Apparently in the minds of many, self esteem is something which mentors and friends and nurturing others build up in one another building block by building block out of raw materials like Praise and Positive Feedback and Acceptance and Toleration. While I agree with the concept in principal in a big picture, generalist way, these values are not part of the Way of the Artist.
This is so true--and in so many areas it seems to lead to problems. I mean, it's not only just the artist's way but any way--eventually a kid is going to not be that good at something. We just happen to now be living at a time, it seems, where people think it's more important for someone to not think they're bad at something than to actually be good at it.
You know, this actually also ties into Elkin's fabulous essay on Elitism in Harry Potter...lemme find a link because I love it: Here it is. (http://elkins.theennead.com/hp/archives/000149.html#top)
It makes me think of it because above we talked about how Hollywood etc. seems to always tell people that as long as they don't give up they'll succeed, and besides being unrealistic it also seems to conflate being a "good" person with being "good at" things. In the movies, the heroine often starts out untrained and far behind everyone else in terms of technical skill, but after a montage of hard work their personal style will have them surpass everyone else, most of whom will probably be considered boring robots. I suppose this probably connects to years of that thing I can't write in Italian that means "the art that conceals art," where you were supposed to be good at all things artistic, but pretend you didn't have to practice to get that way. It's no wonder, if people take that seriously, that they can't see how somebody who just tries hard or is "nice" can't write for toffee, while someone less deserving is well-loved as an author. It's like Elkins describes in the essay when she talks about meritocracy--we describe people as being somehow "more deserving" than others but reward whatever skills we really value.
Somepeople really seem to have a knack for giving less than rave feedback (and Magpie, you seem to be one of those people),
Thanks!:-) And it's true, whenever you've got two people interacting they're both going to be at least partially responsible for how it works out. I think that's maybe why people get very tense at posts about how author's feelings aren't hurt, since they know that just as there are people who are genuinely vicious and want to tear authors down, so are some people just not very skilled at offering advice, and others will call criticism an attack even when it isn't. A writer really does need to LEARN to find the helpful criticism amongst everything else, but they can't really do it if they think that anything that isn't pleasant=an attack.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-20 08:24 am (UTC)This is so true--and in so many areas it seems to lead to problems. I mean, it's not only just the artist's way but any way--eventually a kid is going to not be that good at something. We just happen to now be living at a time, it seems, where people think it's more important for someone to not think they're bad at something than to actually be good at it.
You know, this actually also ties into Elkin's fabulous essay on Elitism in Harry Potter...lemme find a link because I love it: Here it is. (http://elkins.theennead.com/hp/archives/000149.html#top)
It makes me think of it because above we talked about how Hollywood etc. seems to always tell people that as long as they don't give up they'll succeed, and besides being unrealistic it also seems to conflate being a "good" person with being "good at" things. In the movies, the heroine often starts out untrained and far behind everyone else in terms of technical skill, but after a montage of hard work their personal style will have them surpass everyone else, most of whom will probably be considered boring robots. I suppose this probably connects to years of that thing I can't write in Italian that means "the art that conceals art," where you were supposed to be good at all things artistic, but pretend you didn't have to practice to get that way. It's no wonder, if people take that seriously, that they can't see how somebody who just tries hard or is "nice" can't write for toffee, while someone less deserving is well-loved as an author. It's like Elkins describes in the essay when she talks about meritocracy--we describe people as being somehow "more deserving" than others but reward whatever skills we really value.
Somepeople really seem to have a knack for giving less than rave feedback (and Magpie, you seem to be one of those people),
Thanks!:-) And it's true, whenever you've got two people interacting they're both going to be at least partially responsible for how it works out. I think that's maybe why people get very tense at posts about how author's feelings aren't hurt, since they know that just as there are people who are genuinely vicious and want to tear authors down, so are some people just not very skilled at offering advice, and others will call criticism an attack even when it isn't. A writer really does need to LEARN to find the helpful criticism amongst everything else, but they can't really do it if they think that anything that isn't pleasant=an attack.