Writing Exercise: Jealousy

A straight-forward writing exercise this week. For fiction writers, choose a character with whom you are currently obsessed and ask yourself, what makes them jealous? For memoirists and essayists, same question, but apply it to yourself. If some of the jealousy’s synonyms feel a better fit—envy, covet, etc.—by all means…go there.

An aside, I’ve always found it fitting that the word “lousy” is contained within “jealousy.” All in all, it is a destructive, rather useless state of being, although I suspect we are all guilty of it from time to time. Another aside: it is cancerous for writers to be jealous of other writers; basically a guarantee to kill your own work once you let that kind of negativity into your life.

(This image, titled “Jealousy” is from Karenliz Henderson.)

Unrelated to today’s writing exercise, for any readers who live nearby my home in the Flathead Valley, I’ll be doing a signing in Kalispell this coming weekend (see below). I would love to see a few familiar faces.