Two-Fifty Tuesday: What’s in a Name?

Take Control of Your Inner Critic

“You’re a terrible writer!”

“Who do you think you are??”

“What kind of crap sentence is that??”

“You call that character development??”

Recognize this voice? Of course you do. You’re a writer. Each of us has a persistent, annoying (sometimes debilitating) inner critic. The voice that says you’re not good enough. That you’ll never be good enough. 

I honestly believe the inner critic has a purpose beyond cruelty. I see it as a gremlin, tasked with protecting us from harm—in this case, crushing rejection. If you just tighten that sentence, if you just flesh out that character, then your story will be perfect and will never get rejected and you’ll never get hurt. Unrealistic? Absolutely. Painful? Yep. Effective? Definitely.  

So I challenge you to a mind game. 

What if we rename him? Instead of “Inner Critic”, what if we call him “Outer Critic”? What if we rewire our brain to think of him as an outsider? And would we really stand to hear that kind of negativity from someone else? Self-preservation would dictate we’d run far and fast. 

So let’s think of “Outer Critic” as someone outside of us. Someone we can choose to stay away from. Then maybe he’ll be much easier to ignore. 🙂