If you get a weird compliment, like “I don’t know why, but I keep thinking about it,” you’re onto something.

The compliments that matter are rarely the articulate ones. Clean praise usually means your work matched something the person already had a category for, which is pleasant and not very informative. Being unable to explain why something stuck is a sign it did something unfamiliar, and unfamiliar is the hard part to achieve. Lingering in somebody’s head is the actual goal.

Keep a note of the odd reactions people have to your work, the ones that come out garbled. Look for what those pieces had in common. Do more of whatever that was, even if you cannot describe it any better than your audience could.