by Pam Hogeweide
Click here to read the original post on Pam’s blog.
“Have you ever prayed for your inner critic?” asked my dear friend Jane. We were sitting in a tree house her husband Tony had built. Not a tree-fort type tree house. But a Tree House, with windows and electricity and an upstairs and downstairs. We were in the upstairs part, built like a small sun porch with evergreen branches pressed against the window panes. A truly serene place and in this place my soul sister Jane had listened to me reveal the pounding I had been taking when it came to my writing. My inner critic had been on a rampage.
Who are you to think you have anything to say? You aren’t educated. You’re writing is too loose. Nobody cares if you write or not. Stop wasting your time. Kill your blog.
I revealed all to Jane who was more than just a friend, but also a sage-woman in my life.
“What if we prayed for your inner critic right now?” asked Jane in her gentle Jane-ness that endears everyone who comes in contact with her. “Your inner critic is, after all… You. She is a part of you and that part of you needs healing. Why don’t we lay hands on her and pray?”
With our heads bowed down and Jane’s hands covering my clasped palms, we prayed one after the other for my inner critic who is Me. I felt a river of freedom open up in the hidden world within. Something had shifted it seemed.
Time would tell, as she always does.
Writers have many stories of contending with their inner critic. I heard of one writer who negotiates with her critic to wait ’til she’s finished up then she can rip into her writing. Another writer I met at a conference said she had written a break-up letter to her inner critic and that it really worked. And then there was the writer who confessed to murder. “I strangled him dead. Now I write in peace.”
I thought about these different methods for dealing with my inner critic : negotiate? write a letter? murder?
Who ever heard of praying for their inner critic? Leave it to wise, kind-hearted Jane to offer such loving guidance.
Time did tell. It worked.
Within weeks my writing was flowing. The familiar critical voice was gone. There was silence … much of the time just quietness from the sidelines … as I got on with the craft of writing one carved paragraph at a time. And then, she spoke again, but this time without unkindliness.
I really like how you’ve used this metaphor. What a great picture to convey that feeling.Your writing is getting stronger. Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing.
I began to write and blog with greater boldness and strength. Self-censoring began to fade out. My inner critic had become my inner coach and because of this, I began to write with feverish liberty.
Within three years of that tree house prayer time, I published one book and began to write another. Once my inner writing critic became my inner writing coach, it was if I became a new writer. I was born again. My writing bones flourished as my writing voice soared.
It seems to me that there were three things that helped transform my inner writing critic to my writing partner:
- Recognizing that my inner critic is not some disembodied voice out to get me, but she is Me, the fearful, anxious part of me who is scared of failure, rejection, abandonment, and worst of all for writers, a reader’s indifference. Realizing who my inner critic was made it possible to reach in and love her.
- Saying it out loud to a trustworthy, non-judgmental person. Confession is good for the soul, and telling on my inner critic shined the light on a dark corner of my psyche. Reconciling this shadowy part of me meant confronting her … but with kindness rather than banishment!
- Reconciling with my inner critic by embracing her and affirming her. I need her in my life. She is my hidden self, my inner creative who helps shape my writings. She’s meant well, but all that criticism coming from a place of fear and anxiety was not helpful at all. It tore me down. Building her up displaced criticism and turned her into my ally. My inner self and my outer self are more wholehearted when they (we!) get along.
If I could give new writers one piece of advice it would be this: Make friends with your critic. Don’t ignore them, punish them or threaten them. Instead, kill them with lots and lots of kindness. Your writing will flourish with greater boldness and fluidity without the weight of criticism being heaped upon your writing soul. Make friends with your critic. And Write On.