Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.

 A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

Jane Austen from...guess which novel!

Pride and Prejudice

It's something I struggle with - being proud of a piece of work, but thinking it is vain to think so and not an appealing way of being. In fact, on occasions if I have openly said 'I'm proud of this,' I have had comments from Peter such as 'Blow your own trumpet, why don't you?' It's the British in us...self-effacing to the point of inauthenticity.

However, I completed a challenging briefing paper recently - which, if you must know, was entitled "Relational and physical security: generating a culture of hope and recovery in secure settings." I am proud of it. And for once, I didn't need anyone else to say anything to know it was a good piece of work.

It was the icing on the cake when people were complimentary though!

But I didn't NEED that, where in the past I wouldn't believe anything was any good until someone else had said so.

Perhaps I'm growing up?

Finally...

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them."

 "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

I can always count on Mark Twain to make me smile!

Feedback on one's work is sometimes hard to take. Partly because the feedback doesn't very often dwell on the bits that the reviewers like (if any) but only the bits that they want to chew up and spit out...and also because it can show a very limited understanding of what one is (I am!) trying to achieve...

So I've written, following the brief (I think) a quite poignant and gritty drama. I get this feedback: "There is not much humour in it. We think it should start with a joke."

 Oh how I laughed!

But I'm a professional writer. I can take it. I can rewrite according to their wishes.

I'd hate to think that my skull was in danger of being beaten with my own shin bone...