For too long, fear and blame stopped me from writing. Decades ticked by without my completing a book—something I’d wanted to do my whole life. Fear of not being good enough immobilized me. I blamed my father for expecting perfection. I blamed my critical junior high English teachers who stole the fun I had as a child when I felt free to be seen and heard. I blamed writer’s block and my inner critic. I blamed myself for being lazy and undisciplined. And the more blame I spread around, the less I wrote, until even my daily journal entries became little more than a sporadic two or three lines a few times a year.
The truest message that I didn't tell myself is this: I had to find the story that compelled me to write, grant myself permission to write it, and learn to handle my inner critic. Once I accomplished that, I transformed the story that impelled me to write into my first book, The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life (She Writes Press).
Throughout the years I wrote The Space Between, my critic reared her challenging self each time I faced a blank page or computer screen, hoping to create the next chapter. She didn’t care that I’d done a reasonable, or dare I say good job on the last chapter. Her story was always the same: You suck! Sure, you wrote a chapter, but it was a fluke, and you’ll never write another. Even if you do, it will be awful.
Perhaps I’m a slow learner, because it took years of listening to her before I recognized she always said versions of the same thing. Fighting her or telling her to go away only added to her strength and power. Instead, I decided I had to show her respect.
I used to believe that beautiful prose glided down onto the page of talented writers as easily as water falls from the sky on a rainy way. That was before I began writing a book. It was then I learned that except in rare instances, it doesn’t, and I had to be willing to write a bad first draft.
I’d finish my first draft of a chapter and my inner critic would tell me it was terrible—flat, boring, and not well-written. Instead of fighting her, I began working with her by rephrasing the critical self-talk and replacing her negative ideas with ones that empowered and enhanced the flow of words. The decision to include my critic by asking for her help, rather than muzzle her, allowed me to harness her strengths. I embraced her ability to read with discernment, which helped me recognize and cut out any unnecessary sentences and paragraphs that didn’t move the story along.
While I never got over bad first drafts, I viewed them differently. I gave myself permission to have what Ernest Hemingway and Anne Lamott would call a “shitty” first draft. I reframed my self-talk. Instead of telling myself I was a terrible writer, I told myself that my first draft was like the pencil sketch an artist might make on a canvas before adding the multitude of layers which turn the chicken scratches into a colorful vibrant painting with its own unique movement and story to tell.
I could never silence the critic forever or change her. I had to change myself. I stopped trying to squelch her. I changed my attitude, language, and tone. Instead of raging against her mental chatter, I’d chuckle as I cajoled, “Oh, you always say that. You’re smart and I could use your intuition and insight, so can we please work together and get this next chapter written?”
It worked. My internal critic became my ally and together we combined our wisdom to edit with a keen eye as to what worked and didn’t work. This enabled me to move on to the next chapter until I wrote the last page.
And my lifelong dream of being an author became true when The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life was published. My inner critic has also helped me complete my most recent manuscript.
Although what I’ve written is about writing and my inner critic, I believe most of us have a voice that at times tells us negative things about ourselves. I also believe some people don’t hear that voice. Instead, they lack discernment and think they’re perfect when outside observation would say, well, not so much.
When we engage in meaningful conversations with our inner critic, rather than fight her, we can learn from the best of ourselves: the playful, reasonable, intelligent, discerning part that leads us to create and live our best lives.
I hope my experience offers you ideas about enlisting your inner critic as your ally on whatever projects are important to you.
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Can you think of times in your life when your inner critical voice prevented you from a creative activity? Stopped you from learning new things? Playing new games? Meeting new friends? Please share.
We learn from each other.
Ginni, You are an inspiration to all who are stopped or stalled by fear. Thank you for sharing your story with us. You give us hope!
I do that in pickle ball all of the time. I need to stop and look at the good.