How to tame your inner-critic?

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Funchal99
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How to tame your inner-critic?

#1 Post by Funchal99 »

So, I've been struggling a lot with writing recently. It's not particularly because of lack of ideas, but because I just can't shake the feeling I'm doing it all wrong.
I mean, I probably am since I'm not an english native speaker, but I feel like I'm so paranoid on word choice, pacing, trying to sound natural, differing my characters "voices", etc...that I simply can't find any "flow" so to speak when I actually sit down to write. Writing has become sort of painful to me, and I keep finding myself having headaches after I finish a page's worth of words.

Does anyone here know what it's like and have tips on how to deal with it? Even if nobody has actual tips, I'd guess the discussion itself is pertinent anyways.

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#2 Post by Caveat Lector »

Yep. In some cases, though, your inner-critic can actually be your best friend. It can help you spot where to fix your story, and can be a great "writer's intuition" (a more positive term for it). However, I also think it's best to temporarily silence the inner critic until after the first draft is done, and just finish it. Once you're done with the first draft, then your inner critic can come in handy in spotting errors. But don't edit errors as you go along, though, or you'll never get it done!
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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#3 Post by Funchal99 »

Perhaps that's the problem, or part of it anyway. I keep coming back and editing stuff. I'm just always trying to find the hiccup before it even happens.

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#4 Post by Shaples »

I think the best and most important thing to do is give yourself permission to write a first draft that sucks. Striving for perfection on every sentence you write is an awful trap to fall into. If you spend hours agonizing over a single page (or paragraph, or even word or sentence), you're never going to be able to get the story written. Even if you eventually end up with a hundred pages of perfect sentences, chances are there's going to be some big picture stuff that isn't working - stuff you can only see once you've gone from start to finish - and all that work will be for nothing, because you have to rewrite a lot of those great sentences anyway.

When you read someone else's writing, it can seem so effortless - like their words flowed directly from their mind onto the page perfect and polished and amazing. But this is pretty much NEVER true. Even the best writers in the world have to start with their crappy first drafts, and EVERY first draft is crappy, at least a little. Going from blank page to v1.0 isn't about making your story perfect - heck, it isn't even about making something anyone else will ever read. It's about pouring that idea out of your head and onto a piece of paper. Your first draft is like raw ore - it's probably ugly, but you have to have it before you can start refining it and making it into something beautiful.

I guess my advice is, give yourself permission to suck. If you're obsessing over a word or a sentence, just move on to the next one - it will still be there when you come back, and you'll probably have a better idea of how to fix it later. If your inner editor is really harassing you, you probably shouldn't re-read anything you've written until it feels done. Like Lector said, that intuition can be great for editing draft v1.1, but it will only bog you down on a first draft.

Also, when you're feeling down on yourself, it's going to feel like every word you write is the worst word that anyone has ever written. If you ignore that feeling and push through, though, when you go back and read what you've written, it's almost always WAY better than you remember it being. So, pick an idea you're excited about and just start writing - don't hesitate and don't look back. Your word choice or pacing or voice or whatever might not be perfect, but that's okay - at least you'll have something on the page to work with.

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#5 Post by anon2045 »

This is one of my biggest problems as well. But for me, it's not solely about inner criticisms or doubt, but because I have a habit on not writing linearly.

I discover my characters and plot line by line and when I go back to edit, I'm more likely to add to my word count then delete. I keep making small refinements along the way, like adding a description or switching the order of a few paragraphs. I can't write in any other way because only by doing this, can the whole picture come together. Not to mention, that sometimes the ideas come to me in the wrong order, sometimes I realize that I've forgotten about a character or that I forgot where they were positioned in the scene. Re-reading, adjusting, and then writing--the focus isn't line by line editing or grammar checks, but for structure and consistency. This way of writing is a much more time-consuming and draining process than just letting go and writing, like other people do. It will be slow-going and by the time I'm done I'll feel exhausted, but it doesn't feel as painful as the other type of editing.

The other type of editing is rooted in the fear of failure. Perhaps you're writing to impress someone else. Or perhaps you're writing for yourself, but you can't help but compare your writing to other people. Each line you write feels like rubbish. Because you want it to be better. You're frustrated because you see a gap between what you want to create and what you're actually creating. There is an inner critic in your head that won't stop, that makes you wonder if you're just wasting your time. You begin to dislike your story and it isn't fun anymore, it becomes painful.

Getting rid of self-doubt can be very hard. For many people, making that zero draft ("don't edit, just write") works. Try it a few times, see if it works for you. It may not work the first time.

One strategy you can do is to dim your screen to black, while it's still on (and making sure the cursor is blinking inside the document, so that the program is actually capturing what you write) and letting go and typing that zero draft. You can't see what you write and can't reread and edit. So you have to keep going and going until you finish. Then once done, adjust your screen to normal.

If you're computer doesn't do this (like mine), change your font color to white (to match the white background of your document) and type. Type that zero draft. When done, change your font color back to normal.

Another strategy is to time yourself and write without stopping until it goes off. Start off with short writing bursts at first like 5-10 minutes and then climb your way up to 30 to 45 minute runs.

There's an application called "Write or Die". It's a writing app in which you insert the word count you want to reach and how much time you have. It begins to penalize you in rather eccentric ways when you pause too long. Do your google fu to find it and give it a spin.

Another strategy (especially if you're one of those granular type of self-editors that is obsessed with correcting everything, including grammar and spelling) is to turn off spell-check. Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Notepad++ has this functionality. Google "How to turn off spellcheck in Word" and you'll find instructions on how to do this easily. This strategy I personally found helped me a lot. Those red squiggly lines always distracted me and were extremely hard to ignore. And I can always turn it back on when I'm finished and proof the draft then.

Another strategy is to make purposeful mistakes. I tend to drop the capitals when I'm intimidated by a big project. By doing this, I'm promising myself I will edit this with an eagle eye once I'm done with the draft. I'm anal-retentive enough of my grammar to double-check before sending it off to the world, but if you don't have the grammar OCD issue in the first place, then this might not be wise.

The last thing isn't really a strategy, but I found that it helped me a lot. And it's this: No one can write like you do. No one can write the same story you can (unless they're stealing your work, of course). Even when they have the same plot and similar characters, the result will always be different. There are many superhero movies and Cinderella retellings, and no matter how similar they are, at the same time, they are extremely different. Be confident in your own writing and your own story. Be confident in yourself, but at the same time always strive to improve. There's no such thing as a wasted effort. Even if you never use that story, the things you learned while writing it, will help you move forward in your next.

Some strategies above may work for you, some won't. Always think of writing advice as a guideline instead of law. Not every strategy works for everyone.

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#6 Post by Lexer »

I use this to tame my inner critic

Image

Seriously though, finding someone you trust to take a look at your stuff and give honest comments is one of the best ways. Of course you have to listen to him or her and not second guess so much.

And of course, sharing drinks makes for a much more fun time. Vsego khoroshego!

(Don't drink if you're a minor.)

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#7 Post by czxcjx »

It just depends on what you aim for with your art. Throughout the history of creation there have been all sorts of types. You have the brilliant wild and prolific Shakespeare. You have the bustling huge visionary playful James Joyce. You have the contemporary master David Foster Wallace who wrote his 1000+ page Infinite Jest in just three years. And then you have Flaubert.

Flaubert's contemporaries, like Zola and Balzac, were known for huge 20 book cycles. Whereas if you compare his output and their output he had around a quarter of their output in terms of novels. In exchange for that he has been called the 'martyr of style'. His most famous Madame Bovary took 5 years to make and he wrote 4500 unpublished draft pages in the process of making it. He has been described as a 'perfect' writer by all sorts of people from Proust to Henry James to Nabokov, the same way Kubrick is described as a 'perfect' director. He is the extreme example of going all the way with his inner critic and sometimes this obsession edged on madness; he frequently wrote to his friends about the 'torments of style' and all his letters were collected and published. His book of letters is a recorded testament of a man who lived entirely for perfection of his art, and agonized about it endlessly. He would spend days over a line or even a phrase.

"The more I progress, the more difficulty I have in writing the simplest things, and the more emptiness I see in those I had judged the best"
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/15 ... xcerpt.pdf

We don't all have to be Flaubert but, like Hemmingway who rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times, he exists as living proof of the cost of being a perfectionist, and its rewards.
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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#8 Post by pinkmouse »

The technique that I find helps me if my inner editor gets too intrusive was suggested by Dorothea Brande in her book on writing.

1. Get up 30 minutes earlier than usual.
2. Do not have the radio on, or any other voices audible. Most importantly you MAY NOT speak to anyone before or during the exercise.
3. You're allowed to go to the loo, but otherwise AT ONCE begin to write.
4. Write continuously, write anything, write rubbish, but write without pausing for 20 minutes.


Notes:

Sorry about all the caps, but it's to emphasize that those aspects are non-negotiable. If you try to fudge them then the exercise will not help.

1 - why get up 30 minutes earlier, but write for only 20 minutes? I find it removes the "time nag." I *have* to follow my morning schedule, eat my breakfast, catch the train etc or I'll be late for work. Having that ten minutes of slack means I'm able to permit myself to take my eye off the clock.

2 - We use a very specific part of our brain for audio processing, and it's this part of the brain which is also closely linked to the logical construction of sentences -- your internal "editor." If you speak, or listen to words, you'll switch it on.

3 - Ideally you want to start writing while still in that dozy, half-awake state. Your dreaming, story-constructing mind will still be working and so you keep it running. (Watch out for excuse-making at this stage: the notion that you *must* go make a coffee, or *must* get dressed. These are all ego-defence devices to allow you to wriggle out of a situation where you're worried you might fail. At one point I used to put a bottle of cold coffee next to my pc, and say to myself "if you really need coffee, drink that.")

4 - this is the hardest part. By never pausing, you are shutting out your internal editor; literally not letting it get a word in edgewise! What you write during these sessions doesn't have to make sense, doesn't have to be punctuated, paragraphed or captitalized properly (or at all). You can write "er, er, red robin bobbin doodah howdah oh yeah that's right she'd on the elephant isn't she er, sunshine going to the river smelling" (and so on) just so long as you don't stop.

Incidentally, I find it's worth keeping the early morning exercises. I find they often have good story ideas in them that seem to spring out of nowhere. If I remember rightly, Brande recommended this as a story-generating exercise, and I found it cured premature editing as a bonus.

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#9 Post by SundownKid »

Find someone else to critique/proofread your work. You sound like you don't know your writing is good or not. Well, if you have someone to clarify if it is good or not, you don't have to worry any more.

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Re: How to tame your inner-critic?

#10 Post by LinovaA »

Back when I was first really getting into writing, my inner critic was at it's worst. It is not like I dislike my inner critic, but after it would beat me down so many times I would just get depressed and put the work up on a shelf on indefinite hiatus. Eventually however, I decided that I was finally going to finish ONE thing; something that I had never done before.

I started, and ignored that urge to go back and look over what I wrote. May sound silly, but that is what I did. After I finished it, I went on and made a second chapter, and then a third, followed by a fourth. Without looking back on what I already had typed I had managed to write 20k words without going back and scrapping the whole thing. Of course, I had already had an outline lined up, so that made typing it all out much easier.

So really, I believe the key to turning off your inner critic is just to not look back on what you have written until you are all done. It is really easy to get yourself into a loop and rewrite a section of a work over and over again and not ever be satisfied by anything you have written. If you can push past that feeling of wanting to go back and go over it and do it right, you can push through all the way to the end of the first draft.

The end of the first draft... is where you want that inner critic to come out and attack your work. Give him free reign on the thing and then you can get to editing it and making it right. The first draft is all about getting it down. It is your raw creative goodness. However, that is why we have our inner critic... to take that rawness... and refine it into something with much more shape. Doesn't matter if that first draft is filled with plot holes and the like, because it will all begin to take shape once the critic in you gets to it.

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