Vanquishing the Killer Critic
By Barbara O'Neal | October 25, 2017 |
Who is your inner critic? Not the thoughtful one, the editor who urges you to work harder, to reconsider that word choice. The other one, the nasty one who makes you miserable, and keeps you from doing your best work, or sometimes keeps you from writing at all.
I’ve been taking classes online at Sketchbook Skool. One of the recent workshop instructors was Marloes DeVries, who is a whimsical, thoughtful cartoonist. She asked us to draw a cartoon (or even a stick figure) that would represent the voice of our inner critic, and then write around it all the mean things it says.
I knew immediately who’d I’d draw, the awful art teacher I had at 15, whose criticism and general hatred of everything me caused such a wound that I gave up the art I’d been practicing practically since birth and didn’t pick it up again until three years ago. I can’t remember his name. But I was able to call up his face easily for the exercise.
As I’ve been teaching creativity for a couple of decades, I could see how this might be freeing, and couldn’t wait to try it. One morning, I sat in my art corner by the window with bright, clear light, and drew him, exaggeratedly. Meanly. It gave me great pleasure, I have to tell you.
Then I got to the writing down the mean things he said part, and found myself weeping giant, powerful tears. Over something that happened more than thirty years ago! 30 years! I was suddenly so furious that I slashed out those comments with verve.
How did I let that voice get so far into my head that I didn’t do something I loved madly for decades??
Because the wound was deep. Because creative people are very sensitive beings. Because it’s hard to have confidence in doing something that the world considers the realm of geniuses and fools.
Who do you think you are?
Many of us carry around wounds of this sort about writing or creativity or the desire to live a different life from those around us. It might not be something dramatic, as it was with this art teacher. It might be as thin as a cutting comment from a relative who thinks poorly of the “creative class”, those people arrogant enough to think they can earn a living by making things up or creating cool apps or television programs or making sculptures.
Must be nice.
The #metoo hashtag the past week has raised awareness of the impact of harassment in women’s lives. Women are also fed an avalanche of messages about their creativity and the acceptable ways we can write or paint or sing—there are very rigid rules about what is “good” art and what is “foolish” or “lightweight” or “unimportant” are. The male defined literary establishment has told us for eons that stories about domestic life and relationships are not important. Unless a man writes the story, of course.
This is sentimental crap. Girls can’t be real artists.
You don’t need the critic who is only there to tear you down, remind you of all the reasons you don’t deserve to write, all the reasons you are an imposter. A thoughtful writer develops a barometer of where her voice is over time, when a sentence is weak, or a storyline needs more work, but that’s not the evil critic I’m referring to. I’m talking about the nasty voice, the one that undercuts you at strange junctures—like maybe especially when you’re about to do something big, or cross a threshold, or make a discovering in your work.
Here’s the way to tell the difference: the healthy voice offers suggestions in a thoughtful tone, or a straightforward one. The killer critic sneers or slams. The healthy critic says, “Hmm. Do you think that might be a bit weak? Can you make it stronger?” The killer critic says, “You’re never going to learn to do this right. Why are you even bothering? You have no talent.”
It can take time to distinguish between the two, and many of us carry around a mean voice for many years or decades without vanquishing them. But one way to know the difference between thoughtful and evil is to listen to what the voices say.
Take a few minutes to ask yourself if there is an evil critic who needs to be silenced. Is there more than one?
Not everyone wants to draw a cartoon (though I encourage you to draw a figure of some kind to represent that critic–you might be amazed) but we are all writers here—you can certainly scrawl out all the killer phrases of your critic on a big piece of paper, writing down all the cruel judgments it makes.
If you can identify where that particular judgment came from, acknowledge it. For a relative who meant well—my mother, for example, who wanted me to write literary fiction, so urged me not to write romance as a sixteen-year-old (“don’t prostitute your talent that way”), say thank you and scratch out the comment with a big sharpie that eradicates the comment. For the really evil ones like my Very Bad Art Teacher, first acknowledge the damage this person did, and then, for the sake of all the art you can unleash into the world, do some slash and burn. Maybe actually burn the piece of paper. Maybe cut it into little ribbons and drop them into the composter to turn into something nourishing.
I’ve done a great many creativity exercises in my time, but this one freed me in truly remarkable way. Maybe it will work for you, too. Check out the class, Imagining, at Sketchbook Skool, and be sure to check out Marloes’ work on Instagram and the web. This is one of her cartoons:
https://marloesdevries.tumblr.com/image/158066612157
Can you make out the difference between the good editor and the killer critic? Do you know the source of the worst of the mean ones? And finally, if you try the exercise, what do you think?
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Good Editor vs Killer Critic
A Good Editor might tell me that I need to start over with a new draft.
The Killer Critic tells me I need to start over with a new artistic outlet, something closer to my intellectual level like kicking rocks or using “air quotes” in as many conversations as possible.
Thank You for this post Barbara.
The Good Editor says you can do better.
The Killer Critic says you can’t.
Inner critic from parents (when I wanted to go to music school): If you haven’t played Carnegie Hall by the time you’re 13, you’ll never make it. (This critic has now morphed into: If you aren’t a NYT bestseller by now, you’ll never be, so why bother wasting your time? Especially when you haven’t even published a real book yet?)
Inner critic from ex (with respect to any creative work): Must be nice. If i had the time, I could [insert creative endeavor here] too. but I have to make a living at a real job.
I feel like I should be over it by now, but it’s tough when you’ve heard those attitudes for decades.
“Must be nice” gets to me every time. I’ve been hearing it for decades and it still irks me right to the bone. As if this was an easy choice, as if there are not sacrifices we all make to have this creative life. Grr.
Barbara–The terrible teacher you remember so vividly so many years later provided one of the wounds that made you a writer. It’s hardly an influence anyone would seek out (and you will correct me if I’m wrong about it), but there it is.
For adult writers, your post makes me think of an essay by T.S.Eliot. In it, he famously distinguished between tender-minded and tough-minded poets. The tender-minded were associated with the Romantics. They were presented (unfairly) as all feeling and no thought, coughing decorously into scented handkerchiefs while composing stanzas about wounded butterflies. Tough-minded poets were characterized by the Metaphysical poet John Donne, whose craggy, complex techniques and treatment of subject appealed as much to the head as the heart.
Regardless of whether they think of themselves as tender-minded or tough-minded, writers probably do better when they see themselves and their critics in hard-headed, objective terms. Or, as Michael Corleone says to his hot-headed brother, just before Michael kills a rival gang member and a crooked cop, “It’s not personal, Sonny, it’s just business.”
In other words, it’s helpful to develop a certain toughness and objectivity in relation to both the work we do and those who–solicited or otherwise–offer up opinions on that work. Otherwise, we’re just too vulnerable to self-deception in relation to our work, and overreaction to critics. Easy to say, of course, not so easy to do. Thanks again.
True, he shaped me as a writer. But it breaks my heart on behalf of the girl I was that I gave up my delight in painting and drawing. It’s fair to be angry about that.
Yes, writers do have to be tough-minded. It’s the flip side of the vulnerability coin–tough about the work and the process of business and publication, but vulnerable to the world, compassionate in order to understand the plight of others, tender and full of wonder to the world that we’re writing about. Not always an easy road to walk.
LOL on Sonny. True enough.
Criticism tends to imply judgement. Barry suggests that without it we are vulnerable to self-deception in relation to our work. I agree with him that self-deception must be avoided, but have a different take on how.
Logic dictates nothing is perfect so when revising I ask not so much “What is wrong with it?” but “How can it be even better?” I then keep on repeating that question ad nauseam.
As a former English major, I think I created The Critic slowly and subtly by taking class after class after class where we studied the “product” but never the “process.” We were mining the minds of “geniuses” rather than examining how each one of those very ordinary people went through the same processes and crippling doubt that we all go through.
There was never a teacher or a parent, thankfully, who told me I couldn’t. There has always just been that ghostly cast of The Greats on the stage before me. It took a while to realize that they didn’t write their books out on the first try. That it wasn’t all mystical and rapturous and satisfying. That they had good editors. That even after publication they likely thought they could have done it better. And that each of them had their own Critic to overcome.
Writers are just regular people with something to say.
For me, the Killer Critic isn’t a problem. I shot him in the head long ago.
Rather, the box around me is the example of my father. He was a fairly successful man, an entrepreneur who pursued his passion but only so far. My income level is similar to his–not bad but not lavish.
In other ways I’m unlike him. I learned from his health problems, and hug my kids more. Still, there seems to be a boundary set by his example. It’s funny, that, considering as a young man in the Vietnam era I so utterly rejected his politics and patriotism.
There’s no one telling me, “You can’t.” There is, however, a ghost telling me, “You can only go so far.” I’ll have to think about that. Thanks.
That’s a great insight. “You can only go so far.” That’s a powerful one, and I might have some of it myself. I’ll have to think about it, too.
Thanks.
Wow. “You can only go so far.” That’s equally as damaging and probably more insidious because it’s harder to notice. This one plagues me too.
Great post, Barbara. Lots to think on here. I’m so sorry you had such a horrible art teacher. I think my experiences are smaller, cumulative ones rather than a specific instance I can point to. Thanks!
I had a fifth grade teacher named Edith Miller, who was nasty to pretty much everyone (education by humiliation was her motto, I think). She accused me of plagiarism, a word I didn’t even know until she leveled it at me and called my parents. She insisted that I couldn’t have written what I’d written in an essay about Cortez. I remember looking the word up and becoming terrified that I might go to jail. My parents stood up for me, but the damage was done. I uncovered it some years ago when I realized that some of the fear and resistance I felt when I wrote had to do with the terror of being called out as a phony. I did draw caricatures of her (hook nose, beady eyes), and I lectured her likeness on what she’d done to me, and also on her cruelty to others. It freed me. Doing this is a powerful and liberating process. Thank you for talking about it today.
The caricatures are liberating, aren’t they? Taking control, maybe. I’m glad you lectured her.
You always manage to touch a deep place inside of me, Barbara. Today I am only just recognizing a recent self-savaging I suffered. And I can see how silly it was now. But in the moment, these bouts can be so crippling. It started about a week ago. Through the summer and into the fall, I’d had good momentum on my WIP, which is the second edition of a series. I’d gotten into the third act, and so I stepped back to gather my threads and see how they would weave. Something felt off. I well-knew the full trilogy’s arc, but I realized that I didn’t have a clear vision for the wrap of this second section.
While I was grappling with that, the doubt seeped in. And during the seeping, I saw two articles on the same day. First, the announcement of a million dollar book deal being awarded to an acquaintance (an FB friend that I actually met in person a few years ago). I was thrilled for her (honestly). And I don’t know why this later seeped in to become part of doubt’s toxic potion. I really don’t do this for the money, and I have no aspiration for a big bucks debut (I swear). Nevertheless, this news became part of my self-critique. What I am working on will never be “sought after” – not like that, anyway, so maybe not at all. And working on book two of a series when book one hasn’t sold can leave one prone to “why bother-ism.”
The second article was on writing the second edition of a series, and the six lessons that can be learned from The Empire Strikes Back. The sixth lesson was: “Have a late-breaking shocker.” (As in, “I am your father, Luke.”) I sat back and thought, “Huh. I got nuthin’.” At least not a shocker. At least not for book two. And as clichéd and familiar as that cinematic moment is, the realization suddenly made my little story in my little world seem so prosaic. And the one-two punch left me staggering.
The good news? As I said, I can see how silly this was. And unlike during such past bouts, I was (relatively) quickly able to grab my writerly self by the scruff and give me a shake. Why on the gods’ broad beach would I compare myself to a writer of women’s fiction (or any other writer, for that matter), or my work to a 35-year-old scifi blockbuster?
None of that was what brought me to the page. My stories did. Only my inner critic can call them prosaic (they can be criticized in a hundred other ways, I know, but no one’s ever called them prosaic). They’re worthy of my focus and effort.
Thanks for always taking me there, Barbara.
I’m pretty sure all of us have experienced that weird mix of joy, dismay, conflict, worry that you felt over your friend’s great deal. It’s normal and also it kind of aches a little, and it aches because you genuinely are joyful, and not even jealous, just….sort of bereft.
Maybe it’s a little like my plane crash voodoo: there are so few plane crashes that if there’s been a big one in the past couple of months, I figure there is NO WAY a plane I’m on will drop an engine. (Who said it was logical?)
In writing terms, it’s the thing of a million dollars for a debut novel. What are the chances (the gremlins say) that it will happen more than once for the same group of people? If someone I know writes the book of the decade, what are the chances (the gremlins say) that I can ever hit that level?
Not logical. Also real. Better to acknowledge the actual feelings, whatever the mix, than to let it fester because it feels uncomfortable.
Sounds like that’s just what you did with both of those things. Glad you’re back to writing.
I’ve had a couple of those days, lately too. I love your phrase “gods’ broad beach.” Might have to put that in the swipe file. ; )
Thanks, Barbara for the article. There were parts of it that really struck a cord with me.
When I was a senior in High School, my English teacher encouraged me to write. I had always planned to be a writer and other students from grade school up had “loved” my little stories.
Then I went to college.
In my Freshman creative writing course, my teacher, head of the English department “told me” I could not write by failing me. (I had “A” in every other course.
The course was mostly analyzing themes in classic novels. I sat under a campus tree crying every assignment trying to get the words together (I am ADD). The most devastating part was when I had my quarterly review with her, she told me I wasn’t trying. I gave up and switched my major.
I never tried again until I was 60. Still working three years on first draft, learning form every online article and e-book I could find.
I will finish, and it will be a fine book with great heart and a beautiful story about a woman who wouldn’t give up her dream for a family.
So there, Dr. Ellison, Huntingdon College, Montgomery AL !!!
So there, indeed! Very happy you found your way back.
Writing has always been an outlet for me–heck, I even wrote on the walls and was punished for it. I laugh about it now (if I didn’t, I’d cry) but I was punished quite often for being creative, drawing and scribbling in the margins of my notebooks with paper being in short supply. What I hear in my head is: who do you think you are (to write, to draw, to dance) this? It’s the collective voice of a culture–my parents, some teachers, even some friends.
One of my favorite books to read and gain courage when I’m low is The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. Thanks for this post, Barbara. I’m glad you were able to get to the root of one of your critics.
Even more challenging when the collective voice is telling you the same thing. You have the heart of a lion!
(I don’t think my comment went through, so i am posting again. Sorry for the possible duplication, but it was something I’ve been wanting/needing to share for a long time.)
Thanks, Barbara for the article. There were parts of it that really hit home for me.
When I was a senior in High School, my English teacher encouraged me to write. I had always planned to be a writer and other students from grade school up had “loved” my little stories.
Then I went to college.
In my Freshman creative writing course, my teacher, head of the English department “told me” I could not write by failing me. (I had “A” in every other course.)
I sat under a campus tree crying for days every assignment trying to get the words together (I am ADD). The most devastating part was when I had my quarterly review with her, she told me I wasn’t trying. I gave up and switched my major.
I “wrote” stories in my head for decades, but I never tried to put it on paper again until I was 60. Still working three years on my first draft, learning from every online article and e-book I could find.
I WILL finish, and it will be a fine book with great heart and a beautiful story about a woman who wouldn’t give up her dream for a family.
So there, Dr. Ellison, Huntingdon College, Montgomery AL !!!
I needed this today. Thank you!
The killer critic: me on days when its seems like forever for me to reach my goals.
My healthy critics: two literary aunts who worked in publishing and read early versions of a story–kind but pointed out I had miles to go. College professors and even published authors like Elizabeth Strout all had something to say–positive and encouraging. Those ups and some downs. I keep writing and writing and–thanks, Barbara.
My killer critic was my mother–a teacher, yet–who never commented on my writing (which was always competent, I now realize) except to say about a poem I published in my high school paper, expressing garden-variety teenage angst, which she interpreted as evidence of a mental disorder, “If that’s how you feel, you should do something about it.” Angst had started the poem but was quickly displaced by the pleasure of wordplay and craft, and I was truly proud of my poem and having it published.
My good critic was my eighth-grade teacher, who said I should be doing something literary with my life. So oblivious was I to my own abilities that I was baffled by her advice. Now I remember it as early validation, which still goes far to neutralize those maternal discouragements.
Always difficult when the voice is ongoing, like the voice of a parent.
And yet, here you are!
Barbara, when I read your comment “don’t prostitute your talent that way” it rang a big bell. I was told that by my brother, fresh from university and studying “proper” writers. Romance was beyond the pale. It really stung. Still does!
Women’s ideas and entertainments are always silly, dontcha know.
It stings for me, too. I can work myself into a complete snit at times–which doesn’t do any good, but there it is. <3
It’s that constant, “You’re just not good enough and you never will be.” The truth is, writing is a lifelong learning endeavor. If you’re doing it right, then you’re always improving…and you’ll always be disappointed when you look at books you wrote a few years ago.
Thanks for the post. Shared.
Unfortunately, my Nasty Inner Critic often masquerades as my Thoughtful Inner Critic, a trick that can be hard to see through. I call him ‘Scarecrow’ since he pretends to be what he is not, and I only fear him when I feel and think like a fairly stupid bird!
‘You can only go so far.’ is indeed a subtle and dangerous underminer. Examples include other writers and publishing professionals who are helpful, but only up to a certain point, the point where one’s dreams exceed theirs.