Thoughts on the Inner Critic

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

A Room of One’s Own

"There must be silence to hear the song,
there must be darkness to see the stars.
The dance is always danced above the hollow place,
above the terrible abyss."
Ursula LeGuinn, "The Farthest Shore"

Do you have a place where you write? A place that is especially yours? If you have one, does it support and reflect your creativity? It is inspiring and fun to make your writing place alive and organic, a shrine to your creativity, delights and passions. Gather things small and large. Pictures of people you love, flowers, rocks, toys. Choose and arrange them carefully and with love.

My writing room was my son’s room originally. When he moved out, I took over what had been his dark teenage den and transformed it into my space. I wallpapered, much to his chagrin, with lovely blue-flowered paper. Stars and moons hang from my ceiling above my computer. (I feel compelled to say I was a star and moon collector long before it became the fad!) On top of my monitor I have a little plastic windup toy of a cat in a cup as well as a statue of a lamb that I bought while touring England’s West Country; there is a small knight given to me by my son, a pin that says “magic happens,” a chakra stick given to me by my daughter, a piece of bark from a tree. On the wall to my right hangs a rain stick crossed over a sword and across the room is a Celtic Cross carved into slate that my husband bought me in England. There are pictures of my family; my favorite books are nearby and a flowering plant is on the desk. I try, but I can’t seem to keep my room neat for more than a day. Sometimes that bothers me, sometimes it doesn’t. No matter, I love this room. It is mine.

I sit here when I need peace. I curl up on the couch when I am sick, and my three cats, Al, Mushy and Jilly, have staked out their claims—Al and Mushy on the couch, Jilly by my computer or on my chair. (We have a long-standing battle as to who owns the chair!) If my golden retriever, Molly, can’t find me, she checks this room first. And last but not least, I know my characters are at home here, waiting for me to return each morning.

I have had many writing spaces over the years, everything from the dining room table to the guest room. This last space is the best I’ve ever had. I created it from the bottom up with one thought in mind: to make it mine.

I Am Not I

There is a very particular risk inherent in the creative process: when you take the journey inward, you discover that you are not who you think you are, or you are more than who you think you are. But sometimes these images reflected through the inner mirrors are so alien that they first appear ugly, even demonic and cause us to run. The trick is not to run, but to persevere. The image will shift, the fear will dissolve and the stranger seen through the creative mirror will become familiar and quite wonderful. These unknown parts of us will guide us through unseen doors, into unexpected landscapes.

A poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez speaks wonderfully to this point.

I Am Not I

I am not I.
I am walking beside me
whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit
and at other times manage to forget.
The one who forgives sweet when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who remains silent when I talk,
and the one who will remain when I die.

How do we discover these who walk beside us and tend to be who we are not? How do we learn to lift the smoke screen?

First of all, I'd like to suggest that these ones do not walk beside us, but these unseen, unexplored voices live inside us.

There are different ways of finding this inner self which some call the dark or shadow side, hidden self or true self. Whatever you call them they are parts of our selves that have been secluded, usually in childhood or adolescence, when it seemed somehow dangerous to put them out into the world. We learn very early in life to pass judgements on those parts of ourselves that don't meet with acceptance and, in so doing, we doom ourselves to live through a very small part of the totality of self while casting other parts of self into the shadows, where we keep them hidden, silenced in the dark.

Carl Jung said that the unconscious is a great friend, guide and advisor to the conscious and that psychic wholeness comes from bringing the unconscious and the conscious into balance. He believed the primary way of doing this is through dreams. I believe that this communication is also part and parcel of the creative journey. The trick is in breaking through the stranglehold that the rational, conscious mind, the "I" we think we are, has on us.

As far as I am concerned, this is the most difficult part of the journey, quieting the inner critic so that we can go unfettered, without judgment and criticism, into the great sea of the unconscious. This breaking through is also the hook -- or perhaps it is more accurate to say that when we finally break through into the creative unconscious, we are hooked. For there we find the hidden selves who hold so much of our deep yearnings and explosive drive. They hold talents, wisdom and knowledge we never dreamed we had. For the fiction writer, our hidden, disowned selves often come through as powerhouse characters -- if we let them! In so many ways, these hidden selves are partners in the dance of creativity.

To explore these ideas in more depth and see how they affect you and your writing, buy Emily's book, The Art of Fiction Writing and receive two e-books free!

"Nothing's either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

- William Shakespeare

So tell your Inner Critic to put that in his pipe and smoke it when next she tries to stop you from following the passion of your creativity!

Creativity is a labyrinthine journey that takes us deeper and deeper into our self. With every twist, turn and seeming two (three and four!) steps backward for every step forward, we learn more, let go more, fear, love, cry and dance for joy. Creativity is a journey into the dark and it must be. Why? Because as creators, we are manifesting the unmanifested.

Where is the unmanifested found?

Where are seeds found?
What gives birth to dawn?
From where does the butterfly emerge?
What is the warm, encompasing darkness that gives birth to every living thing?

The answers are all around us.

Creativity is BIG STUFF! Don't underestimate the power of the journey! And if you feel at times, and we all do, that you're not up to the task, think of this: if you don't risk the journey, you risk even more.

Why Do We Make Writing So Hard?

We make writing a lot harder than it is meant to be. Don’t get me wrong—writing is not a piece of cake. It is hard work, but it’s good hard work, like digging in the earth to make a garden. The problem for many of us is that our minds have convinced us that sitting down to write a story much less a book is at best painful, at worst impossible.

I believed this for many years –– and despite that I managed to get five novels, two picture books and one book on writing published. I don’t believe in the pain theory of writing any more. Experience and age has convinced me of this: all our stories and novels are vibrant and complete somewhere in our creative unconscious. If we could side-step the Inner Critic who resides in the mind, we could sit down, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and the story would reveal itself in its glorious completeness in much the same way as Mozart’s symphonies did for him. I have read that Mozart sat down and wrote his symphonies with very little revision, if any at all. In other words, he gave himself over fully to the creative journey and fell headlong into its passion.

The first time I read about Mozart composing without revision, I thought, sure, right. And if it’s true, well, we’re talking Mozart. For sure, that’s not me! Now, some twenty-odd years later, I no longer doubt that it is possible to sit down and write a book from beginning to end and have it come out whole. I would like to experience such a creative flow and know that what prevents me is me, my mind that says it’s impossible, “What, are you kidding? Writing is blood, sweat and tears. It’s revision after revision. It’s tearing your hair out. It’s giving up and picking up. It’s blah, blah, blah…”

Because that voice, the voice of my Inner Critic, still has sway over me, I have, like you, something of a difficult time opening to the creative flow. It’s getting easier. And who knows? One day I might just manage to quiet the naysayer in me and write a book whole from beginning to end. For now, I’m happy that writing is no longer such a mountain to climb… and I can imagine the possibility of creative nirvana!

The Inner Critic and the Creative Unconscious

The Inner Critic is terrified of the creative unconscious because it is the home of feelings, emotions, images and it is chaotic and unexpected. The Inner Critic likes order and loves the status quo, which is antithetical to the creative unconscious. That's why if you "fall down the rabbit hole" the Inner Critic won't follow you! Free of the Inner Critic, you have the possibility of experiencing real creative freedom and passionate stories awaits you. Only then can the true dance begin!

Food for Thought

• You play tennis, even take lessons, does that mean you dream of playing at Wimbledon?
  
  
• You hike mountains, does that mean you have to have plans to climb Mt. Everest to have a great day?
  
  
• You love to cook, even may even take cooking lessons, does that mean you have to write a best selling cook book or become a chef in a ****Restuarant to have a deeply enjoyable meal?
  
  
• You take yoga classes several times a week, does that mean you have to be a world reknown yoga teacher to get all the benefits of yoga?
  
  
• So, ask yourself, why doesn't the same rule apply to your writing?
  
  Read Emily's article, Publish or Perish: It's Not Only for Academia
  
  
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On Living a Creative Life...

Living a creative life demands faith in your inner world and the only way I know to take the plunge is to trust that order will emerge. It must. Order is as integral as chaos to the creative process, but the order will be new and often unexpected. Gertrude Stein put it this way, “You cannot go into the womb to form the child... What will be best in it (your creation) is what your really do not know now. If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.”

Releasing the Creative Energy in Story Writing

What is good fiction writing technique? How do we unleash the creative energy through the channels of character and story? Although I still teach technique, my emphasis has changed and the techniques themselves have shape shifted. I know now that the journey of the writer is first and foremost a journey of self-discovery, the path on which we can find essence and hear the song of our soul. Craft and technique are necessary, but the trick is to not put the cart before the horse. Technical expertise alone cannot release the writer’s passion, and the perfectly turned phrase will please the ego, but if it doesn’t translate into something meaningful for the character and story, it is so much wasted word count. Not that there’s anything wrong with seeking the perfectly turned phrase. I do it myself. It’s a great delight for the mind; the problem is when we confuse perfection of outer form with essence.

Both technique and passion are vital in many ways, but I’ve worked with writers who are technically excellent but can’t plumb the depths of the human condition. Conversely, I’ve worked with writers who have great intuitive understanding of the task William Faulkner set forth for writers –– “... the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself... alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the sweat and the agony.”–– but whose lack of technique flaws their story telling, sometimes to the point where they can’t finish and give up in frustration.

But revealing the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself is, for most, the more difficult of the two tasks. If we are to succeed, we must leave our conscious self and all our mind’s expectations and journey into the unknown, that place of shadows, mist, fertility and birth that knows neither right or wrong, that holds a truth beyond the mind’s understanding. If we brave this journey, we will emerge from the mists and shadows into a landscape more vibrant than the one we left behind. Miraculously, we find ourselves writing the story we never thought we’d write, the story our minds could not conceive but our hearts hunger to write.

Write from What You Know? A Different Approach

When we write from the imagination we are writing what we “know” but from such a deep level of knowing that we don’t know that we know it until it is revealed in our writing. This is often the truer aspect of self, the part that we do not readily show to the world, and sometimes do not show even to our self – at least not consciously. This is what makes the journey such risky business. This is also the great joy of writing; when we are true to the process, we discover worlds within we did not know existed.

Five Ingredients to Creative Success

After years of working with and interviewing people on the creative journey, I have come up with five ingredients to creative success, and if you become master of these, your creative spirit will take flight, it will nurture and free you.

Successful creators are:

1. Passionate about their work
2. Risk takers
3. Technical experts at their craft
4. Comfortable with failure, do not see failure as failure and know how to get the job done
5. Different, weird and like it!

Passion and risk are the two major ingredients, they set the pot to boiling and get us moving. They are what ultimate allow us to There are so many examples of ways we short-cut this life changing process, but the one that comes to mind is the adage, “Write what you know.”