Defanging the Inner Critic

Perhaps in time I shall learn to live more deeply and consistently in that undistracted center of being where the will does not intrude, and the sense of time passing is lost, or has no power over the imagination.
—Katherine Anne Porter


Imagine your conscious mind is tuned in to a radio station run by a single disc jockey, your Inner Critic, and you have no way to turn down the volume much less turn it off. In fact, you’ve grown so used to the constant talk from the Inner Critic, you hardly notice he’s ordering you about, commenting, passing judgment and evaluating just about everything you do or say; this is all so subtle and insidious that you don’t separate out the Inner Critic from other parts of you. The Inner Critic has become you—it seems as if the only time you can escape his badgering is when you sleep. There is a reason for this. When you sleep, your conscious mind shuts down. The dream state or intuitive right side of the brain, takes over.

The Inner Critic avoids the dream state like the plague. He can’t get a foothold in a place where there is no apparent logic, where things appear as images, feelings, sounds and colors. It should not be surprising, then, that your best stories, characters and plots, come from this place of dreams, where little is known and anything is possible. The problem is how to wrest control of the radio station from the Inner Critic so that you can give your Inner Writer some air time.

Learn how to Defang Your Inner Critic in Emily's Workbook, The Art of Fiction Writing. And now, when you join the mailing list of The Fiction Writer's Journey, you get the first two chapters of The Art of Fiction as a free download.
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