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Literary Vanity

Is reading your own material incredibly vain? I’m curious to hear if I’m alone on this one…

Every now and then I catch myself indulging in a bit of literary vanity. I’ll be in the middle of something, and find myself following a tangent where I end up reading, and occasionally admiring, something that I’ve already written.

It could be a valid revisiting of something — an important email that deserves extra scrutiny before it gets sent, for example. But sometimes it’s material that I’ve written the day before, or last week, or even last year. It happens at work, with work-related documents, blog posts, edits on a book… and also in my spare time, sometimes with stupid stuff like a forum discussion thread. My thought process moves from “yeah, I really argued that point well, go me!” to “what the fuck am I reading this for? I wrote it, I know what it says! Stop wasting your time, moron!”

It’s ridiculous, and I feel self-critical after I’ve caught myself doing it. Especially if it happens at work (which isn’t all that often, to be fair — I’m usually super efficient and have no problem ploughing through what needs to be done). But it still happens. And it’s annoying.

I remember when Dave Shea released his Wintermint redesign of mezzoblue.com, he unashamedly acknowledged a similar vanity with his design:

because nothing beats the satisfaction of having done work good enough that you keep sneaking peeks throughout the day, when you’re supposed to be on other projects.

I empathise with being proud of something you’ve created, whether it’s pictures or words. I’m not suggesting for one moment that I can write as well as Dave Shea can design, but the sentiment resonated with me.

Now what the fuck are you reading this again for? Get back to work!

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posted: 10.04. 2007, 23:33 (1)

Comments:

  1. Cheryl [http://blog.moltn.com]
    Apr 11, 09:11 am #

    I don’t think it’s vain at all. I do a similar thing, I’ll re-read writing of mine and either think “This is great – that was very inspired writing, I didn’t know I was that smart” or I’ll cringe and notice grammatical mistakes and realise how much I’ve been waffling.

    I think it’s quite healthy to be proud of great work – painters and photographers hang up their work in their house so they can see it all the time.

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