“I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.” – Mark Twain
Mark Twain, a master wordsmith, had much to say on the topic of compliments. The one above is perhaps my favorite, but it’s hard to choose.
He realized what a necessity, and what a trap, and what a travesty, a compliment can be, depending on the giver and the intent.
Here’s a sampling, each one as true as the next.
“An occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one’s self-respect.”
“She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die.”
“There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.”
“When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.”
“They say that you can’t live by bread alone, but I can live on compliments.”
“The compliment that helps us on our way is not the one that is shut up in the mind, but the one that is spoken out.”
“Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments.”
Knocking clients’ socks off is always a challenge, and it is always my goal. Although I don’t hit the jackpot every single time, I do it frequently enough that I feel encouraged to keep going as a writer.
As a kid, even the most staid and perfunctory rejection letters from editors nearly always arrived with an appended scrawled note fitted into the margins saying, in essence, “You’re a very good writer. This one just isn’t right for our publication,” or “We just did a piece on this topic recently. We look forward to receiving more of your submissions.” “Don’t be a stranger. We want to see what else you come up with.”
Every time I face a blank screen (it used to be a blank piece of paper, but I got a PC in 1986 or 1987 and left handwriting in the dustbin of history), I consider what I can do to fill it with something worth writing and remembering. Something compliment-inducing, or frame-able. My first presentable draft always has to be something I would willingly put my own name to, as if my byline would appear, without feeling a shred of shame.
Words are magical to me
A good writer can string words together in unique ways to make them jump right off the page and into someone else’s heart, mind and soul. Good writers can transport their readers to a place they may have had visited before, but have never truly inhabited, to offer greater insight.
So, yeah, when I get a compliment — especially from a client or a reader of one of my books or articles — it stays with me for a very long time. I write it down and revisit the list whenever I begin to feel less than enthusiastic about trying to pull a rabbit out of yet another hat. They give me the courage to give it my best shot and see if I still have what it takes to rock somebody’s world.
I need to write in the same way I need to breathe. It sustains me. When I find it sustaining others, it’s like sharing my oxygen with someone on a plane or under the sea who also needs to breathe.
Compliments don’t make me vain, and I suspect they didn’t make Twain vain, either. As a humorist, he knew how to deflect grandiosity and turn it into a guffaw. To me, compliments land as confirmation, as far from ego fodder as the earth is to the stars.
Compliments make me long for the next one. They are the accolades I need to keep on keeping on.
How do you feel about the compliments you receive?
