Letters from the Devil: From Snodhopper to Leechwart on the Wasting of Talent Melinda Selmys In the spirit of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters.  Originally published in Issue XV of Vulgata, September, 2004.

My dearest Leechwart,

I often wonder how it is that you can bear the thought of yourself, when you conceive how much of your correspondence consists in nothing but sniveling and whimpering about the most irrelevant and petty of obstacles. The deplorable little human creature that you are currently in charge of handling has, I understand, some considerable store of talent. And she has every inclination to use it in the service of goodness, beauty, truth, and all of those other repugnant attributes of our Enemy, which He likes to reflect in those wretched little worms, primarily, I imagine, in order to better torment us with the constant refraction of His image.

Well, it is obvious enough that you are an abject miscarriage as a tempter: human talents are, so often, the greatest possible advantage to us. After all, was it not our own talents, the “goods” which the Enemy spitefully and selfishly endowed us with (all for His own purposes, of course) that allowed us to see through His egotistical charade in the first place? Was it not the gifts given to our diabolical master (wasted, though they were, on such a parasite), that ultimately drove him to demand that he be granted the dignity and respect proper to one of such overweaning ability? You should know admirably, from your own observations of yourself,  how easy it is to conceive a glorious and unconquerable pride even when granted an obvious paucity of real talent or achievement.

This, of course, is always the first and most admirable line of attack – for the moment that we can convince one of those stupid, upstart apes that they are actually the responsible for any of their accomplishments, we will have succeeded in making them more like ourselves – and the glory that they had hoped would fall upon their own miserable and unworthy little carcasses will fall instead upon my shoulders when, by virtue of my advice, you finally manage to drag them down to our realm.

Obviously, you will wish to plumb the depths of my greater experience in order to learn every nuance of how this is to be accomplished. In the first place, you will find it extremely auspicious to prevent your charge from the abominable practice of praying or “offering up” her work to the Enemy before she begins or after she completes it. For even if you manage to stir up a host of proud thoughts in the interim, the Enemy is likely to reward her good intentions by instilling in her, over time, the virtue that she attempting to will by her prayer. Naturally, if you are expert at your practice, you will be able to overcome this by founding her pride upon the prayer itself – as though the little vermin were actually capable of prayer without the hideous intercession of the Third Person. If you can convince her that, by virtue of her prayers, she is not only holy, but also that all of her work is God-inspired and, hence, not subject to any sort of humbling criticism, then you may let her “pray” all she wants – for without realizing it she will begin more and more simply to worship the idol of her own pride, and her empty offerings will quickly and harmlessly descend into our hands. This, however, is dangerous – as all prayer is ultimately dangerous. Thus, if you can manage it, it is simpler and more assuredly effective to merely prevent her praying altogether. This done, you should have little trouble in planting the following vices in the fertile soil of these talents which you so idiotically fear.

You should, for example, keep in mind that anxiety is a close ally of pride – and it is particularly effective in preventing the Enemy from being able to put the human's pitiful little endeavours to any good purpose. Having inserted into your subject's head the notion that she is really responsible for her work, that it's worth and value depends upon herself (as though such a thing were possible!), and that she has every right to be proud of her accomplishments, you should find little difficulty in then convincing her to allow any criticism or failing in the work to gnaw painfully at the edges of her pride and self-esteem. Unable to see that the work is really, in fact, the property of the Enemy, and that He, in his despicable desire to imbue His creatures with the grotesque “virtue” of humility, is apt to include editors and critics in the process of making it “good”, she will quickly become unwilling to submit her efforts to the analysis of her peers. Convince her that her critics are too scathing, that the helpful suggestions of friends fail to grasp what she really intended with the work, that her editor's expectations are superhuman. She that she imagines that all criticism is directed, not towards the process of improving the work, but to maligning her abilities and condemning her efforts. Induce in her the notion that her talents far exceed their actual capacities, and that, therefore, she has every right to expect perfection of herself – and when she finds that this is impossible, let her move into a private darkness where she may produce ever more ineffectual pieces of drivel to be stashed away, unseen and uncommented upon, in a drawer that no one else ever opens.

If, for some reason, she is being forced to submit her work – perhaps it is for some sort of class, or she has promised to make a contribution to some sort of display or publication – ensure that she is led to scruple about it for the maximum period beforehand. Let her hole herself up and beat her head repeatedly against the same material, making marginal improvements or, ideally, disimprovements, as she second-guesses her instincts and fastidiously attempts to produce something good enough to escape the sting of public criticism. Under no circumstances should you allow her to actually seek the assistance of someone qualified, to submit draft work to the review of someone who will offer useful suggestions, or to give a half-polished performance before a knowledgeable test audience – keep in mind that community and co-operation are favoured by the Enemy, while solitude is always to be preferred by those of us who want to be able to keep the credit for our accomplishments to ourselves. Should she, for some reason, set out upon this lamentable course, ensure that she is cantankerous and difficult to criticize, that she takes every suggestion as an attack on her person, that she is constantly seeking to defend herself, and that she ultimately either dismisses their suggestions as ill-informed, or imagines that she would have arrived at the same conclusions herself if only she hadn't been so tired, or if she had gone through the material one more time, or, indeed, that she had already thought of that and just forgotten to implement it. In this way, you will prevent her from realizing that anything she achieves is the result of the Enemy's acting not only through her, but through her critics, in order to pursue His own nefarious ends.

Yours with the utmost contempt,

Snodhopper