A Three-Step Method for Neutralizing Your Inner Critic

What I'm about to share with you can be applied to any new endeavor, including starting a business, a diet, a workout routine, a novel, a painting, or jumping back into the dating pool.

Photo by Adli Wahid

I went into a recording studio twice last week to lay down audio tracks for one of my books, and nothing in life quite prepared me for how exhausting that is. When my daughter was little, I’d tell her to pick “a few” books for bedtime (of course, she’d come tottering in with about twenty) and considerable reading would ensue, but it’s not the same thing as knocking out 50-60 pages at a whack. I leave the studio feeling feeling as though I’ve been gut-punched, the sound of my own voice ringing in my ears.

You might be surprised to learn that I never re-read a book once it’s been published. After umpteenth rewrites, developmental edits, and copy edits, I’m done, as in done done. As in I never want to see it again. There are professionally voice-acted audiobooks of novels I’ve written that I never listened to. Some awful B-movies I acted in that I’ve never watched. Some magazines I sold articles to that I’ve never looked for.

I used to tell myself this weird tendency was the result of not caring. But this week, I realized that isn’t true. The reason I don’t revisit my written work is because I can’t help but obsess over how I might have done better, which sentences were in need of a brisk editing, which similes were a shade too shopworn. It’s physically painful for me to know there is work out there—work with my name on it—that might have been improved had I’d written it today.

The only problem is I am the least qualified person to judge my work.

And when it comes to your work, you’re not qualified to judge it either.

Andy Warhol once said, “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

And I try. I really try. But there’s this unrepentant whore of a perfectionist that sits, gargoyle-like, on my shoulder. Perhaps you know her. With a gleam in her eye, she points out every flaw in my prose, my character, the way I look, the things I say, who I am as a person, whether I’ll ever make it as a full-time writer of fiction.

I earn my living by my pen, but not exclusively from fiction. That is the holy grail all novelists seek. But the unpalatable truth is, although few will admit it, no matter how dedicated, disciplined, persistent, professional and talented you are, you may never get there.

Photo by Mor Shani

Strangely, my inner perfectionist is all ego. So is yours. Not the ego of megalomania, but the pedestrian, garden-variety ego of an artist who forgets that the point of doing something isn’t to “be the best,” but to immerse herself in the process of creation. Admittedly, this gets stickier as we go pro and actually require the approval of gatekeepers, but even then, if we can set that need aside and truly create from a place of beauty, authenticity, and personal truth, we stand a chance. Not just as artists, but as human beings.

I know this, but I forget it. I forgot it a few weeks ago when I picked up a sketch pad and pencils, remembered artists I personally knew who were a thousand times more talented than I am, and then sheepishly put them back again. I forget it when I don’t take the mic at karaoke night because I don’t sound like Dinah Washington. I forget that the point is not to compare or compete, but enjoy.

Creating is supposed to be what it was when we were preschool-age children, happily ensconced in a playroom with rolls of butcher paper and boxes of waxy-smelling crayons. With our tiny hands, we recreated the world we saw around us, a world where stick-figure women wore triangle skirts, a corner sun emitted squiggly yellow rays, and curlicue smoke spiraled out of rectangle chimneys. We were proud of our creations until the age of nine or so, when our fear of what others might say about our work and our dread of being compared and found wanting, forced many of us to stop drawing/dancing/writing/etc. … and to ridicule those that did.

In adulthood, the inner critic only gets louder. It throws up a thousand roadblocks, paralyzing us, shaming us into not even starting. After all, there’s laundry to do, a house to clean, dinner to cook. Who do you think you are, taking time away from your family and your responsibilities as an adult to “play around” with your silly novel or your canvas?

Photo by Matthew Lejune

Fear is the killer, of course, our insatiable need for approval and, perhaps more insidiously, our horror of disapproval. But where does fear come from? It’s not an immediate danger that’s in the room with us, like a bear or a boa constrictor. We can’t see it. Yet it often leaves us crippled.

That’s because fear is nothing more than a construct of the mind. A figment. This thing we believe is so real doesn’t actually exist. We think there’s something to be afraid of, but that’s as great an illusion as the inherent value of money.

We’re afraid of “failing.” We’re afraid of not measuring up to people’s standards, including our own. We’re afraid of receiving the same kind of scorn and ridicule we heap on others. We’re afraid of being laughed at.

Andy Warhol: “Sometimes, people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, so what. That is one of my favorite things to say. So what.”

And I’m here to tell you, most emphatically: So what?

So what if you suck? So what if everyone thinks you’re a talentless hack, delusional, a clown? Who even gets to decide these things? Flawed, biased humans, book reviewers, dance aficionados—people who may very well be, taken on the aggregate, a bunch of bitter wannabes.

Are they creating? No.

Are you creating? I sure hope so.

Are these detractors (whose opinions you fear) people you actually like and respect? We’re so busy tap dancing, we forget to ask ourselves whether we approve of the disapprovers.

What if you just didn’t care? What if the real art was you triumphing over the forces arrayed against you—not just in your mind, but the world? You triumph every time you pick up your paintbrush, sit down at your potter’s wheel, open up a Word document, lace up your toe shoes. You triumph every time you hear the word no but persist anyway. Art, creation, these are acts of defiance—or can be. You can either let the world crush you into submission or you can extend a stiff middle finger and say, not today, Satan.

I aspire to so what. I want so what like I want my next breath. You should, too.

Fortunately, I’ve found a way to … not silence my inner critic, necessarily, but make friends with it. Let’s see if this works for you, too.

1. You must become a forensic detective. Your inner critic wears many disguises, all meant to dazzle and confuse you. She’ll tell you to work on your book later or when you’re feeling “more inspired.” She’ll bury you in mountains of research, which feels as though you’re working, only you’re not. She’ll give you some very defensible reasons why you can’t write at this moment.

   These are smokescreens.

   You may not want to write (I don’t blame you—it’s hard, often unrewarding, and most writers don’t want to write as much as they want to have written) but if art were comfortable, everybody would be doing it. You need to get very good at recognizing your own b.s., because acknowledging resistance and the inner critic is half the battle.

   Carve out an hour every day to do your art or build your business plan, etc. Make that hour inviolable. Maybe you sit there staring at a blinking cursor until a spot of blood appears on your forehead. Maybe this continues to happen (miserably) for days at a time. But if you sit there long enough summoning the Muse—I promise you this is true—eventually the Muse appears. She may be drunk, but she’ll show up. She has to.

2. You need to make friends with your resistance/inner critic. Every time I flip open my laptop and click on my work-in-process, I can hear my inner critic sharpening her blades. She whistles as she works, warming to the task of telling me how every single word I write is the quintessence of suckage. So, I talk to her. Not sarcastically, but lovingly. I realized long ago that my fear is a child, a lost, frightened child, who knows no better than to set fire to the house. I ask her how she’s feeling today. I listen very carefully to what she tells me. I ask her what she’d like to do while I work. The agreement is always this: she can do whatever she wants for the next two hours, but she has to do it quietly.

   Sometimes, that’s not possible. Sometimes, my inner critic is unruly and out of control. Then, I open up a new document, and I let her tell me all the things she thinks—that I’m a horrible bitch, a stupid delusional cow, a joke, a talentless buffoon. We get to laughing, the two of us. But once we’ve brought the imagined future to its most ridiculous conclusion, she usually settles down, and I get to work.

   You can’t ignore the inner critic. You can’t pretend she’s not there. Many writers, painters, actors try, which is why drug and alcohol abuse in rampant in the arts. Far better to be friends with her. I often imagine giving her a hug. Understanding how afraid and lonely she is, I find it easy to forgive her. But I’m the adult in the room. And the adult doesn’t make excuses for why she can’t do something; she just rolls up her sleeves and does it.

3. Give yourself permission to fail. Despite appearances, it is not easy for me to write. In my business, we call it BIC, Butt In Chair, and hand to God, it’s the hardest part of writing. Second hardest? Marshaling my focus and attention. Third? Organizing my thoughts. Fourth? Mangling the tongue of Shakespeare.

   I can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to compel me to write. I compel inspiration by refusing to go away until that bitch shows up for work. If that means typing the F-word in block letters until it fills the page, so be it. If that means writing something truly awful and cleaning it up later, so be it. If that means writing something truly awful, throwing it away, screaming, and tearing my hair out, and then writing something better, so be it. All that matters is that I do the thing I think I cannot do, no matter how much I don’t feel like doing it.

   Push long enough, and eventually, you will develop the discipline necessary to succeed. Such a quaint, old-fashioned concept, discipline. But without it, you will always feel like an imposter. Without it, you will rarely reach your full potential.

Photo by Steve Johnson

To “go pro,” regardless of what you’re going pro in—losing weight, learning how to play the piano, starting a workout routine—you have to first exorcise the inner demons insisting you suck and can’t accomplish anything.

That was how I exorcise mine.

Not by ignoring them or pretending the demons aren’t there. But by loving them. They are my demons, and as they gather for their daily seminar in my head, I can’t help but think how bad my writing would be without them constantly goading me to do better.

But in the end, resistance is futile. Even theirs.

Do you have an inner critic problem? If so, how do you deal with it? I’d love to hear your thoughts and solutions in the comments section below.