That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

The line frames post-creation doubt as an intrinsic part of artistic labor: after the effort and exhilaration of making something, the artist is “rewarded” not with certainty but with a depressive reckoning about quality and worth. The irony in calling this feeling a “reward” suggests Hemingway’s hard-edged view that self-critique and anxiety are not accidental side effects but the price of serious craft. Read this way, the quote highlights a recurring modernist theme—art as disciplined work haunted by uncertainty—while also implying that the capacity to question one’s own work may be what keeps an artist honest and striving.