My Successful Friend Has Become Insufferable

I advise a reader with a friendship dilemma

Photo by David Pennington on Unsplash

Hello Team CCC! Happy Friday! I’m writing from the Colchester Premier Inn, after I had a GLORIOUS time at the Red Lion Books Summer Soiree with Katherine Blake and Lauren Bravo. I tended bar! There was some singing! I had some excellent chats about reading and writing and Strangers On A Train. Technically, Pity Party isn’t out for a week but - and you didn’t hear this from me - you can get a signed copy from Red Lion Books if you click here. RLB delivers across the UK. Or - if you preorder here you still have plenty of time to get your place on the free fiction writing workshop! Everyone who preorders the book is invited. Find out more here.

I can’t wait to see you next week! Tickets for Canterbury are here, London Hoxton here, London Gower Street here, Manchester here, Nottingham here, Margate here and Herne Bay here.

Now, to this week’s problem…

Dear Daisy,

My newly successful friend has turned into a nightmare!

I have a friend I’ve known for almost five years. We met at a local writing group, we hit it off and we became really close. We’ve been to other writing groups together, and we’ve been on holiday together – I consider her one of my best friends. We’re both fiction writers, and recently she found representation and got a deal for her crime fiction. I really, really want to be happy for her, but it’s very difficult because she has become insufferable!

She begins many of her sentences with ‘Well, as an author…’ She goes to various crime writing events and refers to big name authors in an overly familiar way when I’m pretty sure she’s just met them in the signing queue. She’s condescending and says that she ‘knows it will happen’ for me ‘someday’! But she made a big speech about how she’d feel weird about introducing me to her agent, because apparently, they don’t take on many clients at all. I hadn’t asked for an introduction.

Yes, of course I’m a bit jealous, or envious. I’d love to get an agent and sell my novel! But more than that, I miss my friend. It’s as though she’s been body snatched by her ambitions, or something. Help!

Frustrated Friend