The Real Cause of Writer's Block

Enter the Inner Critic

 

Spend time listening to your Inner Critic. He or she is not comfortable with the risks demanded by a creative endeavor. By becoming aware of the foul jabber of your inner critic, you can see how your own mind puts up roadblocks to your creativity.

From Emily's Ten Tips on Creativity

 

An excerpt from The Art of Fiction Writing:

Let’s look at ways the Inner Critic blocks and confounds your writing. He or she may insist you produce an outline before you begin to write. Or he may insist you write only from your own life because, "How can you write about what you don’t know?" Or he might have you spending hours trying to find the right word, or shifting around sentences until you find yourself in a quagmire of grammar, thesaurus page-turning and general frustration.

You know the Inner Critic is at work when you look at the clock and discover you’ve spent an hour on a single paragraph, worse a single sentence, and the computer screen is mostly blank or the page is so scribbled on and crossed out and torn from erasing, you can’t read it anyway. That’s the moment when you throw up your hands or crumble your page into a ball or press the delete button thinking, "Who am I to think I can write? I can’t even find the right word. I’d do better going to Adult Ed and taking a grammar course. God, I’m stupid!"

The good news is that’s not all of you talking; but it is a loud part of you. After being with you most of your life, you’d better believe your Inner Critic knows how to push all your buttons. I have a very fierce Inner Critic, and although I can put him—her actually, my Inner Critic is a very destructive feminine voice—in her place more frequently than I used to, I still succumb to her vile ways. My family, friends and students know that I periodically fall into a song of lament. "Oh, God, I’m never going to write again. This time I know it for sure. I’ve gone dry. Who am I to think anyone wants to read my books anyway? What makes me think I’m talented? I’m stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I want to crawl into a pit and die."

This is not make-believe. These are my true ravings after a fierce Inner Critic attack, and I have been laid low by such an onslaught for weeks, months, even years. But no more. After concerted effort, I have learned to not only challenge but silence my Inner Critic.

You can, too.

The first step is acknowledging his/her existence...

Where Did the Inner Critic Come From? How do we defang them?

 

To find out more about identifying and defanging your Inner Critic, order The Art of Fiction Writing now...

 

"Emily's workbook and tapes are helping me get past the part of my mind that writes rational, predictable, orderly and boring work. The more I use The Art of Fiction Writing, the more I'm discovering scary, exciting, surprising and unpredictable sources of creativity. I feel as if I'm getting a lot of guidance in recognizing and getting past the monsters that guide the gate to truly creative writing."

 

                          Amy Meltzer

 

This article was taken from Emily Hanlon's The Art of Fiction Writing or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying.

 

"Using Emily’s books and tapes I wrote over 90 pages in 10 days. It was one of the most intense—and fun—writing experiences I’ve ever had!"

 

Valerie Storey, author
               "The Essential Guide for New Writers"

 

Explore The Art of Fiction Writing or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying, a workbook and audio downloads that really get you writing and writing and writing some more!!!

 Listen to clips from the audio downloads