Writtenwyrdd : The Inner Critic as Muse

[Reposted from 10/7/06]
Writers, like many other artists, frequently fall into the trap of listening to their inner critics and imploding in a blast of self doubt. Blame our culture, blame human nature, blame genetics, blame childhood trauma. The fact remains that the vast majority of those who pick up a pen to write fail to complete the mission, even though they are certainly capable of doing so.

And, sadly, whether the book would have become the next New York Times best seller will remain unknown, because the author couldn't get past an inner stumbling block. You might call this fear of success. Or perhaps this tendency is better described as fear of movement, an even more insidious version of phobia, because it's one we are conditioned to ignore, like the proverbial elephant in the room.

What keeps us from succeeding as writers? From finishing, for that matter? I suppose that every writer needs to face their inner critic and slay her like a dragon, or harness that force and use it to our advantage.

The Fear.
Lillith Saint Crow describes the crippling fear of failure really well in her blog:

What if nobody likes it? What if it flops and the publishing
company decides I'm no longer worth spending time on? What if
everybody hates the series? What if there's a big hole in the
book that nobody told me about because they thought I knew?
What if this book is the last one I ever sell? What if?

Ah, the Scylla of insecurity and the Charybdis of self-hatred. I
wish I could lash myself to the mast and sail through
these rocks.

I think that's about the best description of it I've ever seen, even though her perspective is from the pre-publication jitters experience. I've got a technique that sometimes works for me when I get really frazzled. No, not anti-anxiety meds, although those aren't bad.

Here's where I direct you to Victor Frankl, the developer of logotherapy. He wrote the famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning," a seminal book in psychology. The basic premise is that a human being can cope with just about anything happening in his or her life if there is seen to be some inherent meaning. You can go nuts following existential thought (now there's an irony) but something I read in the above-mentioned book has stuck with me and become the most useful took in my mental toolbox.

The concept stems from a technique Frankl describes regarding how to resist temptation, e.g. avoid doing what is unhealthy. Basically, the technique is this:

Say I wish to lose weight. I'm at a restaurant. The waiter comes by with the dessert cart. I crave that luscious piece of german chocolate cake sitting there looking gooey and delicious. I know I shouldn't have the cake; nevertheless, against all rational thought, I really, really, want that cake! I want that cake so badly, in fact, that I at that moment don't give a rat's patoot what the consequences of eating it will be!

Instead of giving in, however, I do a simple excercise: I envision a future where I already ate that cake. I imagine what the feeling I'd have afterwards would be - remorse, self-disgust, etc. - and I just roll in those feelings like a dog in a dungheap. Get to know it. Feel it like it's real.

After I'm finished, I reconsider that slice of cake. My perspective about the importance of that cake has been altered. I can be more objective. I can resist. I can choose to resist because I've developed a profound mental separation from the problem: perspective. And this allows me the freedom to act consciously and deliberately.

Perspective is the key.
The inner blocks to being a successful writer vary, obviously, from one person to the next. But my general observation is that, for most of us, it goes beyond simple anxiety and becomes a complex. This gordian knot of mixed emotions ties in fear of success with fear of failure; fear of not measuring up to a personal artistic ideal with fear that you are, in truth, unable to see the elephant in the room: you don't know you suck. That's what makes the elephant so potentially horrible: that your failings are known to everyone but yourself. The complex is fear of looking ridiculous and secret shame that you think you are so wonderful. It is myriad reasons that grow from our personal histories, our environment and whatever childhood traumas got their claws into our creative processes.

Adding to that milieu of confusion is our Puritan-based culture. We were steeped in sin long ago and the faint remnants still color our social perceptions today. The myth of the American Dream compels us to succeed; because if you cannot succeed you are, by definition, a failure. But, according to the American Dream, you will always succeed if you try hard enough, are smart enough, are good enough. Implication: Sinners lose. You are a failure because you sinned. You are a sinner because you failed.

Now there's a paradigm where you cannot ever win unless you, well, win. It keeps the upper eschelons happy with their lot and the rest of us supporting them so we can aim for the thrones ourselves.

Hmmm, off topic? Not really. Whatever is in the world around us in also in our heads and hearts. As above, so below. What we perceive in the world is a reflection of who we are inside. Change that and we can change our world. Or at least manage to get a story written.

There are so many complicated emotional hooks that pull the budding artist in many directions, it is a small miracle that anyone accomplishes anything.

Which is where Frankl's technique comes in handy. You use it to divest yourself of the irrelevant fears, worries and etc. that keep you from staying in that lovely, creative, right-brained place of artistic wonder. You use it to derail the freight train of I know I can't, I know I can't while you ankle off down the Road Less Travelled with your trusty laptop.

And you even use the technique to use your fears to generate ideas.
It's pretty simple. Instead of resisting the problem, I do a Vulcan mind-meld with it. I welcome that panic/worry/anxiety and let it make itself at home in my head. I invite it to spread out, rest its feet on the coffee table and nag me about my failings as a writer and artist. I let it tell me how no one loves me, everybody hates me and I'll always be a failure.

I take those fears and worries, and consider that worry as if the rejection had already come to pass. As if the fear of failure had already occurred. And I allow myself to wallow in it for a bit.

But then I move on to the real-world consequences. And I play them up. If I worry that no one likes my writing, the focus becomes not that they don't like my work, but the consequences. I imagine being unable to pay the bills and I imagine being evicted and living in a soggy box in Golden Gate Park, drenched in fog and misery and looking to avoid the needles in the bushes when I scramble there to both hide from the muggers and the police.

I imagine that I am assaulted while living on the streets, that I retaliate and end up in some horrible over-the-top situation (such as running from the Russian mob) because, say, I accidentally-on-purpose killed the would-be rapist. I imagine being chased down a dead-end alley, no hope of escape but trying hard, and I begin to wonder... What happens now? It's out of the realm of the original situation. Then I envision the orange outline of a door parting the shadows, and a hand that slaps across my mouth and drags me inside before I can scream...

Oooh, wait - this is a cool scene for a story! Who is that character I am skull-peeping into? It's not me, that's for certain! And what the heck is that doorway? The 5 Ws and a plethora of questions strike. Maybe this ties into something I am already working on, maybe it's something to remember for another day. I jot it down and get back to work.

I go from worry to an idea that way. Of course, I do have to make myself get back to the original project. And that's another project altogether.