Self Literacy. From Definitions for the New Millennium: The ability to accurate appraise your own written work.

Me: I don't like the term, "self-literacy." (Too like "self-reliant," which approximately means reliant by oneself, which would make "self-literate" mean literate by oneself --without help from others). A better one, for me, would be, self-objectivity"--but I don't like that, either. But I applaud the interest in what an attempt at a definition is being aimed at.

How many could we call self-literate? Would Eliot’s “a little grumbling in verse” in relation to The Waste Land qualify him for literacy or illiteracy (or simply doing the Brit-low-ball). And I wonder if I am literate in this sense, and have wondered so for much of the past 40 years. You? I, too, have long tried to be (reasonably, since--yeah, perfect objectivity about anything is unlikely) objective about my self-objectivity, by whatever name. Some thoughts:

1. To wonder about how accurately you appraise your own work indicates some self-objectivity.

2. To listen to adverse criticism of your work and agree (sincerely) with it is another indication you have some self-objectivity.

3: Another indication: recognizing flaws in your work on your own. Especially of work others praise. (As with Eliot.) 4. I feel much better about a piece when I come upon it years after composing it and like it. Could be wrong, and realize that, but still believe I'm closer to being right about it than I'd be if I made the same judgement a week after composing it.

5. I think that the more elements of a piece you're aware of, and have evalulatory standards for, the more likely you'll be able to judge it reasonably well--your own piece or another's.

6. Still, I am never easy about how good a piece of mine is until one or more trusted colleagues show they think it good--by doing more than praising it such as critiquing it in such a way as to reveal their knowledge of it coincides reasonably well with yours.

7. Best is their being influenced by it enough to do works in emulation of it.

8. Unless best is the condemnation of colleagues you know for dolts.