Coping with Your Inner Critic

If you've been reading our recent blog posts, you've had glimpses of how we TeachingAuthors are spending our summer, from researching to reading to teaching.

This week, I'm attending the Catholic Writers Guild Convention in Schaumburg, Illinois, where
on Wednesday I gave a presentation on "Coping with Your Inner Critic." Much of my talk was based on the book Wrestling with Your Angels: A Spiritual Journey to Great Writing (Adams Media) by Janet O. Hagberg. Unfortunately, the book is out-of-print, but you can still find used copies online.

Hagberg says,

“We all have strong inner critics standing on one shoulder, reminding us of our failures, telling us to stop before we embarrass ourselves . . . .”

The critic’s fundamental goal is to destroy our confidence. But Hagberg also reassures us that:

“If on one shoulder we have the critic, on the other we have an angel . . .  providing answers to the critic.” 

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Hagberg encourages us to get to know and befriend our critic. The critic tends to be sharp-tongued, but if we set boundaries and give the critic specific assignments, we can get it to keep quiet long enough for us to get some work done. As Hagberg says:

“The critic loves to be needed, and the grooming, editing, and polishing aspects of writing lend themselves to the critic’s skills. . . . Critics are also great at sorting out how to use feedback. . . . "

I promised the conference attendees that I'd share some additional resources on dealing with the critic in today's blog post. Here are several from our TeachingAuthors blog:

• a post I wrote several years ago on using deadlines to silence the inner critic
• April's great Wednesday Writing Workout on overcoming our writing fears in this post, which includes a terrific poem
• Mary Ann's post on when to listen to the inner critic
• Jeanne Marie's post on how she uses an outline to quiet her critic 
• JoAnn's post on how she outsmarts her critic by getting up early

The following articles may also be of interest:

• Ryan Urie's piece on Write to Done on "How Fear Helps You Be a Better Writer"
• Suzannah Windsor Freeman's article on Write It Sideways, "15 Common Writing Fears You Need To Face"
• Sage Cohen's post at Writer's Digest on "10 Ways to Harness Fear and Fuel Your Writing"

I'll still be at the conference when this post goes live. But when I get back, I'd love to know how you, our TeachingAuthors readers, cope with your inner critic. Please share in the comments below.

Happy writing,

Carmela