Your Inner Critic Needs You to Survive

No matter what you’re doing, what skills you’re using, what tasks you’re performing or putting off, something inside you will critique what you’ve done and inform what you will do in your future. 

A writer’s inner critic can be useful, especially if you’re able to be more objective, to catch errors, and to revise in a productive way. On the other hand, some people develop a more unhealthy relationship with their inner critic. 

Perhaps it deals in absolutes. Early drafts can easily feel like complete failures if they don’t resemble the prose of bestselling authors. Maybe your inner critic shames you, assuming that other people reading your work will immediately hate it. 

If your relationship with your inner critic is unhealthy, you probably won’t get useful, constructive feedback out of it. More simply, you’ll get a lot of, “This sucks”, “Your characters are dry”, “Your writing is dull”, “Nobody is going to care.” 

Why is that the case? What skill do you need to improve upon, or what specifically feels wrong about your piece of writing? 

First and foremost, a writer can always improve. If you insist that you can’t improve your skills, you’ve probably plateaued. Approach your writing with the mindset that you will constantly improve and develop new skills despite what your inner critic might tell you.

When researching this topic, I came across this interesting line: “My self-doubt voice can sound the same as my excited and inspired voice. They both sound like me. The difference is that one is energized, expansive, and inspired. The other is constrictive, fearful, and limited.”

A lot of writers who approach this topic reaffirm that your inner critic is you as a way to help you identify it, communicate with it, and unpack the mindset that led your inner critic to make its judgement. That said, you know yourself best, so when it comes to questions about yourself, you should be pretty trustworthy. 

Your inner critic can approach you like a friend, earn your trust, and tear you down under the guise of objectivity. This can be very hard to recognize. That said, in this situation, you will always have the most power. 

Your inner critic needs you if it’s going to live, so if your inner critic must live, why should it not be on your terms?

We can disparage the inner critic for offering baseless feedback, or we can force that feedback into another direction. 

“That sentence sucks. Therefore, you shouldn’t be writing at all.” 

“There’s something about this sentence that doesn’t sound quite right. What is it about this sentence that feels wrong? What was my goal for this sentence, and what did I mean to say?”

Notice that the first statement is very finite. It urges the writer towards a dead end. Writing is not a sea of dead ends. There will always be options, and there is an option that will sound better. 

The second statement, first, names a problem that the writer has noticed. Then, the writer asks a question. To follow up on that question, the writer revisits their original intentions for that sentence, asking what they originally meant to say. This approach is more solution-focused and rooted in your knowledge as a writer. 

I’ve put together a worksheet that can help writers document excerpts from their writing that they’d like to rework. This worksheet asks a few of the guiding questions that I normally ask writers when they’re stuck on how to revise. This worksheet aims to teach your inner critic how to help you. 

Steps to Revision.pdf

Download PDF • 73KB

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