Ego management 2024 addendum
One recent ego-management anecdote slipped my mind as I was composing my last update (even though it’s probably the most powerful!) Last August while I was visiting Heather and her husband in Minnesota, we went to the Center for Lost Objects for a leisurely browse. Their online shop doesn’t give you a sense of what this place is like in person: dimly lit, a tiny bit dusty, and chock-full of interesting old stuff. The bookshelves are a typical mix of 1990s New York Times bestsellers and gems I’d never have found otherwise, like Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry. Another book that snagged my attention was a first-edition hardcover from 1965: The Sorcerer's Son and Other Stories by Josephine Johnson.
I did a quick Google search. Turns out Josephine Johnson is the youngest person ever to win a Pulitzer for fiction (at 25, in 1935, for her debut novel Now in November). She taught at the University of Iowa. The back-flap bio mentioned the Pulitzer, and also that Johnson primarily considered herself a housewife and mother.
(I bit back a shiver of distaste. In fairness, I might’ve felt similarly had I been born seventy years sooner.)
Now, the point I am about to make is undercut somewhat by the fact that at least two of Johnson’s books are still in print with Simon & Schuster, but there are many many MANY more out-of-print authors to make my case. I had not heard of Josephine Johnson. Her name has never come up in any article of literary criticism I have ever found on the Internet, but that is not surprising. All but a few of the books that are widely read and lauded and talked about today will not be read (let alone lauded or talked about) thirty or fifty or a hundred years from now. Recognition is and always will be an ebbing curve. There will even come a day when no living person has heard of William Shakespeare.
So how do we authors (and aspiring authors) orient ourselves in response to this depressing truism? Two simple-but-not-so-easy directives emerge: write for the present, and for your own satisfaction. This is the only emotionally sustainable way to conduct your creativity. As George Saunders (also known as Uncle George) wrote in his Substack newsletter recently,
One thought I’ve often had about success is this: none of it is solid or is guaranteed to last. A supposedly great book can be forgotten or become dated. Laurels fade pretty quickly. But the one thing that seems pretty resilient is the pleasure one takes while writing – the alteration of the mind that takes place as we work a thing up the ladder, making it sharper and better – the person we are in those moments, that’s ours to keep.
We all want to produce work that resonates beyond the cultural moment in which it was created. But thinking too much about one’s posthumous reach (and the unlikeliness thereof) siphons generative energy from the story in progress—here, now, TODAY, the as-yet secret delight that is keeping you up at night and luring you out of bed in the morning. Nor is a preoccupation with posterity conducive to full-hearted presence in your creative friendships. The other day my new friend Bird told me she’s learned to gauge her success in terms of relationships and community building, and as the guiding force behind Quarry, Richmond Young Writers, and other similar endeavors, I’d say she’s one of the most successful people I’ve ever met!
Nothing lasts, but there’s no point choosing to experience that fact as an anvil in your gut. Instead, see it as a daily humility practice. Read up on the Buddhist principles of mindfulness and non-attachment, if that seems worthwhile.
…Then get back to work. 😎
P.S. I go back and forth about this inevitably self-indulgent blogging when so many people are suffering. The International Rescue Committee is my humanitarian aid organization of choice, so from now on I’m going to drop this link as a postscript so you can click through and donate if you feel so inclined.
