Boomerang

The words don’t change. I sit up all night watching the page, and not a single letter shifts. Still, the pleasure taken in my writing of one day returns the next day as snooty disdain. Not a mere, “I can do better,” but a “What the hell were you thinking?” I call it the Boomerang, one day’s careful shaping of language cast out toward the hopeful distance—only to spin right back and smack me in the head.

Delayed nay-saying is such a universal experience, it might be listed as a requirement of the craft. Tools for writing: Pen; Paper; Inner Critic. Why do we carry a demolition expert armed with the Red Ink of Doom aimed at our hearts?

Conversation among writers often turns to how to avoid its attack. Books offer advice and exercises on vanquishing the destructive voice. Is that a good idea? If we all have one, then perhaps the Inner Critic is meant to serve a purpose beyond making us miserable. Perhaps the misery lies in our expectations of someday making the voice happy. Or at least quiet.

Why do we carry a demolition expert armed with the Red Ink of Doom aimed at our hearts?

My Inner Critic is the multi-faceted bureaucracy of my education. Education as in “what I learned in school,” yes, but also the sum of everything I’ve learned in moving through life. The Ministry of Excellence is a branch of the Grammar Police. There is a Task-force monitoring All Things Ever Laughed at By Others. A DBE (Department of Bullies Endured) where the lines are long. A bicameral Congress of Teachers—those beloved and those despised. Administrations of Embarrassments. Offices of Failures. All of this is overseen by the Chief Executive of Insecurities. Their united commitment is to audit any chance I take. They’re established not by mandate of self-esteem but rather by the expectation of being graded.

 I learned to write for grades. I learned to write in fear of failing. Inner Critic: “If I’m not getting an A+, what’s the point?” Trying to get that A+ for the Inner Critic keeps me writing, keeps me learning. Inner Critic doesn’t want to protect me from failure. It’s the one who’s scared.

Its judgments are not all fear-based. New material I love, I’ve written with my heart. Love, however, is a feeling, not a critical assessment. Assessment is the job of thoughtful editing where feelings can get in the way. I want to love my work and simultaneously have it be perfectly edited. Neither is within my grasp.

Are the heart and head necessarily separate phases of writing? Is my head’s assessment accurate, that creating consists only of risky impulses? Is my heart right to presume that editing makes only for rules obeyed? How can that conflict be avoided when silencing the Inner Critic, the systems of my life-long education, has proved impossible?

I don’t have the answers. What I’ve learned in fifty years of writing: When the writer respects their process, that process respects the writer back. When the whole is appreciated, the heart and head will work together. Create with the heart. Edit with the head. Then vice versa. Bring rigor. Bring compassion. Bring awareness. Bring bandages. That Boomerang is always coming back.

Writing Exercise

Make a list of every unkind phrase your Inner Critic likes to use when “helping” you write. All of them. It should begin to look ridiculous. When finished, for each phrase you wrote, write next to it what you’d rather hear that would be helpful for real. This may be difficult, but come up with as many helpful phrases as cutting ones. Stick this list near your writing area. Use it however feels right to you. Bonus Points: Where and when does the Inner Critic become genuinely necessary?

Photo: Nick Fewings via Unsplash