For years now, I’ve been guiding writers toward their goals and dreams. I’m fortunate to be a witness, a companion on this path. We spend a lot of time focusing on what’s working in their early drafts, what we like. And when it comes time to revise, it’s important to hold onto that focus, so that they don’t edit out the good parts, the parts that are working.
One way I’ve addressed this head on is to use prompts that help us personify the inner critic. (If you want to find out more about this exercise, you can check out this post from my blog.) I felt it was time to share this with you too, dear readers. So today’s post is all about the inner critic and the imposter syndrome.
Julia Cameron addresses this beautifully in the following quote from her book, The Writer's Life (2001):
All writers suffer credibility attacks; learning to ignore them is part of surviving as a writer. Based on the idea that writing is product, not process, the credibility attack wants to know just what credits you've amassed lately. The mere act of writing, the fact of which makes you a writer, counts for nothing with this monster. Writing for the love of writing, the sheer act of writing, is the only antidote for the poison of credibility attacks--and the antidote is short-lived and must be re-administered.
This week, I encourage you to use the linked prompt above to help you see just how ridiculous the inner critic really is, especially when you respond to it with the nurturing, intelligent voice of reason. You might also find that the antidote to the venom the inner critic can spew is in the community around you: friends, colleagues, fellow artists and writers.
Give this a try: write about your inner critic using the linked prompt above, or try the list exercise below. I wrote the following piece from three short prompts I drew from that list. And if you really want to go easy on yourself, feel free to simply use the three phrases below.
After my piece, you can find a poem by Billy Collins, who takes a satirical look at how feedback in a writing group can go terribly wrong.
Enjoy. And please be kind to yourself.
The prompt I used:
"I'm trying to remember how to..."
(Complete this phrase as many times as you can in three minutes, keeping your response to your inner critic in mind.)
Stop inviting the bully in my head into the conversation
Find my way back to my dreams
Be honest but gentle
What I wrote is below:
My inner bully is a fat, white, redhead. He’s a high school gym coach wearing too- short-shorts with a whistle around his neck. He likes to say things like, "Just quit: you've already lost," and "You're not being realistic: what you want to happen is never going to happen."
He's part abusive father, part grown up version of my enemy in middle school who liked to taunt me and call me faggot in front of everyone: he's rage turned inward, and fear personified. It didn't take too long to figure out that he was the latest version of my inner critic. That critic used to be a patronizing intellectual wearing silver earrings from her travels in Guatemala. She was modeled after one of my least favorite writing teachers in college. But now he’s morphed into a Grade A asshole. Toxic masculinity personified.
What's been interesting is how he sneaks into my internal dialogue. Just when I think he's finally out of the picture, he jumps in with a "Just quit," or a "It will never happen," and I'm upside down again. But just for a while.
I recognize him now, of course, which is progress, but the question lingers: how do we deal with our inner critic?
My first piece of advice is to have a conversation with with your inner critic, but as a nurturing parent. You have to return to the middle way and simply be the voice of reason. and while you’re stirring up inner support, also search for that in your outer world: friends who understand how to listen and offer advice, who hold up a mirror and say, "This is how I see you. Can you see it too?"
"You're a very dynamic person," someone I love said to me recently. "You're doing a lot and you need a team to help you reach your goals." I like this idea a lot. A whole team of people who can help me meet my goals, reach my dreams. And I think I already have that: it's called community.
My friend Nina had a team. We met monthly in her beautiful home and helped her plan a successful dance-a-thon that raised over $24,000 for ovarian cancer research. We shared food and stories, loss and hope, we helped one another problem solve, and connected one another to resources. And we helped Nina heal over and over from the indignities of cancer treatment: surgeries, procedures, and failed experimental drugs. We helped her laugh and think about where she could travel again when she felt well enough. And when the time came, we helped her enter hospice. We couldn't keep her alive, but we were able to save her from a lot: self-blame, despair, and in the end, we saved her from a complete loss of agency.
Like Nina, we all need a community to help us in this lifetime. It doesn't have to be large, but it has to be vetted and curated. And it has to be people who know how to be a nurturing parent, to embody an inner voice that can quiet an inner critic, a voice that says, Let's think this through. Let's figure this out. You don't have to know right now. Give this a try and see how it goes. Don't give up.
Workshop Billy Collins I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title. It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now so immediately the poem has my attention, like the ancient mariner grabbing me by the sleeve. And I like the first couple of stanzas, the way they establish this mode of self-pointing that runs through the whole poem and tells us that words are food thrown down on the ground for other words to eat. I can almost taste the tail of the snake in its own mouth, if you know what I mean. But what I’m not sure about is the voice which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans, but other times seems standoffish, professorial in the worst sense of the word like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face. But maybe that’s just what it wants to do. What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas, especially the fourth one. I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges which gives me a very clear picture. And I really like how this drawbridge operator just appears out of the blue with his feet up on the iron railing and his fishing pole jigging “I like jigging” a hook in the slow industrial canal below. I love slow industrial canal below. All those I’s. Maybe it’s just me, but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem. I mean how can the evening bump into the stars? And what’s an obbligato of snow? Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets. At that point I’m lost. I need help. The other thing that throws me off, and maybe this is just me, is the way the scene keeps shifting around. First, we’re in this big aerodrome and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles, which makes me think this could be a dream. Then he takes us into his garden, the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose, though that’s nice, the coiling hose, but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be. The rain and the mint green light, that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper? Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery? There’s something about death going on here. In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here is really two poems, or three, or four, or possibly none. But then there’s this last stanza, my favorite. This is where the poem wins me back, especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse. I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before, but I still love the details he uses when he’s describing where he lives. The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard, the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can, the spool of thread for a table. I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work night after night collecting all these things while the people in the house were fast asleep, and that gives me a very strong feeling, a very powerful sense of something. But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that. Maybe that was just me. Maybe that’s just the way I read it. Billy Collins from Nine Horses © 2002
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