I recently listened to an audiobook featuring one of my favorite prose writers, Harlan Ellison [link] . Ellison is like Eminem or, to a lesser extent, Ke$ha: whether he's good or he's bad, he has a voice you can't ignore.

I was listening to him reading some of his own short stories, and as he often does, he introduced a story with a quick background on the idea, the theme, and the process. What stuck out was: at the time of the recording (2002, as far as I can tell, and he has published few stories since then), he considered "Grail" to be one of his "four or five" best as opposed to his much-reprinted and adapted "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" (or, I suspect, "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" or A Boy and His Dog). Stories like that are famous throughout the sci-fi literary world, and yet "Grail", one of the author's personal favorites and felt achievements, remains unrecognized.

This is referred to at tvtropes.org as "Magnum Opus Dissonance" [link] Woody Allen's list of his six favorites [link] includes nothing from the much-praised Diane Keaton era. Disney animators thought Pocahontas was going to be the bigger picture than The Lion King. Mark Twain's pet project was a bio-novel of Joan of Arc. All of them run counter to popular opinion.

All this led me to thinking: what would I say was my best stuff so far, and would any numbers support it?

I went into my devArt gallery and decided to pick out some absolute favorites. I ended up with four:

[link] "from Late Bloomer" is on the list mainly because of the ending. It felt overwhelmingly clever finding it and putting it in writing. While the novelty of the circularity has worn out, the admiration remains.
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[link] "Despicable" is not only one of my most successful poems online but also a firm favorite in the creative writing class it originated from. Teacher said it was her favorite of my final portfolio of works. She said it had the strongest voice and most attention to detail. And it should--Daffy Duck has had 80 years to have his voice heard while I'm still tinkering with my own. He has a long history of lunacy and screwballity to refer back to while I have barely begun to actually live my life. Anyhow, it must be said, both writer and audience have some agreement: you people enjoy it, and I certainly still enjoy it.
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[link] "That's All I Need" is based on a scene from Steve Martin's film The Jerk. More importantly, it exemplifies the strange and winding paths my brain takes when it truly lets loose. I had no idea it would end in such a dark place, but I love how it got there. I thought it would just be a simple poetic reflection on the things I treasure most in this world, but it became this bigger creature, and I absolutely adore it.
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[link] I must admit that "Plane" is here for potential more than its actual form. The words themselves can still be improved, but the basic plot I am fond of. It's part of that idea I brought up with "That's All I Need": a small beginning leading somewhere unexpected. I thought the final image was going to be a sort of paper airplane airshow fly-by, and I still think it should be the last image if I ever get around to filming it. But when the first plane was thrown, I had no idea what would happen to it. I certainly didn't imagine the ending relationship, complicated and all.
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Honorable mentions: my sonnets [link] [link] and my light poetry [link] [link] [link] [link] . I might be too proud of my ability to find rhymes.

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I think the most important thing to take away from this is: while the end product is certainly taken into account, the artist choosing his own favorites is bound to be skewed by the artist's own fond memories of the process. With "Late Bloomer", "That's All I Need", and "Plane", I explicitly told you that I was fond of the winding road that took them to their endings, and I can't pretend it wasn't fun to be Daffy Duck for a poem. The point is, the artist may well be too close to the subject to judge its impact.

I will be honest with you: my favorite writing of mine is probably one not on deviantArt at all. Ending 1 is to say "my favorite is the one I'm working on right now" which happens to be an interesting fairy tale about two princesses and a giantslayer. Ending 2 is to point to this entry on a different site [link] . I wrote this on reflection of a friend's impending boyfriend break-up, and she adored it and found it enlightening and strengthening. This will always be a firm favorite because it's one time I've written a poem that helped a person out.