How I Harnessed the Wisdom of My Inner Critic and Finally Became an Author

For too long, fear and blame stopped me from writing. The decades ticked by without me completing a book—something I’d wanted to do my whole life. I was immobilized by fear of not being good enough. I blamed my father for expecting perfection and critical junior high English teachers who stole the fun I had as a child when I felt free to be seen and heard.

I blamed writer’s block and my inner critic. I blamed myself for being lazy and undisciplined. And the more blame I spread around, the less I wrote, until even my daily journal entries became little more than a sporadic two or three lines a few times a year.

The only message I didn’t tell myself is the one that now seems the truest: I had to find the story I was compelled to write, give myself permission to write it, and learn to deal with my inner critic. Once I did, the story I was impelled to write became The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life (She Writes Press, 2016)

Throughout the years I wrote The Space Between, my critic reared her unpleasant and challenging self each time I faced a blank page or computer screen hoping to create the next chapter. She didn’t care that I’d done a reasonable, or dare I say good, job on the last chapter. Her story was always the same: You suck! Sure you just wrote a chapter, but it was a fluke and you’ll never be able to write another one. And even if you do, it will be awful.

Maybe I’m a slow learner or perhaps the critic is clever, because it took a few years of listening to her before I recognized that she always said versions of the same thing. Fighting her or telling her to go away only added to her strength and power. I decided I had to show her respect, but I was free not to pay attention to her.  I realized the inner critic is part of me and trying to kill her only strengthens her because she doesn’t want to die. Judging her empowers her by adding to her judgments.

I used to believe that beautiful prose glided down onto the page of good writers as easily as water falls from the sky on a rainy day. That was before I began writing a book.  I learned then that it doesn’t (except in rare instances) and I had to be willing to have a bad first draft.

When I’d finish the first draft of a chapter, my inner critic would tell me it was terrible—flat, boring, and poorly written. Instead of fighting her, I began to work with her by rephrasing the critical self-talk and replacing her negative ideas with ones that empowered and enhanced the flow of words. The decision to include my critic by asking her to help me instead of continuing my efforts to muzzle her, allowed me to harness her strengths. I embraced her ability to read with discernment, which helped me recognize and cut out any unnecessary sentences and paragraphs that didn’t move the story along.

Although I never got over bad first drafts, I learned to view them differently. I gave myself permission to have what Ernest Hemingway and Anne Lamott would call a “shitty” first draft. I reframed my self-talk. Instead of telling myself I was a terrible writer, I told myself that my first draft was like the pencil sketch an artist might make on a canvas before adding the multitude of layers which turn the chicken scratches into a colorful vibrant painting with its own unique movement and story to tell.

I was never able to entirely silence the critic or change her. I had to change myself. I stopped trying to squelch her. I changed my attitude, language, and tone. Instead of raging against her mental chatter, I’d chuckle as I gently spoke, “Oh you always say that. You’re really smart and I could use your intuition and insight, so can we please work together and get this next chapter written?”

It worked. Eventually, my internal critic became my ally and together we were able to use our combined wisdom to edit with a keen eye as to what worked and didn’t work. This enabled me to move on to the next chapter until I wrote the final page.

And my lifelong dream of being an author became true when The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life was published.

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Virginia A. Simpson, Ph.D., FT is a Bereavement Care Specialist and Executive Counseling Director for hundreds of funeral homes throughout the United States and Canada. She is the Founder of The Mourning Star Center for grieving children and their families, which she ran from 1995 to 2005, and author of the memoir The Space Between (She Writes Press, April 2016) about her journey caring for her ailing mother. Virginia has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. She holds a Fellowship in Thanatology from the Association for Death Education & Counseling (ADEC) and has been honored for her work by the cities of Indian Wells, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Rancho Mirages. She lives in El Dorado Hills, California with her husband Bob and her Golden Retriever Shelby.

www.virginiaasimpson.com

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ABOUT THE SPACE BETWEEN

As a Bereavement Care Specialist, Dr. Virginia Simpson has devoted her career to counseling individuals and families grappling with illness, death, and grieving.  But when her own mother, Ruth, is diagnosed in 1999 with a life-threatening condition, Virginia arranges for Ruth to move in with her—and is caught off guard by the storm of emotions she experiences when she is forced to inhabit the role of caregiver.

            In The Space Between, Simpson takes readers along for the journey as she struggles to bridge the invisible, often prickly space that sits between so many mothers and daughters and to give voice to the challenges, emotions, and thoughts many caregivers experience but are too ashamed to admit.

            Described as “A beautiful, searingly honest book,” The Space Between “offers a testament to love’s enduring and transformative power throughout our lives and in our closest family ties.”

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips