10 Rounds with the Inner Critic, But Still Standing

February 4, 2009 · by Joanna Paterson · in

I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of my audacious writing goals for 2009 is to learn how to teach memoir writing.

The classes start in about 10 days time, and I’m delving into memoir books to read (for ideas, method and approach) and some suggestions and techniques to get me on my way.

Of course to teach memoir writing you also need to have some experience of writing it.  So that’s where we’re asked to start: writing some work of my own.

And that’s where I got stuck at the weekend.  Totally and utterly stuck.

My inner critic was running rampant.  Having a field day.  This is the kind of stuff he was chucking at me (for yes, he is a he):

  • You don’t know how to tell a story
  • You can’t write anything interesting enough about your life that anyone would ever want to read
  • You won’t be able to teach if you can’t write
  • You’ll never be able to complete the course if you can’t even piece a paragraph together
  • You haven’t got anything interesting to say anyway
  • Your life doesn’t amount to much does it?
  • Look at what a mess you’ve made of things.  Why would you want to rake over all that?
  • Best stick to what you know.  Whatever made you think you could write anything else?
  • You’ll need to shape up if this how you start [and yes, I haven't even started yet].  Doesn’t look like you’ve got the stamina for this.
  • Looks like this is the sort of the thing that other people would be good at – those who can spin good stories.  People who’ve lived interesting lives.  Not people like you.  Nice idea, but no, not for you.

Yes.  Ouch.

Some of them were jabs I could defend myself against.  Some I could see coming.  Others were more subtle, insiduous, knowing exactly where to find my weak spots.  And then hitting them.

Boxers - Nyrkkeilijät by Matti Matila on Flickr

Some people say that the best way to get through a bout of stuckness is to start writing.  Just write.  You’ll write your way through it.  Just write.

This doesn’t seem to work for me.

When I feel as though concrete’s been poured into my veins – and set hard – I can barely raise my arms, never mind move my pen.

Okay I can write out all the gunk onto a page that I’ll shred.  And that does help to process it, to see it for the nonsense that it is.  And to start to pick your way round it.

But I can’t ‘write’.

So what I do when the inner critic threatens to get the better of me like this?

I break state.  Go off and do something different.

I worked in the garden.  Turning over the earth.  Digging up nettle roots.  Clearing the ground.

I watched a robin, waiting to see what morsels I’d leave him.  Listened to his song.  Thought how I enchanted I was by his singing – though he wasn’t doing it for me.

I went for a walk.  Breathing in the big sky, and the cold choppy sea.

Once my mood had lifted I spent some time on Twitter.  Chatting to people who know how to make me laugh, and sometimes cry, and sometimes get happily distracted chasing down recipes for snickerdoodles.

And then I asked myself the questions I’d ask someone I was working with.

Do you want the inner critic to get the final say?

No.

What would you say to someone else who claimed there was nothing interesting about their life?

Okay.  Point taken.

What’s your positive intention?  Because you know, that’s where the answer lies.

Right.

Well I don’t have a burning desire to write my own memoirs.  But I do want to learn how to teach others.  I do believe that other people will come up against just these blocks, these painful assaults, and will think – oh, I’d better stop, this isn’t for me.  I do want to learn how to find the words, the questions, the encouragement and the support to help them believe, to see, to recognise that they can.  That their stories are valid.  That their words count.

And so I know that I need to learn how to do this too, however hard it might seem.  However gruesome the prose.  However inadequate the stories.  However peculiar the life.

Which means finding the way in.  Working my way round the blocks, the criticisms, the problems I’ve thrown in my own way before I’ve even started.  Being willing to be tenacious, even when it’s the last thing I really want to do.

Finding the simplest, the easiest, the most basic place to start.

So, just tell me, quietly: what are your roots? Just tell me, where are you from?

And so I go back to the beginning.  Which is, after all, the place we all need to start.

Photo Credit: Boxers – Nyrkkeilijät by Matti Mattila on flickr

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