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If I Had Written That: What happened when I turned my inner critic on my favorite writers
Every book about becoming a writer talks about them. The inner critics — the voices that say this sucks, you can’t do it, that sounds stupid, etc. I have a whole team of them in my head. I call the biggest one Thor. I don’t know much about superheroes, but I do know Thor has a hammer and the suits my inner critic perfectly.
I type a sentence. BANG! That’s not good. I change three words in the sentence — maybe that will fix it? BANG! That still sounds stupid. But the saddest part is Thor is not the worst of the team. He is harsh, but he is indiscriminate; he generally just hates everything. Occasionally he is napping and I get some writing done. When he wakes up he looks at it and says, “whatever.” He will let it get past.
It is the rest of the team that keeps me up at night. They are not giants. They have no hammers. They are usually dressed in black and look very sophisticated. And they are my writing’s worst enemy. I think of them as the “eye-rollers.” Their criticism hurts much worse than Thor’s because I can tell they’re actually reading what I write before they condemn it. This team of critics is willing to give my work a chance, unlike Thor — I can usually tell he’s barely read it before his hammer comes down. The eye-rollers — they have convinced me that they…
