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Some academic writers are crippled by the desire to write perfect prose from the very start. Even though they know that the first draft is always rough, they find writing rough difficult. They have what writing advice calls an over-active inner critic. Rather than saving that little critical voice for reading and refining the first rough draft, they find it continually interrupts and disrupts their flow. Writers with an over-enthusiastic inner critic go over and over the same piece of text. They want to write more but are hamstrung by continuing inner critic demands for changes. If this goes on and on and on, they become terribly frustrated and start to think super-negative thoughts about themselves as writers.
One well-known strategy for dealing with a hyper-vigilant inner critic is to speed write. You just write without stopping for a period of time- you Shut Up And Write. When your focus is on generating words as quickly as possible, your inner critic simply doesn’t have enough time to stop and read what is on the page/screen. Another strategy is to set a prompt to write to, like “Today I have to write about x and this is what I have to write… “ Again the emphasis with prompts is to write fast for a limited period of time. Yet another approach is simply to talk into your phone and let one of those nifty speech to text apps produce a rough draft that you can then work on.
The best selling teacher and author Julia Cameron describes the inner critic as a bully. She says it is important to try to bring the bully back to size. She offers a bully-reducing strategy which also relies on writing fast. She suggests that on a blank page you write at the top “If I didn’t have to say it perfectly I’d say…” Next you write a list using numbers 1-5. Then you quickly write what it is you are going to say after each number.
Making a list combined with writing at speed positions you to concentrate on the content – you write what you want to say, rather than continually focus on how you are saying it.
But Cameron also has another strategy. She writes about personifying her inner critic – her’s is called Nigel. She says In my imagination, Nigel is a British interior decorator. His aesthetics always supersede my own. She describes her ongoing battles with Nigel.
When I wrote The Artist’s Way, Nigel told me no one would want to read it. That book has now sold more than five million copies, but Nigel continues to insist that its popularity is a fluke. When I wrote my second book, The Vein of Gold, Nigel told me it was boring. I finished the book anyway, and am frequently told by readers that the book was “a great adventure” for them. My third book found Nigel telling me my ideas were hackneyed and my prose style lumpish. I didn’t think it was true, but it scared me. That became the pattern: Nigel would tell me something terrifying about each new book and I would become frightened that Nigel was right. Finishing the books became an uphill task. Several years ago, I wrote a book which provoked Nigel into fury. Every day when I worked on the project, Nigel would weigh in with vicious remarks. “This book is terrible, no good at all, useless,” Nigel’s comments ran. … I kept on writing, and Nigel kept on disparaging my work.
Cameron describes the process of dealing with Nigel as a combination of (1) developing strategies that allow her to keep writing and (2) a process of shrinking – In my experience, the critic can’t be entirely eliminated, but it can be miniaturized. Miniaturized, the critic seems more like a cartoon character and less like a frightening ogre. Nigel and his like can be shrunk. A mere nuisance instead of a monster, our inner critic can be defeated.
Personifying your inner critic is a playful strategy. It is designed to take the sting out of the self-critical reading/writing which happens at the wrong time. It positions you in charge of what you do rather than being a victim to your own critiques. Maybe you fancy finding a name and persona for your inner critic too.
Of course, neither of these strategies might work for you. But then again they just might. Or some combination of these and the other tools that Cameron suggests in her many best-selling writing books – Morning Paper, setting a low bar, Date Night with yourself, talking to the book and more. You’ll just have to read Cameron’s books to see what these strategies are – I’m sure they are in your university or public library.
Julia Cameron (2022) Write for life. A toolkit for writers. London: Souvenir Books pp 58-59.
