One of the webcomics I read on a weekly basis is Hugh MacLeod’s Gaping Void, where he presents comics mostly drawn on the backs of business cards. I’m not really his target market, but I like his style and I’m a fan of somewhat non-sequitur cartoonage.
He made a post recently about going home to his mother’s house and finding binders and binders of old business-card cartoons in the attic. He talks about being struck by how many cards there were, and how he came to the epiphany that he had created “a body of work”. I know how he feels; sometimes I’m still struck hard by the fact that there are books flying around out there in brickspace with my name on them which may very well outlive me. But what got to me more than that was what he followed up with:
I finally had evidence here and now that, no matter what happens from now on, regardless, it’s been a good life. It’s been a good fight [...] That’s all we all really want, at the end of the day. Evidence.
I don’t know if other artists and writers feel this way, but for me it’s very difficult to add up my work and look at it from this angle, the angle of evidence that I have already achieved something. It’s good not to be complacent, but at the same time it’s good to have a sense of scale. If you can hold onto it, it’s a very secure feeling to know that no matter how many things you haven’t done, you have Done A Thing. There are like twelve books in my head that I haven’t written yet, but there are three (soon to be four) out there that I did write.
Edward Leedskalnin, an eccentric quasi-scientist in the early part of the twentieth century, once published a treatise on “moral education”. The treatise itself is a bit of a misogynist screed, but in typesetting it Leedskalnin did an interesting thing: he printed his text only on the left hand pages. He prefaced the book with the following quote:
Reader, if for any reason you do not like the things I say in the little book, I left just as much space as I used, so you can write your own opinion opposite it and see if you can do better.
The Author
May I one day be capable, but more importantly worthy, of such hilarious, wonderful arrogance.
(Mind you, doubling the printing cost does nobody any favors.)
Then again, since you post all of your writing online, you can get the same effect with a link to a “create your account” page and save the paper. :)
There is that. But somehow it’s so much less satisfying to tell someone to express their opinion on the internet. I mean, most people think that’s what the internet is for. :D
I think it really depends on what your goals are, in many ways. I mean, if you have a life-goal of publishing something, anything, then being able to look at a published work and say, ‘I did this, it’s done. That goal has been acheived’ then it allows you to feel like something you based your personhood around (I want to be a published writer/whatever) is justified. If you always dream then never acheive it is very wearing on the sense of self.
On the other hand, for someone who has passed that initial goal it can become semi-irrellevant, because you have now shifted the goal-posts. When I published a complete piece of fanfiction it was my first completed story, so it felt momentous, but now that I have my eye set on publishing original work that acheivement barely registers.
However I do think there must be some crossover point where you have acheived your goals enough times that you feel that there is a ‘body’ of work, a collection that, while it can be added to, it’s enough that you feel satisfied that it represents your efforts. That you could die and say, ‘Yes, I feel pleased with what I achieved.’
That feeling possibly is not fixed though, and will change depending on the feelings of success and frustration that are associated with various goals at various stages throughout life.
That’s very true. Though I don’t think many people who would call themselves writers or artists are people who want to create just One Thing, which is why people in those specific fields need a body of work to prove to themselves they’re doing something and/or progressing. It’s not that the goalposts keep moving, it’s that they’re very, very far away and just being able to see them a little closer is sometimes the achievement :D
I know this is an old thread and this comment will most likely go unnoticed, but I felt I had something to add and the words above read, “Leave a Reply”, and that was really all the encouragement I needed.
I will not forget the day that I realized I had a ‘body of work’.
It came about four months after I buckled down and started creating work on my terms, things I wanted to see – and this is the important part – consistently.
I had always yearned for some sort of creative outlet and it took thirty years of searching, numerous life changes and the advent of computers and the internet before I finally found a combination that suited me.
So to loosely couple both of the previous analogies, I believe I felt what Hugh described when I suddenly realized I had several months worth of honest endeavor; it felt like I had created something I could stand on, some structure from which I could view the future.
This structure also provides a kind of emotional security – there is evidence now that I do finally know what I want to do, I’m not insane, or at least there’s proof that my particular madness is fruitful.
I SEE ALL :D
It is a really nice feeling. And yeah, I think consistency is part of it; and another part is finding something that you can be passionate about for long enough to BE consistent.
Congratulations on finding yours! :)