This post is going to split some hairs.
Near the end of my time in grad school I got an academic paper on James Welch’s novel Fools Crow published in a literary journal, which was a first for me and a super big deal. It also seemed worth celebrating to some extent, so I wrote a quick blurb (“Ian Rogers’s paper, Language as Immersion: The Blackfoot Mode of Experience in James Welch’s Fools Crow, was published in…” etc.) to send to the English department newsletter, then didn’t think much about it.
I remember missing that month’s newsletter amidst a pile of other emails, but I knew it had come out when people started stopping me after class, in the hallway, and even sending me messages to congratulate me on my paper. It felt pretty good (not going to lie here), but after a while I started realizing that none of these people had actually read this paper I’d worked really hard on and that showed some interesting aspects of a cool piece of Native American fiction I’d genuinely enjoyed reading.
When the print edition of the journal came out I got to see my name in an actual hard-copy publication, which was, again, a first. I posted a photo of the title page on Facebook (back when Facebook was more relevant) and within a day was overwhelmed with a fury of Likes, comments, messages, and even a phone call congratulating me on the publication.
This time I felt even more bothered, since once again I was pretty sure none of them had actually read the paper, or had more than a vague grasp of what it was about. It felt good to hear everyone’s kind words, but part of me felt empty because more than anything I just wanted to talk about the paper with someone who’d read it.
The story has a happy ending, though: a year later, a former colleague who’d moved on to teach at another university messaged me out of the blue saying she’d found my Fools Crow paper by searching through the library databases. She’d read it and was impressed, and planned on assigning it to her undergrad class as part of their reading of the novel. Her message was simple and sincere, and afterward I felt really good knowing that something I’d written was going to help a class of undergrads understand a rad novel about Native American life (which you should totally check out, since it’s a solid, easy-to-read story about Native Americans in frontier times).
At the end of the day, I guess that’s what really mattered.
Know the Difference Between Being Proud of Someone for an Achievement Related to a Creative Work, and Appreciating the Creative Work Itself
I tell this story not to brag that I got a paper published, but to share an instance where I got a lot of praise for something that not many people actually saw, since no one really reads those dense academic journals outside of literature courses.
For creative people, when you’re considering things like your reputation, your resume, and the street cred that the gatekeepers are going to look at when they’re weighing your work against everyone else’s, it pays to have some impressive-sounding achievements that show you know your shit. This is where the big names, formal bios, long CVs, and high follower numbers play a role.
At the same time, it’s more important to focus on the actual creative work: the painting that won the award, the song that got you on the radio, the novel that got picked up by the publisher. At the end of the day, the recognition and the fabulous prizes only exist because the work itself was really good (or at least is supposed to be really good), and that’s what’s really worth celebrating.
It’s easy to lose track of the actual work when so many of our posts and announcements and general hyping focus on the achievement in a way that’s separate from the work itself. This can happen on social media whenever we post photos from events that have already happened or make publication announcements, or even announce that our books are being sold in actual bookstores, like I posted about two weeks ago.
In a perfect world, of course, announcements like these are meant are meant to stir up buzz about the actual work in a way that drives people to seek it out and enjoy it. It’s easy to lose sight of this if you’re too focused on the number of Likes, though.
I try to put real intent into every post, photo, blog entry, and tweet I put into the world. Some of them are just for fun, some of are meant to share an achievement, and some are meant to steer people toward an actual piece of creative work they can enjoy. More often, though, I think a good post can do two, and possibly all three, of these things at once.
Bottom line: I never want to get caught up in the self-serving brag trap where it’s all about getting recognition, and I hope you don’t either.
It’s All About the Actual Creative Work
The reality of life is that we’re all freakin’ busy and don’t have time to check out all the books, movies, shows, music, video games, and whatever the hell else we’re interested in. This lack of time makes it easy to let what we really enjoy slip by the wayside while we surf through the hype-filled social media universe.
At the end of the day, though, I always feel less fulfilled reading about people’s creative achievements and more fulfilled reading an actual book that’s good or listening to a kick-ass song or watching a movie that pulls me out of everything else. Social media, and the internet in general, seem to work best as giant signposts pointing me to where I can find more of the things that move me—and that’s the way I’d like to keep it.
Cropped cover photo used under CC 2.0.
So I totally have an Instagram now where I post cool and offbeat pics from Japan—check it out!
Plus, you know, there’s other ways to follow me…
But I Also Have a Day Job on Facebook
Occasional Email Update List (extra cool stuff ahoy!)