Artists Feel Like Crap Sometimes. It's Okay.

"I hate awards season."

Search that on twitter, and you will find plenty of people who find awards shows tacky. Awards season invites all sorts of opinions about who deserved to win what, and people can find that either exciting or extremely grating. Plenty of people spend awards season frustrated that something that was personally meaningful to them got snubbed.

But dig a little deeper and pay close attention, and do you know what else you'll find?

Artists. There are writers, singers, producers, directors, actors, and so on, and many of them are frustrated around this time of year. However, there is a reason why you have to dig for those responses. They're going to be muttered quietly when people aren't looking, because people don't always react well to hearing about other people's frustrations. If you are a working as a writer, taking home a healthy paycheck by writing stories, there might not be a lot of sympathy if you are living that kind of life without a shiny thing.

This bit from Ryan George, a hilarious YouTube comedian, cuts to the heart of the absurdity that a lot of us feel around awards. In his usual silly delivery, Ryan George points out how goofy award shows are if you aren't already familiar with them. A whole bunch of people get invited to a party where only one of them is getting a shiny thing? It's ridiculous!

That alone is good comedy fodder, but Ryan George digs a little deeper: We all think that the shiny-thing event is a bit missed up... until you're the one holding the shiny thing. Turns out we humans are easily seduced by the glamour of the shiny thing.

If you don't go home with the shiny thing, the whole event can be hurtful or frustrating. And it's doubly frustrating because we've agreed as a society that it's not very classy to admit to being frustrated if you don't get the shiny thing.

You Are Not Alone

Here's a truth for you: Rejection hurts, no matter what level of success you've achieved before being rejected. It hurts when your first short story gets rejected, and it hurts when your 20th short story gets rejected. The hurt changes, sure. Maybe you're beaten down by the frustration of constantly losing, or maybe you've become somewhat numb to it. But there's still a degree of hurt because you wanted something, so you tried to achieve that thing, and someone else told you, in no uncertain terms: no.

Whenever someone wins their shiny thing, the camera at awards shows likes to catch the reactions of all of the people who just lost. They all nod knowingly, like oh yes, of course they deserved to win! No hard feelings here! We're all here to celebrate your successes!

Deep down, though, we know most of that is just acting though, right?

The problem is that because we only see the performance, it can be easy to feel like you're somehow broken or unusually selfish if you feel like crap watching someone else win. You're supposed to be an empathetic person, after all. Shouldn't you be excited for your colleagues? Shouldn't you be admiring their work? Shouldn't you be clapping and nodding, because of course they deserved to win?

Jealousy isn't pretty, and I'm not going to pretend it is. But that doesn't mean that we all have to lie to ourselves. We've all had moments when we felt frustrated by other people's success. Come on, be honest with me: haven't you read a published novel at some point and thought, I'm a better writer than this! And then you look over at your stack of rejection slips and wonder What the hell?

I'm fully confident that other people feel that way sometimes, because I feel that way sometimes. Not all the time! I really like to read, so even if I don't adore a book, I can usually find something to admire about it. Maybe an author has particularly strong control of language, or maybe their characters just seem a bit more lifelike than should be possible. Maybe their concepts always feel fresh and original. Usually, there's something.

But sometimes?

Sometimes I see someone else's success, and as ugly as it might be, I feel jealous.

That Has To Be Okay

Sometimes it's not even jealousy. Sometimes it's just plain hurt. You put yourself out there, and you hoped that you'd be recognised for that effort.

Maybe it's time to stop beating around the bush?

One of the most exciting aspects of Vocal is the challenges. Since joining Vocal last year, I've participated in so many of them. There was the Summer Writing Series, and then the Halloween event, and then the Vocal Fiction Series, and the Return of the Night Owl. Oh, and the non-fiction events too!

Most of the time, they're a lot of fun. I see them as a bit like writing prompts. I sit down and I think, What story could incorporate an owl? And then I think about Athena, and how owls show up on Athenian coinage, and I start thinking about ancient curses and... And, well, you'll have to read Athena's Curse to find out where I took that idea.

That part of the process is a lot of fun! I love it. I genuinely enjoy writing.

But writing something just for it to flop? That's not fun. That's the sort of feeling that can make you hate awards season.

In the past few weeks, there have been a few big fiction events on Vocal, and here's the sad truth about contests: there are always more losers than winners. We love the excitement of the challenges even though we know how the challenges always end, right?

So what do we do about this? Is there a right answer to this messy game of excitement and disappointment, thrill and frustration?

There is an answer, even if it isn't always easy:

Give Yourself License To Feel

Have you ever considered how wonderful it is that art allows you to peek into the mind of another person? I'm guessing that you have, if you are someone who uses a platform like Vocal!

The great thing about fictional characters is that they will admit to things that people never would. You slip into the mind of a protagonist or a villain, and you learn about the impulses that they would usually keep secret. In a world where we are all constantly filtering our thoughts in order to be socially appropriate, fiction gives us access to the real meat of the person.

Maybe this sounds like a stretch to you, but I think that this means that it is necessary for a strong artist to be in touch with their own feelings. Maybe you don't want to show those feelings to the rest of the world, still, but it doesn't work to strangle your own emotions in the pursuit of art. Understanding emotions is at the heart of creating art.

If you strangle your own emotional capacity to the point that when you write, you imagine a world where everyone feels great all the time it will feel fake. Artificial. Plastic.

Instead, if you can get in touch with those feelings that we don't always like to talk about? Your readers will see something of themselves in your writing, and they will reward you for your efforts.

So consider this your license: you're allowed to be disappointed and hurt by rejections.

But maybe we can take this just a little bit further:

Give Yourself License to Feel Complexly

One of the great misunderstandings of emotions is that they function in an exclusive manner. In reality, emotions are complex. So just because you feel frustrated, disappointed, or hurt by rejections, that doesn't mean that you don't feel anything else.

No one benefits from you beating yourself up for feeling ugly emotions about rejection, but those ugly emotions don't have to be your only emotions.

Don't you think you can feel disappointed while also admiring the work of other people? Don't you think you can be proud of your own work while also appreciating the strengths of someone else's work?

Feeling complexly starts with remembering that gut reactions aren't everything. You can have a gut reaction that goes one way, and you can accept that feeling, but you can also cultivate other feelings in addition to that impulse.

Complex Feelings are Useful

A few weeks ago, Vocal released the nominations for the Vocal Fiction Awards. Naturally, I searched my own name, and I was excited to find a story pop up when I entered "Littlewit Philips." Honestly, I still can't believe it. As I write this right now, I have the list open in another tab just to be sure that I'm not just confused.

That prompted me to go back and read that story for the first time since publishing it. And you know what? I'm proud of that story. I really like it. I don't expect to be one of the winners, because statistics are unyielding, but I am proud of the story that I wrote. It deserves a shot, and I'm glad that I shared it with the world.

Then, more recently, the Return of the Night Owl contest results came in, and my story didn't make the cut. I went back and read that story again too. Is it perfect? No. But looking back on it, I found out that I still really like it. That's a complex emotion, but it's a healthy emotion.

Feeling complex emotions fully is an opportunity to ask introspective questions. If you're disappointed, are you disappointed in the results? Disappointed in your story? Disappointed in yourself?

Often, when I am done with a story, I just want to send it out there and then close my eyes. Once it is out in the wild, I don't want to dwell on it, because I want to move on to new projects and I don't want to be endlessly tinkering with edits on the same story. Moments of introspection are a great opportunity to actually look at your own work seriously and say, but how do I feel about this?

Left unexamined, the disappointment of rejection can get messy. You can go from being disappointed with a result and end up feeling disappointed with yourself. You can go from the truth (You didn't win something that you wanted to win) to a lie (You are a bad writer, so you will never win at anything).

The Value of Introspection

Ultimately, you get to decide who you are. You get to set your own goals. You choose your own path, and introspection and disappointment can also nudge you to let you know if you're on the wrong path.

Here's the great thing about Vocal: ultimately, you get to decide what you write. You decide when a story is ready, and you decide when to hit publish. Compare that to traditional publication, where you could send the same short story to a dozen different venues and only collect rejections. Here, you have the power to decide that your story is worth being read.

So while the challenges are fun, do you really want to sacrifice that control and return to the old model?

I still love the challenges, but sometimes it's worth remembering that this kind of publication is about personal choice as much as anything else. I wrote most of a second story for the owl challenge, but ultimately I was faced with a dilemma: should I rush the story in the hopes of winning some cash, or should I accept that it wouldn't be out in time and focus on making it as good as it can be?

I chose the latter, because my goal is to write well. Winning contests would be fun (and I definitely wouldn't say no to the prize money), but good writing is still my objective.

Eventually, I hope my subscribers will read a story titled "The Fool's Guide to Fool's Gold." I hope they get the chance to enjoy that story. But they haven't seen it already because when the final hours of the owl contest were winding down, I just wasn't happy with the story. I had to reject it myself.

But you know what? That's power.

In Conclusion

If challenges and awards and rejections make you feel messy emotions, that's okay. It's actually healthy to feel those things. So rather than trying to strangle that aspect of yourself, why not try to put them in perspective instead? What strengths from the winners can you admire? Do you still like your own work, and what about it feels the most worthwhile to you? And finally, are you pursuing the right goal?

Remember, there's always another challenge in the future. If you decide to continue to pursue that, no one can stop you except yourself. But make sure to check in with yourself and remember why you're doing any of this in the first place.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider checking out some of my other writing. I would especially appreciate it if you read my short story, "Killing Goblins." If you like what you see, I'd appreciate it if you left a like and subscribed. That way you won't miss it if I ever manage to get "The Fool's Guide to Fool's Gold" to a place where I'm proud to share it with the world.