Because You Mean It
4. Celebrate Others (The Encouragement Manifesto)
We included ‘Celebrate Others’ in the Encouragement Manifesto because we mean it. It is a value we live by.
When we set up our coffee shop/deli, there was nothing distinctive about us. Nothing to set us apart. So we started to handpick the very best products we could find made by the very finest food and drink producers. And we shouted about those amazing people and their great tastes. They were the story, not us.
We celebrated the great tastes and the amazing producers because we loved what they did; we LOVED the taste of their products and the stories behind them.
tackles this subject head-on, cautioning us all against the flimsiness of ‘celebration for what’s in it for us’. If the world of literature is going to thrive it needs to find (and celebrate) new voices with different stories. We need to stop being told by the gatekeepers what we like and start shouting up for the writers and words we LOVE.We are thrilled that The Gift of Words* project is attracting strong voices with powerfully argued points that challenge ‘the way things have always been’. That’s how change happens and we are excited to feel it rippling out from this community of encouragers.
* follow this link if you would like to add to this collection of encouraging words.
Celebrate the success of others. High tide floats all ships.
― Susan Elizabeth Phillips (author)
I recently took part in a poll suggesting ideas for discussion on a writer’s podcast. In the front seat of my car, while parked outside the dentist where I was waiting, my brain said, “art and the patriarchy”. What I meant to say was the artist and the patriarchy, specifically, the writer and the paradigm that is top-down order, standing on the heads of others, or as Gore Vidal put it, “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail,” which included in her recent essay A Difficult Subject We'd Rather Not Talk About: Are Writers Prone To Jealousy? but I’d already pressed submit by the time the editor in me stepped in. I’m sure they got the gist.
Writers and The Patriarchy, how we succeed in a building designed to let only one person up at a time. Or rather, how to preserve our integrity while working in a structure built to keep most people down. And let me be clear: everyone suffers in this system, if not in the short term, then certainly in the long. It is a broken, defunct and ugly tower. I want it toppled for many reasons, not least because nowhere on its walls or in its stairwells or even displayed on the balcony of the sunny penthouse is it written to celebrate others for the joy of it alone.
When I restacked Elif’s essay, I quoted her conclusion :
“The world is changing fast and so must literature. I sincerely believe women writers and young writers of today and writers from minority backgrounds especially can knock down the old ways. No longer can we leave the popular assumption of the “jealous/envious author” unquestioned. It has to be examined. It has to be dismantled.”
Yes, dismantled, brick by steel girder by every pane of mirrored glass, especially the locker room that has spray painted on the walls what’s in it for me, because that’s the caveat to celebrating others in this patriarchal system; how will it further my career, and what will it gain me, and we can smell that stink, the false cheer emanating from basement to lift shaft to rooftop garden where blinkers are handed out with champagne.
I’ll get to the blinkers in a minute because commercial celebration is a category of its own.
First I want to talk about cheering for its own sake.
It’s a fundamental quality of the life of a writer to need someone shouting for you, telling others to look, promoting your work because they love it, want to spread the word about you, and encourage you to keep going.
When I celebrate a writer, I do it because they’ve moved me, I want others to experience the same, and if they’re not well known already, to help them along that path. And I do it because I can see they’re doing something difficult and I want to celebrate that, too, the bravery it takes to put together a piece of work and publish it.
Also, this: art saves people. It’s the lifeblood through which we connect with ourselves and each other. Without artists, the world dies.
Now, before you sigh and give a massive eye roll, listen for a minute, because I may be blowing this up but it’s not out of proportion to the good you do by celebrating others. The impact of shouting from the rooftops when you discover a writer who makes your heart sing or inspires you, who shows you what’s possible, is massive. When you celebrate them you spread the love and that’s not a figure of speech, that’s a literal translation of what happens. The world becomes a better place. Your world and theirs. And here’s an even more encouraging piece of news: it’s completely free, it’s the easiest win of your day, it costs you nothing and makes everyone feel good; there’s no debt.
Okay okay, I can hear you at the back, there’s a contradiction in what I’ve just said, but you and I both know for this magic to happen you have to be a purist about it, commit absolutely to the notion that it’s not about you, you will not be noticed, you have nothing to gain and everything to give, which brings me to the commercial arm of this body, the one which will scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.
I admit it, there are publications I shout about where sometimes I feel come on mate, I’ve restacked you like a million times, authors whose notice of me would make a fundamental difference to my commercial punch. I want to sell books too, and being celebrated by the right person at the right time can make all the difference. But they don’t, and I can choose to sulk or carry on celebrating them for the reasons I started with, because their work is great, and I can’t help it. In a weird way, it keeps the action pure.
To the blinkers. I was at a lunch years ago and sat next to a screenwriter who was suffering the “one at a time” effect of Fleabag. She quoted a TV exec telling her they “already had a Phoebe Waller-Bridge” as if one woman writer was interchangeable with another, and one was enough, thank you very much; the ‘celebration of female comedy-drama’ box had been ticked.
We see this all the time, don’t we? Be like that writer, but also, we already have one of those; this patriarchal thinking, the narrowness of it, art as commodity, art as competition, the exact paradigm we don’t need, a set up which keeps us from flourishing, a celebration of one that blots out the celebration of many.
And when I hear it, the angry, feminist in me rises up and I think of Marta Becket who danced on stage in an Opera House in Death Valley for forty years whether there was anyone to see her or not because her heart determined she must celebrate her love of the ballet, in this theatre in that desert, so she did.
What I’m getting to, obvious enough, is that the act of celebrating because we mean it, not for personal ends but because we’re in love, makes us soar.
Imagine it’s a spark of something beautiful you put into the cosmos every time you shout good things about another person’s work. A little drop of magic goes flying off into the soup, and everyone’s world becomes brighter.
Eleanor is one of the most exciting voices on
who, in her own words:… felt like I was shouting into the void until Substack came along and filled me with connections to you, readers, the people who help on a daily basis to remind me I’m not alone. This place, for writers and readers, is where the action happens.
Eleanor is currently serialising a novel, IN JUDGEMENT OF OTHERS. Set in a neat market town in southeast England, it’s a dark comedy about psychosis in the Home Counties. A new chapter is posted each Sunday.
A MEMOIR IN 65 POSTCARDS, and its follow up, THE RECOVERY DIARIES, will be coming out in paperback in June.
This: “art saves people. It’s the lifeblood through which we connect with ourselves and each other. Without artists, the world dies.” Thank you, Eleanor! So glad to have made this connection.
Eleanor is a gift to Substack and to me. We collaborate on a project I hope you find--each of us calls it "This Writing Life" where we do a video I record for us and the each us posts that video and we each write a post to help and celebrate other writers here. I'm so glad I found this site and that Eleanor found you.