How to Silence Your Inner Critic

Writer’s block is a myth, but writer’s paralysis isn’t.

Many years ago, when I was still a baby writer, I attended a regular writer’s workshop in Eugene, Oregon, taught by professionals.

The woman who ran it, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, then-editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, asked everyone in the room to raise their hands if they’d ever experienced writer’s block or something similar. A dozen or so people—half of us, myself included—raised their hands.

She then asked how many people are or were English majors in college. The exact same people—again, myself included—raised their hands.

Everyone in the room was stunned.

Every single person who had spent time in a university English Department suffered from “writer’s block” at least sometimes, yet no one else did.

What was going on? Was “writer’s block” somehow taught to people in college?

Yep.

Not on purpose, of course. Literature courses are all about criticizing what somebody else wrote. If you spend enough time criticizing other people’s work, and if you’ve internalized the fact that even Shakespeare and Milton are subject to criticism, your own inner critic can mushroom to Godzilla size and paralyze you even if you’re writing something that would never be confused with “literature,” such marketing copy or even blog posts.

You need the inner critic when you’re editing, but it should never be the size of Godzilla, and it needs to shut up entirely when you’re in creative mode.

Start with Draft Zero. There is no getting around it: you must produce a first draft, and your first draft will be sloppy. As Robert Graves said, there is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting.

But even the most seasoned professionals can feel a bit of anxiety, trepidation, or paralysis while writing a rough draft.

One solution is extraordinarily simple. Think of the first draft as Draft Zero. Only after you’ve cleaned up that mess do you have a first draft. If you can internalize this idea, your inner critic will leave you alone and let you get started because it doesn’t matter if Draft Zero is littered with problems.

Pre-write. If that doesn’t work for you, try this instead: create a document on your computer for the sole purpose of pre-writing. This is not the first draft of your copywriting, content marketing, blog post, story or article. It’s just a warm-up. It’s practice. Just start typing whatever it is you’re going to write about later.

It’s going to suck. So what? You’re not writing yet. You’re just stretching.

Do this for ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes. Then go have a cup of coffee and look at your warm-up again later.

You might be surprised to discover that you already have a serviceable draft

If not, who cares? Some of what you wrote during your warm-up will be worth preserving and copying and pasting into an actual draft. And you will have produced those parts without the inner critic sticking his nose in because you weren’t actually writing. You were just typing.

Dare to be bad. Best-selling author Dean Wesley Smith used to tape a hand-written note to his computer monitor that said, “Dare to be bad.” It was his way of shutting up his inner critic so he could get on with his work and clean up any messy parts later.

His subconscious—and yours—knows what it’s doing and can produce at least some decent material on the first go-around if it can be liberated from the need to be perfect.

Daring to be bad, pre-writing, and starting with a Draft Zero are just three different ways of hog tying your inner critic, putting duct tape over its mouth, and tossing it into the basement. You don’t want to kill your inner critic. You need it for editing and cleanup. But it will paralyze you if its reading over your shoulder as you type your first draft.

Especially if you majored in English.