Our Monsters

Some brief thoughts on inner critics

I should be waist deep in the NaNoWriMo waters by now, but I stand ankle deep with barely more than 3,000 words under my belt. It’s not for lack of vision or desire either. The words are there, but the time and capacity are not.

NaNo puts a lot of undue stress on some writers, while being a perfect amount of challenge for others. I always found myself falling into the first camp. I would pull deeply from the dregs of my perfectionism and trip over too-high expectations. Halfway through the month, I would flounder a bit with the guilt of being a non-writing-writer.

My inner critic is barbed- a bit poisonous even. She knows where I am weak and digs into the wounds, bleeding them until I’m drowning in a mire of my own making. So I respond by trying to hammer out the “right amount” of words, driven by guilt. Those words that come from empty writing sprints are ashen.

The critic takes the shape of a monster, tooth and claw, digging into my skin and ripping it away as though she can unearth the core of my creativity. The writer’s spark.

But she can’t.

Very recently, I learned something: our monstrous inner critics are incapable of their own creativity. They’re a piece of us that cannot touch that glowing, inspirational core, but oh how they lust for it.

Mine tears and gnashes at me in her effort to obtain it; but she can’t have it, she doesn’t have the capacity to carry it. For writers, our creative spark is sacred. Our inner critics live in the dark and desire for pieces of that light, glimpses even.

I’ve learned to quiet the monster by listening to her. In reality, she’s scared; scared of failing, scared of never finishing and, ultimately, scared of rejection. Now, I hear her out and honor her fears, gently coaxing her down with the things that quiet the beast: soft music, candles, some tea or cider, and a book in my hands.

I don’t believe in immuring the darker parts of ourselves; that darkness is there to teach us, whether it comes in the form of perfectionist inner-critic monsters, or something else. I’ve come to believe that it is our responses to our monsters that is what truly needs the work.

So, while I’m nowhere near where I should be for NaNo this year, I am giving myself a lot of grace. The spark is still there, the monster rears her head from time to time seeking it, but I hold her gently and remind her that the words will come when they are ready- when I am ready. Until then, I fill her up with the things that settle her spirit and, in so doing, I’m filling up my own spirit.

The day that I came to find peace with the monster was the day that I realized that the monster is me.

Writing isn’t always sunshine and rainbows or writing what you know, sometimes it’s the moments of non-writing outside of the margins that allows you to grow yourself. I’ve learned more about myself as a writer, and as a human being, in those moments spent outside of the margins.

Here’s to the words that are forever inked within the margins of our books, and to the growth that we allow ourselves outside of them- because of them.

May we be more than just our monsters.