out of all the writing pitfalls, this one can cause the most nights lying awake at night. The most time spent staring at the ceiling. The most time wondering if it was worth spending three and a half years bleeding out tuition money and desire to live for a writing degree.

It’s jealousy.

My first bout with creative jealousy happened when I took Creative Writing as a freshman—the first time I had been exposed to a group of my writing peers. On one of our early assignments, we reviewed each other’s work. One girl in particular wrote a gorgeous poem, and as soon as I read it, my anger flared.

She made me picture the scene. She made me feel the emotions. And she did it better than I could. In a moment of witlessness, I spat out the first thing that came to my head.

“Ugh! How do you do that?”

The girl in question didn’t know how to respond, but my advisor caught on right away.

“Hey,” my advisor said to me. “You can’t be Abby, and Abby can’t be you.”

In the moment, I didn’t much care. Another person my age had threatened my creative capabilities and that wasn’t cool with me.

Of course, some years, many writing courses and a whole bunch of existential crises later, my advisor gave me another quip/slap to the face:

“You’re not a perfectionist, you’re prideful.”

Only this time, I quipped back: “Yes, I know. Those go hand-in-hand.”

The second conversation was more about grades than writing, but doggone it, the principles still apply. Getting from point A to point B in my understanding of my own jealousy took a lot of learning and humility. My advisor was right (as always) when she brought pride into the equation.

Ah, you think, she’s bringing humility into this again. Well that’s because it is still relevant, and it will always be relevant.

For instance, when I was a freshman, I’d had no previous experience with real critical feedback. I naturally assumed, as most young writers do, that I was a great new creative mind breaking her way on a fresh frontier. Someday, I’d be famous, and I was in college to prove that. Except, by senior year, my pride had been knocked about enough to know that wasn’t true—and it never will be. My stories will never be one hundred percent original. My sentences will always be too wordy. No matter if I get published today or in twenty-eight years, someone will always be far better than I am.

Sigh.

Oh, is that too dismal? Well, have a nugget of hope: at the end of that semester in Creative Writing, we had to write a ten-minute play for our final project. We got to cast our classmates and then perform in front of a small crowd in the school library. Loads of fun, a bit nerve-wracking but a thrilling memory. A few days after, I visited my advisor to schedule classes for the following semester. Somehow, the plays came up.

I asked if she liked mine.

“Well I was almost crying there at the end, which I don’t often do,” she said.

I almost screamed. Someone had been moved by my writing. To tears (almost). My advisor had been moved. She cared. Someone actually cared.

“Cool,” I squeaked.

Since then, I’ve had all the highs and lows a writing major should have. Peer critique. Teacher assistant status. Bad writing grades. Good writing grades. Now that I’ve graduated, it’s time to step out of an official learning setting and get into an unofficial but much larger one.

See, that’s the trick—because pride is the belief that we no longer need to learn. For writers, that is the most dangerous thing one can ever believe. It breeds jealousy, and jealousy breeds contempt, and then we lock ourselves into stubborn non-growth. If we think we have nothing left to learn, what will we do? Just write the same words over and over in slightly different ordering until we cease to write altogether?

I say no. I say we take the criticism. I say we roll with the punches. I say we get up and nurse that black eye for a minute or two before stomping back onto the battlefield and shoving our newly-sharpened stories into readers’ hearts so we can watch them die. All in good humor, of course. We writers are in the business of heart-rending, after all. But still, criticism sharpens the story for better piercing. Jealousy does not.

Think about this article the next time you read something that makes you angry. If someone else can do better, praise them. They deserve it. Give honest, critical feedback to make it even better. In turn, use the opportunity to learn. Why did you feel during their story? Employ the technique next time you write. No matter how long you’ve been writing, no matter how skilled you are, no matter how many diplomas you have, you can always learn.