377 days - Blog #94, my inner critic

A few days ago a friend posted in a comment that her son had been given an assignment to draw his inner critic.  Then the teacher took the illustration and locked it up where it couldn’t interfere with the writing assignment.

I spent most of last night reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  He spends almost half the book talking about resistance.  The inner critic is part of resistance.  I’ll quote a few sentences to give you an idea of this thesis.  “Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.  It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease…To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit.  It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.”

That’s some pretty grand thinking.  Lots to mull over.  A big idea around which to wrap my thoughts as I enter a month of frenzy.

A month when I want to toss that inner critic aside and just start doing some things out of which I have been talking myself for years.

So, it got me thinking.  What does that inner critic look like?  Is it a demon as some of Pressfield’s pages suggests?  Is it a cruel monster?  Ugly?  Tyrannical?  Black and smothering?

I wonder how I would draw it.  But I don’t draw.  I draw an image with words.  As I try to figure out the adjectives to describe it, I realize the inner critic is not ugly or monstrous.  It is much more subversive.  Insidious.  It is disguised as a friend.  

As a glass of wine I need to unwind from the distractions of the day.

As something I need to look up so I can be more authentic in my scene.

As the idea that it will be better to start tomorrow.  And then tomorrow’s tomorrow.  And so forth.

As the Netflix show I suddenly have to watch.

As the pillow that wants to claim my sleep too long before I can start my day with a plan.

How is that critical?  Isn’t that more like procrastination?  Procrastination that masks fear.  Fear that is a result of a thought what I am going to write is going to be garbage anyway, so why bother starting?

Starting Saturday, I have to write 1700ish words a day.  Plus this blog.  So don’t be surprised if a lot of these entries will have something to do with those 1700 words.

But those words won’t be eaten by the inner critic and her subversive fear.  I’m not going to let her have power over me.