Praise
the dichotomy of accolades
Dear intrigued reader,
Welcome all! I recently received a bump of fresh-faced readers thanks to the generosity of fellow writer, Taylor Berrett. In his recent newsletter, Still Human, he recommended my newsletter to his audience.
Taylor picked up on my December piece, ‘Wonder’, in which I interwove astronomy and mythology to demonstrate how I maintain enchantment.
It was a happy moment at the beginning of the year, and I felt a deep gratitude to Taylor for his thoughtfulness (and of course I told him so). Artists are cautioned against requiring validation for their work, and it is solid advice when your writing appears to garner little attention or positive feedback.1 Overall, the best way to keep going is to create work that excites you, even if you believe you are swimming against tidal trends.
I often experience moments of uncertainty. I read work by other people and notice the interactions and acclaim given to their work. The insecure part of me begins to second-guess my approach. Doubt begins to whisper, Perhaps if you were funnier/more anecdotal/edgier people would like your work just as much. It’s healthy to interrogate your style, but underneath that urge may lie a slippery suspicion of yourself and your unique characteristics. At some point in one’s life one must set down a marker and declare ‘This is me’. Acceptance of oneself is a surprisingly difficult task in a world that puts out a strong message that we need to improve ourselves endlessly.2
I have a broad range of interests, and most of the current advice is to specialise and evolve a ‘brand’ that is easily categorised. What’s useful to remember is that this latter consideration means you are drifting off the focus of artistic expression and into the territory of ‘selling the work’. They have different objectives. I’m not going to waffle about maintaining the purity of your vision, but this secondary offshoot about audience-share, engagement and popularity is what may confuse your instincts about your artistic direction.
When you are open to approaching your work in a free and playful style, and are unafraid to experiment and take risks, your work will improve. Weirdly, as soon as you begin to experience the weight of attention and adulation, it can spin your artistic compass. I now relate this to an aspect of quantum physics: the observer effect — i.e. the act of observing something changes it. I’m aware that there is a specific definition in physics of an ‘observer’ (something that detects or measures quantum particles).
Yet, the reality is that reading your work tends to fix you and your writing into a specific category in the mind of the reader. Thus if you veer too far from this designated attribution your audience can genuinely feel resistance and/or discombobulation. They thought they knew your work. Now you’re doing this other thing? What? This is why so many writers are advised to conjure up new personas if they branch into different fields of writing. I know people who utilise a variety of noms de plume and use each for a specific category of work.
I also know several people who have resisted this pressure — and believe me, it is a pressure, especially in publishing — and deal with having their work spread out in various categories of shelving in a book shop. Some writers flit between creative personas as a way of segmenting their interests, yet, as one persona becomes more popular, the less well known persona may get jettisoned. Stephen King did this with his alter-ego Richard Bachman (and wrote about it). Irish writer John Banville also axed his pen name Benjamin Black, a character he created to offset his perfectionist mindset and to write popular mystery novels. (Banville writes in longhand while Black used a computer). Over time, this division resolved itself:
‘What happened, Banville says, is that in rereading some of the Black books, he decided they were better than he remembered. “I was surprised and highly gratified to discover that they weren’t bad at all, and in fact might even be quite good,” he explained. “You must understand, I’m one of those writers who dislikes and is shamed by his own work. I am in pursuit of perfection and, as we know, perfection is far beyond the reach of our puny powers. But when I found that I liked the Blacks, I said to myself, ‘Why do I need this rascal anyway?’ So I shut him in a room with a pistol, a phial of sleeping pills and a bottle of Scotch, and that was the end of him. I’ve never been ashamed or felt I had to defend what Black wrote. His books are works of craftsmanship written honestly and without pretension.” He added, with characteristic slyness: “Not that I think pretension necessarily a bad thing in a writer.”’3
This drive in Banville’s psyche to prove he could librate himself from his restrictions was a profound intuition. In a Jungian worldview, Banville summoned his shadow self, allowed it expression and creative free rein, and over time was able to reincorporate that aspect to move forward in an integrated fashion. Some deep part of Banville tricked himself into self-acceptance. It’s a terrific example of how following your creative instincts can lead to unexpected and fruitful outcomes.
That strategy worked for Banville, but equally, one could circumvent that deception by accepting one’s multitudes and allowing the rascal out without a mask. It’s easier to write that sentence than it is to put it into practice, however. Rascals enjoy mischief, and can cause trouble.
‘I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.’ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Taylor’s recommendation of my newsletter also provoked me to ponder the subject of praise as I have a conflicted history with it.
The word is often associated with religious fervour, but it’s an old word, that dates from 1175–1225 to the Middle English verb preisen, via the Old French preisier “to value, prize,” that originates from Late Latin pretiāre, a derivative of Latin pretium “worth, reward”. It is both a noun and a verb. So it can be an offering of value to another and the action of expressing approval.
As the recipient of praise it demands two parts:
to acknowledge (and thank) the person who saw value in your work.
to acknowledge your work has value.
Many artists struggle with the second part, and partly because we have strong cultural admonitions against becoming too ‘cocky’, or having ‘notions’, as we say in Ireland. This is why Irish people may compliment you and add a nettle lash at the end. Humorous self-deprecation is an art-form here.4
When someone praises your work it can expose this vulnerable uneasiness with being worthy of a compliment. I grew up hearing the expression ‘self-praise is no praise’. Thus, I was conditioned to wait upon other people to praise me, often yearning for it and doing my best to provoke it, but also learning to squash that excitement when I achieved the goal, because delight was best sacrificed upon the altar of humility.
It’s a terrific self-reinforcing mental trap.
When my writing began to be published and reviewed I had to confront the issue of praise more directly. I learned to say simply ‘Thank you’ to anyone who took the time to tell me they valued my work, without making any disparaging / funny comments about the piece (which was my default urge). I understood that act would be betrayal of myself and it was rude to the person complimenting my work.
It’s useful to understand this push-pull attitude towards praise: to want it and yet to discredit it. Another complicating factor is that artists are finely tuned to their limitations.
When a viewer (observer) praises your work, all they know is the piece they have experienced (observed): the collapsed quantum state, where all the possibilities have been reduced to one. The creator remembers all the dead ends, edits, reversals, changes and mistakes she made. This ghostly quantum flux hangs over the work forever in her mind, and she might even mourn the circumstances that reduced it to one version (sometimes, depending on the media, she may have had no control over the final outcome, and it could provoke a painful recollection). These other potentials may even haunt the creator. So, she may also have genuine mixed feelings about receiving praise.
We can never experience our work as a reader does: fresh and surprising.5 So, there may be a measure of revelation for the artist when a viewer praises her work.
Mozart’s above quote indicates a detached viewpoint that seems almost superhuman to me, after all, we are simply human beings doing our best in this strange world! 6
These days I’m simply more at ease with myself, although that was achieved through confronting my weaknesses and asking them to account for themselves. Sometimes those responses were dragged out, other times they were easily won.
And then I attempt the ultimate magic trick: to turn the eye of critical regard away from those replies and allow their points to dissolve and form into new potentials.
In those moments of grace and freedom I can open myself to possibility and renewal.
I’ve learned over the years, that just because you don’t hear back from readers doesn’t mean they don’t value your work. They merely have not communicated their interest to you.
Of course, self-reflection and a certain level of self-improvement is useful in life. Yet, understanding our immutable qualities and accepting them (flaws and all) is a healthier approach than believing you are broken in some fashion while constantly searching for a magic practice that’s going to smooth off all your jagged edges. Some of those barbs are what people love about you.
‘With His New Mystery Novel, John Banville Kills Off a Pen Name’, Charles McGrath. 1 October 2020, The New York Times.
I should underline that having a sense of humour and perspective about yourself and your work is crucial to remaining sane. All art is both ridiculous and vital.
Although, Stephen King admitted in his 2000 memoir, On Writing, that he barely remembers writing his novel Cujo due to being dulled by the amnesia of addiction.
That quote is all over the Internet, but it is unsourced from the Musician's Little Book of Wisdom (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416. It’s useful to remember that Mozart was a prodigy, but also a supremely dedicated artist. ‘It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.’ (Spoken in Prague, 1787, to conductor Kucharz.)