Today, I'm supposed to be working on a second revision of my 2013 Young Adult book for Delacorte. I've got a busy few weeks ahead and I need to make some headway on this edit in order to feel okay about taking a few days off for a family vacation. I don't have time to waste. I don't have time for a breakdown in the process.
Of course, that's always when the breakdowns happen, isn't it?
For me, the breakdown often comes in the form of the Inner Critic. Unlike during the crafting of a first draft, I tend to think that my Inner Critic will be a valuable addition to the process this late in the game. She will help me kill my darlings and cut the fat and make my manuscript as tight as it can be. After all, my editors said they wanted to see this draft as close to final as possible because they think the book is "nearly there."
Nearly there...
Which of course makes my mind start fretting:
Oh dear, oh dear. That means this is it! My last chance to make it perfect! Or at least as good as I can make it at this point in my career. And, oh man, do I want it to be good. I want the readers who've liked my other work to like it. I want the readers who thought I could have sucked less to think it sucks less. I can't do that without my Inner Critic!
And so I invite the Inner Critic in, and cower in the corner with my laptop perched on trembling knees while she stalks about the room holding forth on my work.
Let me tell you a little about my Inner Critic. My Inner Critic is gorgeous. Flawless. She is strong and brilliant and unflinching and merciless and as caustic as every reviewer who's ever really-not-liked my books all rolled into one. Her tongue is made of acid and, most of the time, she uses it to burn the soft, downy flesh from my manuscript's bones. It is the rare paragraph that escapes without a snide comment or two. Or three. And though I try to take her advice and do my very best to suck less, I am never able to please her. Because I am not perfect. I am a work in progress as much as the book I'm writing. I am human, but I am trying my best. I really am.
Isn't that worth something? I ask her in a soft voice.
No, the Inner Critic says,
It is not.
She tells me I should quit and spare the world my work, and assures me a large number of people on Goodreads would thank me for it. She insists I am a weak, worthless, stupid fraud.
And I
am stupid, because the truth is, my Inner Critic isn't my ally. She isn't my helper. She's a monster in disguise.
The Inner Critic is the eating disorder of my teen years dressed in grown up clothes, insisting she's relevant because I'm a professional now and I shouldn't be allowed to go around publishing drivel and embarrassing myself. She is the chain-smoking mental hipster of my early twenties who insisted I would never find a partner who would love me for the strange, neurotic, silly, naive, believing-in-fairies person I was. She is the faded, emaciated wraith who haunted my mental space after my divorce, assuring me I would never be anything but a poor single mother and that it was all my fault because I should have majored in something other than Acting and should have made better choices and should have and should have and should have, on and on and on until I started sleeping every moment I could spare because even my nightmares were better than that voice.
I don't know what your Inner Critic is like--I sincerely hope she isn't as terrible as mine, because mine is a nasty bitch with destruction and pain on her mind and I firmly believe none of you lovely people deserve a voice like that in your head--but I invite you now to show your Inner Critic the door.
Walk to the sliding glass door of your mind and open it. Outside, it is raining hard and is very, very cold and there may or may not be rabid, hungry wolves prowling about--I'll leave those little details up to you. Now, I encourage you to hold out an arm and invite the Inner Critic to become an
Outer Critic. Stand tall and breathe deep breaths as she spews venom on her way out and then slide the door closed and return to your place by the fire, settle in your comfy chair, pick up your hot cocoa and take a long, luscious sip as you watch the Inner Critic's hair stick to her skull and her mascara run down her cheeks and her mouth open and close like a demented fish as she screams and screams insults you can't hear over the sound of the rain (and is also maybe ripped apart by rabid wolves).
Now, put down your cocoa and get back to work. The Inner Critic will run off to find a place to dry off and get her rabies shots sooner or later, but we don't have any more time for her. There are books to be written, human stories that are sometimes beautiful and sometimes flawed and sometimes, if we're very lucky, beautifully flawed, which is the best kind of beauty there is (or so say my stretch marks, nothing more beautifully flawed than a post-baby body).
Hope you all have a peaceful, critic-free week,
Stacey
